An almost 8 000 km train journey across Asia is not your
average holiday. The four-bed compartment barely counts as a hotel or even a
tiny hostel room. And the two basins in each carriage are the closest you get
to a shower in five days.
During our See the World with Spar trip, five of Spar’s
travel reporters joined nine other travellers from all over the world for a
trip on the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Beijing. What lay ahead for
each of us, after a few days of sightseeing in Moscow, was sharing a train
compartment half the size of my bedroom in Joburg with three other people for five
nights and four days. Wet wipes would become our best friends and instant
noodles would fill the holes in our stomachs. When the bed covers, which looked
like something I’d imagine my great-grandmother would have had in her house,
seemed too dirty to sleep on, we could always make the situation seem better by drinking vodka.
As soon as I set foot on the train, I was thankful about every
Oppikoppi music festival I’ve been to. I didn’t know it at the time, but those days of
not showering, constantly being covered in dust from head to toe, and sleeping
on a punctured air mattress in an ice-cold tent prepared me for this.
Then came the good news – we were only two people in our
cabin, which suddenly made it seem as spacious as a billionaire’s mansion in
Sandton (it’s surprising what the context of a situation does to one’s
perceptions).
A different kind of
interesting
To say the journey soon became interesting is an
understatement. Station platforms turned into markets as Mongolian
entrepreneurs jumped off the train with almost more clothes than they could
carry and started selling them to locals. Babushkas (Russian term for old
ladies or grandmothers) sold homemade food to commuters who were tired of instant
noodles. Since my Russian is just as good as most Russians’ English, I
initially didn’t have a clue what I was buying, but after a few days I figured
out these foods would usually include a snack similar to a vetkoek (with a meat
or cabbage filling), pancakes (called blinis in Russia) filled with cottage
cheese, meat dumplings and cottage cheese fritters.
Then interesting became very
interesting. A Mongolian man knocked on our compartment door, explaining (using
a combination of Mongolian and hand gestures) that he would like to come in. I
was too surprised to say anything and before I knew it he jumped onto one of
the top beds, opened the ceiling with a screwdriver and started taking out stuff
from the roof: boxes, shoes, plastic bags containing what looked like dish cloths
– passing the one packet after the other to his friend who was now standing in
our compartment door. I later discovered this very suspicious process repeated
itself in several other cabins.
As much as I wanted to grab my camera and start filming, the
hardcore journalist in me disappeared as soon as the language barrier set in. I
didn’t want to take the chance of a group of angry, overweight Mongolian men breaking
my camera, throwing me off the train, and then having to find my way out of Russia.
The scenery
Russia
I didn’t know it was possible, but in Russia the scenery
remained the same for three days and thousands of kilometres. It consisted of yellow
grass fields and trees in autumn colours (which were beautiful for the first
few hours). Every now and again we would see a godforsaken black-and-grey village
appearing out of nowhere, looking as if it has been forgotten by everyone in
the world except the poor souls living there, who don’t have anywhere else to
go or don’t know of any better. “And now they are drinking vodka from the
morning to the evening to forget where they are,” added a fellow traveller from
Belgium, after I shared my impressions with him.
The majority of the wooden houses have turned black and were
in a dilapidated state, some of the trees seemed black, most of the cars in
sight were old (and black). Pieces of scrap metal were lying around everywhere −
as if it was just left there by people who couldn’t wait to get out.
On the fourth night we passed Baikal lake – the deepest
fresh water lake in the world. I set my alarm for 03:00 to make sure I didn’t
miss out on seeing it, and after the monotonousness of the first three days it
was a welcome change of scenery.
Mongolia
As we arrived in Mongolia, the first mountains made their
appearance. After five nights on the train, our first stop was Ulaanbaatar, the
Mongolian capital. We spent an unforgettable three days in the country, exploring
this fast-developing city and going to the countryside for a visit to a family
in a traditional ger − the round mobile homes of Mongolian nomads.
We tasted fermented horse milk, salted milk tea, dried
pieces of milk curd, and homemade cheese and butter – all of these having quite
a strong taste if you’re not used to it. That afternoon I even dared getting
onto a horse for the first time in 20 years. The countryside with its grass
fields and rock formations reminded me of a wonderful trip to Southern Namibia
a few years ago.
China
The last stretch of the journey was a relatively short one –
we got onto the train (which was much cleaner, modern and spacious than the
train from Moscow to Ulaanbaatar) on the Thursday morning and arrived in busy Beijing
the next afternoon.
In China the scenery changed completely – we were suddenly
closely surrounded by high mountains and green, leafy trees. Believe it or not,
by the time we arrived in Beijing for just another adventure in one of the
friendliest and the most hospitable countries I’ve been to, I actually wanted
the train journey to last longer.
So, how do you survive a train
journey of almost 8 000 km (and end up wanting it to last longer)? You enjoy the scenery, you catch up on lost sleep, you read, you
play card games, you sing, you try the homemade food on platforms, you drink vodka, and you do
all of this with a great bunch of people.
The Trans-Siberian train trip was
indeed not the average holiday; it was an experience I could share stories of
for the rest of my life.
Watch the video:
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