Now Google have teamed up with Russian Railways, to offer the ultimate in virtual travelling: a trip on the Trans-Siberian railway!

If you have a spare week or so but can’t leave your computer because you are addicted Facebook, then why not open this in another window, and you can have the best of both worlds.

That’s right, the entire length of the track has been filmed and embedded into a Googlemap so that you can experience the whole journey. Not only can you watch everything you might see out of the window, but you can listen to light-hearted tidbits like the whole of War and Peace by Tolstoy.

If you’re wondering who on earth Russian Railways are, it is relatively self-explanatory, but if you want more info then I’d watch this video interview with the cheerful chap who heads up the company. In his words (and I quote): “Yearly, we are carrying like one billion three hundred million passengers”. Blimey.

I personally would prefer the real thing, especially as at the end of the week I’d be in Asia, rather than still sat in front of my computer. But it’s a cool idea, and here at Loco2 the journey-planning tool we’re releasing soon has some similar features in terms of helping you know what to expect on a long rail-based adventure.

Photo credits: Brostad, Denis Tang, Magical World

We visited all the tourist hot spots: the Kremlin with its mosque-like domes, Red Square with its worn out cobbles, and the incredible St. Basil’s cathedral. Legend has it that after it was completed Ivan the Terrible had the eyes of its architect poked out so that he could never make anything so beautiful again. Seems a little excessive to me, though it is rather a nice building. From there we wandered over the river to see the trees of love; sculpted from metal and hung with thousands of padlocks by newlyweds, these were a source of great interest – do you suppose divorcees come back with bolt cutters? Having spent all too long wandering the streets and eating delicious burek (бюрек – baked pastry cheesy goodness) we dashed back to Red Square just in time to see the changing of the guard and get in line for the mausoleum of Lenin.

Ho Chi Minh, Mao, and Lenin. It’s official I’ve got the Communist hattrick. All these gents have now had the pleasure of my company in all their waxy formaldehyde glory. I’m expecting an honourary Socialist Party membership any day now, complete with KGB security access and some sort of medal. Jokes aside I have been amazed just how many people still revere these former tyrants. I mean Ho Chi Minh seems like a stand up guy all things considered, but Mao, Lenin…really?! A few million deaths aren’t enough to put you off eh, not bothered by widespread persecution? Last year Russians voted Lenin as Man of the Century with Stalin as a close second (STALIN!!!! Honestly?) I’m baffled. But in a way that makes the history all the more interesting.

Our second and final stop in Russia was St. Petersburg; a sprawling mass of palaces, grand promenades, parks, bridges and McDonalds рестораны. There I made the terrible mistake of going to the Hermitage museum where I enjoyed some art, over 1000 rooms of it to be specific, and slowly felt my love of life slip between my fingers. OK, well not my love of life exactly, but certainly my appreciation of paintings of Jesus (which if I’m honest didn’t have a high threshold in the first place). This sadly quashed my appetite for museums and I spent the remainder of my trip deliberately avoiding anything that might fall under the category of a museum. That is with the exception of the Vodka Museum, which, as I’m sure you can imagination sits happily in the grey area between museum and bar.

“Vodka. Connecting People”, proclaimed the Nokia-inspired hat which Vicki had acquired somewhere between the nettle vodka and the chilli shots. We’d learned rather a lot about the distillation process, and looked at pictures of people who had something to do with vodka (one of whom looked rather a lot like Sean Penn). Then we tasted a medley of vodkas and proceeded to forget everything we had learned, including what exactly Sean Penn was doing there in the first place. Honey, cranberry, chilli, and nettle vodka were all duly tasted, washed down with beer and gherkins. Delicious. Then came a couple of expensive ones: Beluga (not, I was assured, made from whale) and Marmot (not to be confused with the small rodents I was eating in Mongolia). These were the final nails in my coffin and before we knew it Vicki and I were in full flowing conversation with a troupe of scary looking business men, and dancing to Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen, proving that Russian’s aren’t like coconuts at all, you just have to know their poison.

