ALWAYS SOMETHING TO SEE: Monument to the soldiers of the tank column 'Komsomolets of Transbaikalia'.
Phil and Sue Newdick travel on the Trans-Siberian Railway and discover the ultimate train journey, full of interesting scenery, friendly people and quirky experiences . . .
For us, the Trans-Siberian Railway really is the ultimate train adventure.
We’d enjoyed the train rides over the North American continent, Australia and most of Europe, but each of the three legs of this journey were further in time and distance to anything we’d experienced before. The accommodation was adequate, the ride comfortable, the food acceptable — although unexplainably the tickets only provided for one meal per journey plus a travel pack, which included slippers and toiletries. So that meant only one meal for the one-day, two-day journeys, etc, — or the whole 6½-day journey! However, being the intrepid little travellers that we are, we came armed with a selection of dried noodle packs, rolls and coffee to supplement our diet.
The landscape we travelled through was quite different from other places we have been to, with vast tracts of land which seemed to be unused.
There was evidence of cultivation and grain crops around the small settlements that can only be described as shanty towns — even where there was construction the new buildings were small and the materials budget.
The amount of freight passing our train was phenomenal and the number of labourers working on the lines huge.
The workers were not the most energetic, but they were there when we woke in the morning and were still there when night fell. They seemed to live in trains, which were on sidings and had, along with accommodation, all the machinery and material needed to lay and maintain the tracks.
Chita was our first stopover 2½ days from Vladivostok (2863km). It is sometimes called the City of The Exiles, because after 1825, some of the Decembrists were exiled there. According to the 2010 census, the population is 324,444, and it is located at the confluence of the Chita and Ingoda Rivers.
Finding our accommodation was no real problem — we hired a Lada and were very quickly deposited at the address we gave the driver.
Oops, someone had neglected to inform us that we had to check-in at the office, which was some distance away, and Chita was not really overflowing with interpreters.
However, as always, language is no barrier when people really want to help, so we soon had another taxi to the office for check-in and another one back to the apartment before we finally settled in.
As we were paying for the taxis, we were probably the only ones put out. But with the low fares, the well-founded, low-priced apartment and the really helpful people we met, it really was only a very minor irritation.
As Lonely Planet says, Chita is not really geared for tourism yet, but it has a charm that is probably enhanced because of that. The people are generally very friendly: they were certainly very patient with two strangers who, although a little advanced in years, had wandered into their territory with no language skills, a smartphone, NZ passports and an adventurous, inquisitive nature. We are grateful to the young man from the MTC phone company who took the time to establish that the trouble we were having with our phone was only because of our excessive use of our data allowance, because of our need for online translation and overuse of online GPS.
He soon rectified this by apologetically adding a further NZ$14 to the low monthly cost we had already paid and this gave us access to enough data to last for the rest of our time in Russia.
Our departure from Chita was at a very convenient 2.40pm, which enabled us to retrace our journey to the railway station via “the office”, lunch, a few more photos and plenty of time to sort out which train to board.
Our train was 007 yet the only sign of a train heading in our direction was the train heading in our direction was the 001, so we went to information for advice.
“No English, so sorry”, was the response, but if we went to ticket counter 8 we would be understood.
We joined the queue: there were about eight people in front of us but that was no worry — we had plenty of time. Then, two policemen appeared and escorted us to the front of the queue to be attended to first.
The English-speaking attendant sorted us out with very limited English, but we still couldn’t help but wonder why we were extended such preferential service.
Chita to Novosibirsk is another first-class doddle: 22 hours of an easy-going journey, with another meal and our own additions.
The journey also included an impromptu lesson in country music — our style — to a couple of aspiring young Russian artists, who hadn’t even thought they liked country, until they heard it our way.
This was the way to travel.