Suspended in time with the Trans-Siberian Express

Built during the imperial era and adapted to Soviet needs, the Trans-Siberian Express is like a journey back to another world, writes JOHN LEE.

It's 10.30 on a crisp September night when my friend and I sweep into Beijing central railway station. We pile our packs on the floor and lean self-consciously against a pillar near the entrance.

The station is not well lit and it's difficult to focus on details. Red marble floor, grand central staircase, large stained-glass window: a grimy pre-communist building modified with fading gold stars and political inscriptions. I feel we're being scrutinised, but no one, not even the teenage soldier wearing an oversized khaki jacket, is looking at us.

After a week in Beijing, we're about to take the six-day, 9000km Trans-Siberian Express from the Chinese capital to Moscow. Built during the era of Russian imperialism and adapted to Soviet needs, it is the world's longest passenger rail route, now mainly used by black-market traders and foreign tourists.

We pass through to the platform and pull ourselves up the steps of the Russian train, the only one in the station. It's suffocatingly warm inside and smells of coal smoke and unaired rooms. Squeezing along the corridor, scraping our packs against the wood-patterned Formica walls, we find our compartment. The train lurches and we drop our bags and collapse on the long, red seats.

We exchange our tickets for bed linen with a middle-aged Russian attendant, or provodnitsa, who fills the doorway. Later we use the musty sheets to turn the seats into beds and try to sleep as the train bounces through the night on uneven tracks.

Opened in the early 1900s, the Moscow-Vladivostok stretch of the Trans-Siberian Railway was a textbook example of how not to build a railroad. The construction was characterised by reckless methods and haste, as light rails that snapped easily were laid over land that often could not support the weight of a train.

But the line endured and now three Trans-Siberian routes share the same tracks through Russia but separate before northern China. The original line to Vladivostok can now be extended by taking a ferry across to Japan. The second route, the Trans-Mongolian, branches off near Siberia's Lake Baikal and cuts down through the People's Republic of Mongolia. The Trans-Manchurian route leaves the Russian line further along, enters northern China and circumvents Mongolia. The Trans-Mongolian route and the Trans-Manchurian line, which we are on, both end at Beijing.

In the line's early days, sumptuously decorated carriages with deep carpets, oak panelling and armchairs were exhibited at the Paris Exposition to attract wealthy travellers, but today's railway is more a reminder of later Soviet functionalism.

Our train, the Vostock, was built in East Germany in the 1970s and contains 13 carriages, each with 10 compartments and a coal-fired hot water samovar.

One first-class car, mostly used by foreign tourists, has two beds per compartment rather than the standard four. Each compartment is about 2m across and has long padded seats separated by a folding table. Ours is of the stubborn, non-folding variety.

Above the grimy window is a radio speaker that can't be turned off and hisses at us for most of the trip. Nothing seems to have been replaced since the carriage was built, except the curtains, which are a dazzling gold colour.

There are two well-designed washrooms in each carriage, but they are dirty enough to make us want to avoid them. A hot tap delivers only cold water and the toilet flushes halfheartedly, perhaps in protest at the maintenance man, who beats it with a sledgehammer every morning.



Time is a nebulous concept on the Trans-Siberian. The route crosses several time zones, and although I try hard to keep my watch adjusted, it never matches the stop times on the timetable or the clocks at the stations we pull into. Many passengers adopt a more intuitive existence, getting up when they want breakfast and going to bed when they're tired.

We spend most of the time playing cards, drinking warm Chinese beer or gazing at endless golden larch trees punctuated by occasional wooden houses or Lada cars. We eat when it feels time to eat.

We venture to the restaurant car only once. The floor is scarred with spilled food and the table cloths, once white, are now grey. Despite the extensive menu, which the waiter insists on handing out, there's only one dish on offer. It's a $16 meal of rice, greasy slivers of meat, watery mushrooms and tea, which in Russia is always served black and sugared.

There are no other diners in the car and we finish our meal in silence, while the waiter rubs the counter top with his apron and watches us closely.

We have brought some food with us: dry noodles, oatmeal, and soup that we rehydrate from the samovar. But we buy most of our supplies at stations along the route, where the train stops for around 20 minutes two or three times a day.

Chocolate, ice-cream and dark Russian beer are easy to find, but the best food comes from the droves of gnomish old women - babushkas - who descend on each new train.

Dressed in headscarves and thick woollen coats, many sell stews and boiled vegetables, cooked in their kitchens and warmed on their car engines for the trip to the station. Others walk the platforms with pale cheeses, brown curled sausages, smoked fish and leather-skinned rye breads.

My favourite breakfast of the journey turns up in Omsk: a plastic bag of warm potatoes drowned in butter and herbs.

The train bursts into life at these stops, and it's just about the only time we see the other passengers. Many are Chinese merchants, and they hit the platform running before the train has even stopped. The merchants sell different goods at each station and the locals wait in groups to see what the travelling market is bringing. Striped sweaters in Omsk, jogging pants in Tomsk, fur coats in Irkutsk and gaudy clocks and ornaments in Ekaterinburg.

It starts to feel colder in our compartment and the trees begin to thin out as we approach Eastern Siberia's Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world, known locally as the Holy Sea. With the train right on the edge of the lake, all we can see is brilliant blue.

When I pull down a window, one of the provodnitsas narrows her eyes, shouts something and gestures at me to push the window back up. The rest of the day, during which we never leave the shore of the lake, is a running battle with the attendants to keep the window open. I am told off for waving my camera through the opening, but the provodnitsa runs back into her compartment when I point it at her instead.

Lake Baikal is the turning point on the Trans-Siberian. The small villages and impenetrable forests are replaced by sprawling grey cities and hissing factories belching black smoke as we leave Siberia and move into the industrial heartland of Russia.

The sun disappears. Fog and faint, persistent rain take over. For hours, we crawl through a thin tract of no-man's land between the backs of houses and the railway line.

It's strewn with collapsed sheds, rusting car hulks and mounds of broken machinery half overgrown with grass and weeds. We are approaching Moscow.

Casenotes

GETTING THERE: It is possible to book a trip on the Trans-Siberian independently, but it is far easier to use a travel agent that knows the system. The Hong Kong-based company Monkey Business, which has booked more than 14,000 foreigners on the Trans-Siberian is a good starting point. Try its website www.monkeyshrine.com

COSTS: Tickets start from around $1000 for non-stop itineraries on any of the three routes. Summer is the peak period, so book well in advance. Autumn, when the Siberian forests are spectacular, is also popular.

VISAS: Most tour operators or travel agencies can help travellers arrange the necessary visas for travel through Russia, China and Mongolia.