Despite the stereotype, Russians are not a miserable people. They do have a sense of humour, and laugh appropriately when they catch a ridiculous girl, mid-somersault, rolling down the aisle of a train. Any country that is host to this many mullets (retro hairstyle of 80s fame: “business up front, party out back”), must be good for a laugh. However, they don’t immediately crack a smile at you on meeting and their facial expressions may appear, to the untrained eye, to fall under the category of stabby. But it’s all a facade. On our last night in Russia we went to a bar and found ourselves without a table. The only spare seats in the entire bar were alongside a pair of mean looking Mafia types; leather jackets, shifty gazes, intriguing scars, definitely the sort of men who are in the “waste disposal” industry. We looked around for an alternative, but finding none we accepted our fates (donned our bullet proof vests) and took a seat. The first few minutes passed nervously, but then, as if by magic we broke the ice and before we knew it we were knocking back tequilas and dancing to Grease Lightning. I should have known their weakness. It’s just like the Russians on my cargo ship all that time ago. All they really want is to get a bit drunk and dance to bad music: rum and Abba for the sailors, vodka and Queen for the business men and tequila and Grease Lightning for these Mafioso. You just have to know the right combination.

A few days later we were in Estonia, back to the EU, the Schengen zone and a familiar alphabet. No more metro challenges: “what’s our stop called?” “It’s called tablecloth, starfish, backwards R, man jumping through a ring of fire… sounds like robotov-electrov-dimitrov-skaya…RED LINE, RED LINE…GO GO GO!” No more mystery meat: “you want me to eat this miscellaneous offal do you, or this cheese which you have been carrying in the lining of a goat’s stomach for days? Mmmm yes please”. No more monster bus journeys, Valium induced sleeps or train Olympics. No more tasers, reckless umbrella users or daredevil tuk-tuk rides. No more dinners of offal, scorpion or locust. No more mummified Communist tyrants!!! Whatever will I do?

The journey is almost over. Only a few countries lie between me and the United Kingdom. Around the World in 772 days, eat your heart out Michael Palin! Twenty-One countries, two oceans, somewhere in the region of 25,000 miles – of which I flew around 3,000. To my credit I have personally bullied countless backpackers into re-evaluating their choice of transport, and dragged Vicki at least 8,000 miles overland where she would have otherwise flown. I can say hello in a few more languages, and have developed an unshakeable belief in my ability to whatever the hell I want when it comes to bizarre and dangerous journeys. You might even say that I’ve found myself. Ha ha, bollocks, I’m exactly the same. So, goodbye-eee, don’t cry-eee, wipe the little tear from your eye-eee…never again with I darken you e-door with my long winded and unwanted tales. You never asked for them, you probably didn’t read them. So, be free, go forth and prosper.

We began the final leg of our adventure from Mongolia totally saturated with dairy products and severely bruised thanks to ten days on horseback. To the Trans-Siberian… oooohh, aaaaah, the very mention of this journey makes people swoon. An epic journey over thousands of miles, from one continent to another, from the mighty and powerful West to the erm…mighty and powerful East.  Across Siberia with the company of vodka swilling Ruskies, and views of snow-swept tundras and reindeer herders. We imagine a beautiful train. Maybe it’s got velvet curtains, and mahogany panelling or oil burning lamps à la Orient Express. Dream on suckers. This is a former Soviet train.

Let me just clear this up, once and for all. Yes it is an epic route, you can watch incredible landscape whiz past the window and it’s wholly satisfying to know that you have crossed the biggest country in the world, and passed from one continent to another by rail. However, this is a four night, five day journey…on a train and it ain’t got no mahogany! Now I love trains, you probably won’t find a bigger fan when it comes to long journeys (the bus can take a running jump of a large cliff!), but five days is an awfully long time to be sitting on any kind of vehicle non-stop. So perhaps it isn’t necessary for me to say that we became a little bit bored.

We looked out the window a little: trees, mostly alpine, some deciduous; towns, mostly industrial, definitely gray; people, mostly Caucasian, probably Russian. What shall we do now? Cue the fanfare, light the torch…so begins the Trans-Siberian Olympics; an opportunity to do all the things you’ve ever wanted within the confines of a train. Can I fit in the luggage compartment? Yes. Can I get back out of the luggage compartment unassisted? No. Can I fit an entire boiled egg in my mouth, whole, without breaking the shell? Affirmative. Press ups between the bunks? Bring it on. Stand on one leg on the wobbly bit between carriages while the train goes around a corner at 60km an hour? In your dreams Andrews! Somersaults down the aisle before you are busted by the carriage attendant? Three. Well that took about an hour, only 119 hours to go.

Once these activities were exhausted we decided it was time to venture out of our carriage. Maybe there are other small spaces to squeeze into. To be honest I was borderline obese at this point due to boredom induced over-eating so didn’t have high hopes – pot noodles, instant porridge and boiled eggs are a Godsend on this kind of journey but will eventually lead to lardiness of first year student proportions. Put down the fork Kate.

