This was it. The big one. Three nights, 61 hours, in third class. I arrived at the station, in front of me sat my new home/prison. It shone majestically in all its Soviet glory: a clunking, rattling metal rectangle inhabited by very bored-looking Russians, all smoking cigarettes on the platform. As you walk in, the…
View More
The train ride from Irkutsk to Krasnoyarsk, my first leg in 3rd class, was uneventful. Platzkartny, as it’s known in Russian, is 4-berth open compartments with two beds above the opposite window. It’s comfortable enough, and exclusively Russians. The carriage is almost empty the whole time; I’m alone in my 6-bed ‘section’. Each carriage has…
View More
As soon as I found my compartment, I was greeted by two Brits: the fourth bed was empty, and soon became the drinks cabinet. Another passenger later quipped the bed was empty because there wasn’t room for any more personality. The two were Luke, a guy travelling to Dubai overland to meet his girlfriend, and…
View More
I had a free day in Ulan-Bator before I headed out to the Gobi for 2 days, so I decided to check out the ominously-named ‘black market’: Naran Tuul. It’s Ulan-Bator’s largest market, and while you can’t quite buy arms, kidneys, or order assassinations, it’s like the ‘original’ supermarket. Naran Tuul must be 2km by…
View More
Entering the Beijing train station, it wasn’t hard to find the right platform thanks to the crowd of non-Asians surrounding it. In contrast to the high-tech, high-speed streamlined Chinese trains, this one was far older. I’d guess it last got a refurbish in 1970. My entire carriage was mostly empty, I think only 3 of…
View More
After arriving in Kunming from Jianchuan at 2am, the driver mercifully let me and a few others stay on the bus till 6am – when it would be needed again. I had, then, 5 hours to kill before my train. I wandered around the city for a good two hours, stumbled into a fish market, found…
View More