UK to China Overland via Russia

A Trans-Continental Adventure

We set out to travel overland from the UK to India, using public transport as much as possible, taking somewhere between 6 months and 1 year. The decision to travel via train was reached based upon our following reasoning…

• Firstly there is the big environmental reason, aviation being the fastest growing source of greenhouse gases and the fact that emissions at high altitude have a greater impact,
• Secondly, flying means ‘missing out’ countries that are ‘in the way’ of the chosen destination, we wanted to experience subtler changes in culture and people and,
• Thirdly (and maybe most importantly), it makes the trip more of an adventure!

Soviet Monuments are always worth a look at!

Our adventure started with a ferry to the Netherlands. Travelling by ferry out of the UK is a much more laid back affair than flying out. We just turned up at the dock, checked in straight away, and were onboard in our cabin within 15 minutes, no queuing, waiting rooms or checking in baggage. We departed in the late evening and arrived in Rotterdam the following morning, a very relaxed journey with a good nights sleep.

We only spent 2 nights in Amsterdam, mostly wandering around trying to spend as little money as possible, knowing our savings would go much further when we got to Asia.

Getting the train to Moscow from Amsterdam station was pretty exciting; knowing it was the first of many trains, taking us halfway round the world, made it feel like the journey was now really beginning. We had booked a 3 berth cabin for the 2 night journey through Germany, Poland and Belarus, but we had it to ourselves the whole journey, pretty luxurious travelling really.

Russian Bureaucracy is not the most appealing thing about the country. Before we left the UK we had to get a Russian Tourist Visa and also a Belarus Transit Visa as the train passes through Belarus even though we technically didn’t set foot in the country. On entering Belarus we were given an immigration form which we had to complete with the usual information; entry date, exit date etc. The train is only in Belarus for 1 day so we filled in the following day as our exit date expecting to be given another immigration card when we entered Russia.

St Basils Cathedral in Moscow always draws a large crowd

When we arrived in Moscow we realised that our immigration cards were for the whole of the Russian Federation and we had filled them in to say that we would be leaving that very day! Not wanting to leave Russia immediately or feel the presumably heavy hand of the Russian law we got an unofficial taxi (every vehicle is a potential taxi in Russia, you just stick your arm out, negotiate your price and away you go) and headed to the UK embassy in a hurry. We got there 10 minutes before they closed for the day quite stressed only to find that we could simply change the date on the card ourselves!

Moscow was interesting, with its impressive soviet monuments and some incredible architecture and pieces of art. Visiting Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal was easily the Highlight of Russia for us. Lake Baikal is the largest mass of freshwater in the world (it contains 20% of the world’s supply!) and has many unique plants and animals. It felt very peaceful, remote and clean after the busy, and polluted capital. The beauty of the island and the lake made us wish we had not already bought our onwards tickets so that we could have spent more time there.

Baikal was still frozen when we were there, to get to Olkhon Island the minivan drives over the ice, there are even road signs and speed limits on the ice! The ice was due to melt only a couple of weeks after we were there, which makes the island inaccessible for a few weeks until the ice has melted enough for boats to sail through.

The first time we walked out onto the ice was great, until we heard loud cracking sounds! The noise is only the ice moving and cracking underneath so there isn’t any real danger, but it was still a bit unnerving.

Looking out over Olkon Island to the frozen Lake Baikal

The language was pretty difficult to get to grips with, translating the Russian ‘Cyrillic’ alphabet into the Roman alphabet is not too hard, meaning that we were able to translate some written things, but pronunciation is really tough and we didn’t learn more than the usual pleasantries.

On the Trans-Siberian train from Yekaterinburg to Irkutsk (a 2 nights and 2 days journey) we shared a cabin with a Russian soldier who spoke no English, but we managed to get by passing our Russian phrasebook back and forth. Later he brought one of his army mates who could speak a little English, and communication was a little easier. They kept buying us drinks and we shared our wine with them, we talked about rock music and Jason Statham films (he’s big in Russia apparently!). They also asked us political questions, like how we felt about the British Army in Iraq - we weren’t sure how to answer, but luckily they were against the Iraq war and it seems it’s always possible to play the safe political card - Disagree with American politics! (they did like Obama though).

Russians are keen on making toasts whilst drinking, mine (following their lead), was something along the lines of “Russia is a great country, vast and beautiful, I drink to Russia, and peace and friendship between England and Russia”

The typical view out the window of my Trans Siberian Express across Russia

Most of the people we met on the train were really friendly, which is a big difference from the people working in the service industry who seem like they have taken an exam in ‘not being friendly to customers’; one woman in a bus station literally shooed us away from her ticket window because there were no buses to our destination leaving from there.

Two weeks in the largest country in the world is nowhere near enough time to do it justice, despite the often recurring scenery of birch trees and snow (and not much else) that we saw from our train window.

The thermometer at Irkutsk train station read -110C on the morning we caught the last of our Trans-Siberian trains out of Russia into China. We were plenty warm enough though as we hadn’t left enough time for the taxi to get to the station in rush hour traffic, we had to jump out as it stood in a jam about half a mile away and run! We got on our train with only minutes to spare and slumped into the seats in the warm carriage, now feeling very hot with all our layers and the exercise, the train staff gave us reprimanding head shakes as the train pulled away, taking us to a warmer climate, a different culture, and (we hoped) a stronger vow of punctuality!