Ours was the first carriage on the train so getting to the restaurant car was an adventure in itself. Eight sets of doors, each with a pre-door door and a post-door door, all guarded by humourless Russian railway employees who clearly hate their job and are suffering from the aforementioned Trans-Siberian obesity crisis. Once you’re through the doors you have to walk down the aisle, all the while being accosted by crazed Mongolians chasing you with the dairy product lunchbox they’ve brought from home (run for your lives!!), and the Russians who look as though they want to stab but probably want to drink vodka and sing along to The Eagles.

Having fought off the various assaults on our progress we made our way towards the end of the train, and then heard the sweet sound of fellow tourists, who we immediately coerced into joining us in the restaurant car. The remainder of the journey passed easily. There’s nothing like a few beers and some board games to pass the time, and there were enough characters on that train to write a small play. There was a batty old English lady who commended us for our first rate mingling: “there aren’t enough young people these days who know the true value of mingling” she said, and then proceeded to talk at length about how they make clotted cream in Devon, and on the role of the potato in international cuisine: “you just can’t go wrong with a potato”. Later we were joined by a pair of 6ft 7″ South Africa twins who challenged us to a game of Scrabble and went on to insist that ja was a legitimate word, “ja bra, it is, ja”. Translation: yes dude, it is, yes…hmmm I think not, but entertaining all the same. And then came Jim from Canada (I am forever meeting Canadians called Jim, have they no imagination!?) who was so happy about finally achieving his dream of doing the journey that he did little else but look out of the back window at the retreating landscape and smile to himself.

The border crossing was an interesting one. Note to self, get a new passport. I have long known that my passport photo isn’t the best likeness. I was sixteen, blurry, and appear to be wearing some sort of heavy eye make-up on (damn you teenage Kate), and roll neck jumper (curse you 90s fashion). The curious effect of all this is that I somehow appear, in the words of one fellow traveller to look “like a small Indian child”. Little wonder that the Russian border guard eyed me suspiciously for what felt like hours.

During those tense minutes I considered pulling out another coconut pun: so I hear that Russians are responsible for numerous deaths on tropical islands as they fall from palm trees…maybe not. This one was among the hardest, and thus most coconutty of all the Russians we’ve met and in retrospect I’m glad I kept my mouth shut. Vicki later informed me that in a recent survey of Russian border officials, over 75% were found to be mentally unstable and inappropriate for any kind of work involving fellow human beings.

Once I was sure we were safely in the country and not going to be flung into Siberia from the train window I was able to relax, get stuck into a book, and a few more pot noodles, and before we knew it we were in Moscow, a little fatter but as happy as ever.

And as if all these circus antics weren’t enough I threw in the added excitement of doing it all from Australia. Below you’ll find a pretty general description of the steps you need to go through to be granted a visa. But if you’re in any doubt of my dedication to the cause, rest assured that I spent hours on hold to the Russian embassy in Sydney, sent in excess of twenty emails back and forth to the UK and eventually posted my passport to New Zealand where it was processed by the slightly more amiable embassy there.

Sort it out

First you need to work out an itinerary, Russia isn’t interested in going with the flow, they want to know what you’re up to, every minute of everyday, so get a map and guide book, and make a plan. The people at www.realrussia.co.uk are mighty helpful and very capable when it comes to answering queries about train times and all that jazz. They also have the benefit of offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg so they really do have their ears to the frosty Siberian ground, and can give you some accurate estimates of travel time and price. Once the visa has been issued you have a little more freedom but the consulate doesn’t reward laziness so just make a plan; places to visit and stay, things to do, trains to catch and don’t forget to factor in insanely long train rides in between destinations.

Then you have to score yourself an invite. The Ruskies don’t want any old riff raff gallivanting around their fair state, after all you might well be a 007-esque, exploding watch type spy of some description. So play the game and take your self to www.myrussianvisa.com or www.visatorussia.com and apply for an official invite. These can only be issued by registered travel agents each of whom has a unique tour operator code which will appear on your invite. This part is relatively painless and will only set you back around £20 for a standard issue 30 day tourist visa, which is normally emailed to you within a couple of days. You can ask to have a hard copy posted to you for an extra 45 quid but my advice is to simply print the document straight from the PDF. It should print out on one page so make sure it comes out as it appears on screen because the consulate won’t look kindly on any dodgy comic sands font or borders falling off the page!

