7,000 kms down - 2,000 to go

Wednesday 9 August

Another lazy day on the train. Nothing to do but eat (very important on this trip) and read, do puzzles and contemplate the scenery. Not sure if I’ve mentioned about food – three meals a day, including a three course lunch and a four course dinner – mostly traditional style Russian food (but very delicious) – and as much wine and beer and soft drinks as you want. Wines are a choice of Australian Shiraz or French Burgandy for red and Italian Pino Grigio and French Chardonnay for white. Beers are local Russian brews.

We went to the film show (made by the BBC, with English subtitiles) on Ghenkis Khan, the mighty Mongolian warrior of the 13th Century, who united the tribes and ruled an area from Beijng in the east to Persia (I think we call that Iran today) in the west and died before he could overrun Turkey. His aim was to take over the world!

We have a large group of Turks on this train – they are distinctly unfriendly and luckily they have separate activities for a lot of the time. We did eat in the same restaurant carriage as they do, a couple of times near the beginning of the trip, as it is half way between us and Millie and Jim. They stared coldly at us, talked pointedly about us and one even had a bit of a tantrum about interlopers! The following day ‘reserved’ notices appeared on the tables in this car. So we moved on elsewhere – we could of course have the last laugh and vote to keep them out of the EU!

We also had a talk about the construction of this railway line – started in 1890 in Vladivostok and 1891 in Moscow and several other points along the way. Lots of money was paid by some officials to ensure it passed through their towns and brought prosperity to the area – Novosibirsk was one such town. It was completed in just seven years (although part of it passed through China at this stage) at a cost of 1,500 million roubles! – lots of money now, never mind then (exchange rate is currently 44 roubles to 1 pound GBP), but Russia was a very rich country in those days. The war between Russia and Japan in the early 1900’s proved that the railway needed to be wholly in Russia and so the final part was completed and opened at the end of the first World War. The total length is over 9000 km (6000 miles) and contains the longest bridge in the world (2.5 kms), the longest tunnel (7km) and non-stop it takes 11 days to travel from one end to the other. Nowadays trains are an important form of transport in Russia and nearly all freight is transported by rail – it’s a shame Dr Beeching closed so many of our railway lines – perhaps we could have had less lorries on our roads.

We are currently about 7000 kms along the line and lose yet another hour tonight – the last I believe - to take us to 10 hours ahead of England. When we leave Vladivostok and fly to Beijing we will be reclaiming two of these lost hours. The countryside has changed again today from very Devon-like countryside of rolling hills and green pasture to miles upon miles of pine forests – the timber resources in Russia are enormous. It is hard to believe we have traveled all this way in one country (apart from our short sojourn into Mongolia). The country is just so vast – about 77 times the size of Great Britain!