However, the time spent aboard these trains, rattling through Siberia and across the Mongolia Steppe, meeting locals, eating local food, taking in culture on board while watching the world change through the window, is truly something else.īy submitting your email you are agreeing to Fairfax Media's Vladivostok, to a lesser extent, is also interesting.
The old cliché of travel – "it's the journey, not the destination" – has never been truer than it is on these famous routes. "But actually, it's a double-track electrified railway, just one part of the massive Russian rail network, and you can use it to travel by train from London, Paris or Berlin, through Moscow, not just to Vladivostok but Beijing, and through Beijing to Hong Kong and Shanghai and even Hanoi in Vietnam." "What's incredible about the Trans-Siberian is that people have got this image of it as an isolated Russian curiosity, winding single-track with one train a month that goes from Moscow to somewhere called Vladivostok," says Smith, speaking from his home in the UK. He's done both the Trans-Siberian – Moscow to Vladivostok in seven days, eight nights – and the Trans-Mongolian, which takes five days and six nights to travel from Moscow, via Ulaan Baator in Mongolia, to Beijing, and he says these journeys truly are the pinnacle.Īmur Bridge over the Amur River in far eastern Russia. Mark Smith is better known to his legions of followers as "The Man in Seat 61", a train-travel fanatic who runs the respected repository of all rail knowledge,. They're also intimidating journeys for first-timers, ones that can seem almost impossible to plan and execute.
These are iconic train journeys that cover almost unbelievable swathes of the world, transporting passengers across continents, across cultures, across civilisations. This train trip, together with its alternative route, the Trans-Mongolian from the Russian capital to Beijing, are names that are instantly recognisable to so many travellers, that sit close to the top of many a list of fantasy experiences. "Well it's the great granddaddy of them all, isn't it?" says Mark Smith, leaning back in his chair as he considers one of the world's great journeys, the Trans-Siberian, the 10,000 kilometres of railway track that stretches from Moscow all the way to Vladivostok. The Trans-Siberian stretches 10,000km from Moscow all the way to Vladivostok.