A SIBERIAN JOURNEY

It is certain to happen with every book I pick up, but my recent acquisition of Bryn Thomas's Trans-Siberian Handbook is affecting me a great deal. I have just added a full two weeks to the time I am planning in Russia, and will mostly use this in cities and towns along the route of the train from Vladivostok to Moscow.

I am looking even more forward to learning Russian and practicing with some friends at every opportunity here in New York before departure so that I can get the most from my time in places where English is very rare in Siberia.

The only view I have ever had of Siberia was from a plane from NY that flew over the north pole in route to Tokyo. I was wide-eyed the whole time as we flew over the white and nearly featureless land. It is not any specific beauty, but rather the unknown and mysterious that makes Siberia what it is in our minds.

After the Ice Festival in Harbin, China, I will cross the border to the east to Vladivostok, the Russian city on the Pacific Ocean that is the end of the main rail line. There are shorter routes to Moscow, but this seemed more fitting to start at the end and go the whole way. There are also a few towns to the north of it along the rail line that look great for a stopover.

(Novosibirsk - Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)

Breaking a 6-day journey up into many small segments of rides (the longest being 30 hours) serves many purposes besides being a great way to know more of a country and its people. The journeys on smaller segments can be done with more local trains which will obviously have more local people aboard, and will also make buying tickets more simple as I will not have to stick to any pre-determined schedules. Most tourists end up buying the entire journey from an agent, including any stops they want to make, and have to stick with their plans or forfeit their tickets. In winter there will be no issues with availability, and I can stay or go in any city as I please. I like the sound of that.

I think I will make these stops:

Vladivostok --> 13 hrs -->Khabarovsk --> 3 hrs --> Birobidzhan -->10 hrs --> Belogorsk (side trip to Blagoveshchensk) --> 30 hrs --> Chita --> 10 hrs --> Ulan Ude --> 8 hrs --> Irkutsk --> 20 hrs --> Krasnoyarsk --> 12 hrs --> Novosibirsk (side trips to Tomsk and Akademgorodok) --> 9.5 hrs --> Omsk --> 7 hrs --> Tyumen (side trip to Tobolsk) --> 5 hrs --> Yekaterinburg --> 21 hrs --> Nizhny Novgorod

This will be followed by some visits to some outlying cities near Moscow and then to Moscow itself before heading southwest towards Ukraine. The idea of so much Siberian snow and old Soviet architecture already gives me the chills.