Travel Tips

We took the trans Siberian (well, exactly the Trans Mongolian branch) to travel from Beijing to Moscow in august 1991.
It had always been one of my dream travels. It takes 7 days to do the journey, and it goes through many landscapes & cities all along Asia.

We started the trip in a foggy morning in Beijing Railway Station.
The day before we bought drinks, cookies, fruit and many things to eat, as the train supplies are (were at lest) poor. Remember to bring also many books, a walkman, card games, chess and as many crosswords as U can, LOL

We took 1st class, that consists in 2 beds, 1 little table and a comfortable place to sit and read for a while...

Every 2 cabins share a toilet with WC and a shower, with 2 doors, 1 for each cabin. Not luxurious, but quite enough.

The restaurant coach is where you'll possibly spend 1/4 of your time. Part of that time goes in queuing for the next meal. The place is small and the food was rather monotonous: meat soup, salad and a main dish... for breakfast, lunch and dinner!!!
Bring your own food, U won't regret it, believe me. The last days you can even seel it to other passengers, LOL

Apart from the landscapes, it's interesting to gaze at the various people in the stations and inside the train. If you go to 2nd class coaches you can see mostly chinese people travelling west, and observe their habits... and even make friends, is a good way of spending your time.
Some chinese people were carrying huge bags full of shoes, shirts... and the bought and sold items in every station where we stopped.

As you go through different countries (China, Mongolia, Russia) some local coaches are added, the restaurant coach is always local and some other coaches are taken away, so you can see different nationalities coaches all through the way.

Mongolia has different rail width than the rest of the countries around, so the train must change the basement when going through Mongolia.
To do this, each wagon has to be taken into a warehouse, elevated and changed. They did this in the middle of the night and, though you don't have to go down, the noise wakes U up and U can't sleep much that night (border controls included).