Siberia

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From Finland to New Zealand – Transiberian Train, Siberian Landscape

Posted by Nesh on November 5, 2016
Posted in: F2NZ, Russia, travel. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment

Along the long way, it is impossible not to get lost in the wilderness and vast emptiness of the Siberian landscape while looking out the window.

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View from the Train Window


At each new look, the seemingly lifeless environment first amazes and then quickly blends into a blurred image of snow and trees.
The scattered wooden houses break the frozen monotony making it an interesting exercise to imagine how such a lifestyle must be. What comes to mind are a mix of western movies, old photographs, and snow.
And, even with all those imagined adventures playing out, the train carries on.

From Finland to New Zealand – Transiberian Train, Station Breaks

Posted by Nesh on November 5, 2016
Posted in: F2NZ, Russia. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment

Being confined to a train, and often just to a small bed, for days and days sounds daunting and boring, but usually twice a day the train has a longer stop at a station.
So, for about 25 minutes, it is possible to get out, breath in the gelid fresh air, walk around and buy some food and water.

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Station of Новосибирск (Novosibirsk)


It doesn’t sound like much but it is truly refreshing and each station tends to have its own personality: either because of the style of the station or just thanks to the presence (or lack) of babushkas (grandmas) who sell homemade meals to the hungry travelers.
Given the long distance, after a few stops, faces become familiar, exchanging a smile or chit-chatting about the ongoing experience.
At some stations, one can feel a bit more adventurous and try to explore a bit farther than usual but that needs to be done cautiously as the train waits for no one. As promptly as it stopped, the train departs once more into the endless frozen land.

From Finland to New Zealand – Transiberian Train, Departure

Posted by Nesh on November 5, 2016
Posted in: F2NZ, Russia, travel. Tagged: , , , . Leave a Comment

If someone wants to get to the other side of Russia, there are only a few feasible options available: either flying, the most obvious and fastest one, or taking the train, the slowest but more interesting one.
I picked the latter as it would give me not only the chance to see a bit of Siberia in winter but also to experience the famous Transiberian Train: “At a Moscow-Vladivostok track length of 9,289 kilometers (5,772 miles), it spans a record eight time zones. Taking eight days to complete the journey, it is the third-longest single continuous service in the world.”
Wanting to head to Mongolia, I would stop at Ulan-Ude (roughly 3/5 of the complete route), after 4 and a half days of train.

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Preparing the Train


The train, to me, seemed very “Soviet-style”, both imposing and experienced, you could almost feel it had done the route many times before and this was just yet another day of work, nothing special. But to me, and certainly many others before, this precise moment felt historic, at least on a personal level.
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