So now you’ve got an invite you can bask in the joy of reading your name in cool Cyrillic letters, and gather your strength to apply for the visa itself. Some of the online agents can apply for the visa on your behalf and although this is tempting, it is usually twice the price of applying directly to the consulate. Do not be afraid, anyone can do it so long as you read the document carefully and maybe complete it in with a pencil first.

* Fill in all the fields and check the instructions which will come with the application as many forms ask that you ‘N/A’ any questions with do not apply to your circumstance e.g. please list any relatives you have in the Russian Federation.

* You will also be asked fill in your invite number and travel insurance policy number (remember to take hard copy of these with you to the border as they may be asked for).

So that’s it, now all you have to do is wait anxiously for 3 weeks while someone has your adventure, and your passport in their hands. Depending on your nearest consulate you might drop the application off in person, or send it along with a prepaid return envelope (I would recommend registered post, a little more expensive but it will save you a fortune on manicures after all that nervous nail biting).

Despite the aforementioned fire juggling my application was fairly painless. Just get organised, be patient and you’ll be laughing all the way to the Kremlin.

Image courtesy of Kate

NIC SETON, The Australian Youth Climate Coalition

The Great Northern Train

Having spent the last two weeks catching trains around South-East Asia, the weather hasn’t so far changed much. Hot and humid largely describes it – the start of the wet season. The longest we had spent on trains so far was two nights, with one day in the middle and only half-days either side. Now it was time to really get a handle on long-distance train travel…

So far we had taken two weeks to cross over 9000kms. Now, in one fell swoop, we would cover over 4500km over three nights, sharing close quarters with the other four travelers, and no way to escape. Would we make it out alive? This was to be considered a warm-up to the big trip, the five-night journey from Beijing to Moscow via the trans-Siberian.

Beijing

We arrived in Beijing on the 48 hour train from Hanoi, passing through the south of a rapidly developing Chinese countryside. By some estimates China is set to build as many new buildings in the next twenty years as the entire current building stock of Europe. Walking around Beijing it is easy to see this as possible – the city stretches for over ten kilometres in every direction, the majority of it medium or high-rise development. With 3 days to fill before catching the trans-Mongolian railway to Moscow, we had a rare opportunity to take a break, and explore a bit of this sprawling city.

It was interesting to talk about the development of the city, in part because of its sheer scale, but also because of the recent attempts to ‘green’ Beijing. Apparently the city was traditionally dominated by the bicycle as the most affordable and efficient way of getting around. However, the trend towards private car ownership, largely the product of an increasing economic divide, has seen pollution in Beijing deteriorate further. Of all the ‘green initiatives’ heralded at the Beijing Olympics, the single most effective was taking half the cars of the road for two months through an even/odd numberplate system. This measure alone reduced emissions by 850,000 tons.

The ‘Ulan Baatar Incident’

The highlight of the trip to date has definitely been what will henceforth be known as the ‘Ulan Bataar Incident’ on the trans-Siberian railway (which is technically known as the ‘Trans-Mongolian’ when you travel from Beijing to Moscow via Mongolia.

The train stopped in Ulan Bataar for half an hour, and all of the overland trippers got off to have a look around. When it came time for the train to leave, only Katy and Nic were on board – the other three overlanders, Jack, Ollie and myself (Anna), had read the timetable incorrectly and thought the train was stopping for an hour, instead of the half-hour time that was actually allotted. So we were wandering around the local shops, separately, thinking we still had half an hour.

Ollie had made it back to the platform, but refused to jump on and thereby leave me stranded in the middle of Mongolia. Jack saw the train leaving, sprinted up the platform and jumped onto the train as it started to slowly pull away. At this point, I was shopping for condensed milk and ramen, not noticing the commotion going on only a few hundred metres away.

With a cry of ‘It’s insane to leave someone on their own in the middle of Mongolia!’, Ollie was still standing on the platform arguing with train officials. (Thanks again Ollie!) Jack, with his wits about him, figured that he could help this situation more on the ground than from the train, so he jumped from the moving train back onto the platform, and with Ollie, watched the train pull away, before running around the shops to find me.

Nic and Katy had delayed as much as they could, and now they were left on the train with most of our possessions (not to mention all our operating mobile phones), wondering if they would see us again before we reached Poland. The Trans-Mongolian only runs once a week!

They looked pretty surprised when we jumped back on the train five hours later, US$200 out of pocket, with a story of a -1 degree Celsius Mongolian winter, and dangerous taxi driver!

Photos: cmaccubbin, Rosa