Our Trans-Mongolian Adventure

Well as we last mentioned on Wednesday evening we were heading for an Uzbekistani restaurant in Yekaterinburg before joining our train. This was more eventful than planned. We arrived at Nigora, under an element of time pressure, and once given a table was greeted by a young waiter who seemed both nervous and rather over keen to please, despite his lack of English. He took our order for lamb chops and shortly after a waitress with good English came to tell us that the chops would take 20 minutes to cook and was that OK? We had enough time so said yes.

Our flustered waiter presented us with a starter and then dashed around with undue haste from table to table to kitchen and back in Fawlty Towers style. Eventually he brought out our main courses. However having placed John’s dish on the table in front of him he tried a rather complicated manoeuvre of moving our side dishes with two hands whilst balancing Janet’s plate on his wrist. This action was without doubt beyond his capabilities as Janet’s plate of lamb chops, salad and a small bowl of spicy tomato sauce dip slipped from his wrist and was deposited, via Janet, and particularly her hand bag, onto the tiled floor with an almighty crash. Waiters appeared from all corners of the restaurant to clear up the mess whilst the hapless perpetrator of the disaster appeared frozen on the spot and held his head in his hands with his mouth open. He obviously could speak at least one word of English as once he’d recovered some form of composure he then said ‘sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry’ about 50 times. The Manager then arrived to take control of the situation and ‘kindly’ advised us that we wouldn’t be charged for the lamb chops on the floor(!!) and that they would cook us some more free of charge but it would take another 20 minutes! We agreed but knew that revised timescales would likely result in indigestion. They did give us a free take away desert as compensation. Our waiter disappeared for sometime after the incident (we thought possibly for ever) but returned as we were leaving to say sorry another 50 times. We think his long term prospects at the restaurant could be limited so left him a tip as he may well be unemployed imminently. With 4 days on the train ahead of us Janet was pleased to be able to clean off the few bits of food that hit her top however her bag, which took the brunt of the damage, is now perfuming our train compartment with a rather strong ‘scent’ of lamb, stale spicy tomato sauce and dill.

Following this diversion things worked quite smoothly. We boarded our 9:21pm train and found our second-class carriage and compartment (again we had purchased four tickets for the two of us). We were initially disappointed to see that it wasn’t to the same standard as we’d enjoyed on our last overnight trip. Janet’s bedside lamp wasn’t working, but our Provodnik (i.e. male) Alexander had the train mechanic into our compartment to fix it it within 15 minutes of the train leaving and we got used to our brightened environment quite quickly and felt much more comfortable with the situation as we retired.

After a decent night’s sleep and a free breakfast served to us at 9am (cottage cheese casserole with raspberry jam....don’t ask!) we have now got ourselves nicely sorted and are looking forward to the longest single train journey we are ever likely to make. Our compartment is absolutely fine and our Provodnik and Provodnista (one male and one female) as well as our neighbours are all friendly. And additional good news for us is that the toilets are fine (hurray!). With two of them between 36 of us we are certainly better off in quantity terms than an airline journey or the UK rail service.

We have quickly formed some acquaintances in our 36 berth carriage having met a lady named Kirstine from Copenhagen whose daughter lives in Kilburn, North West London, and also a Brit named Tony who lives in Twickenham and is travelling to the Rugby World Cup which starts In 3 weeks time, taking the train to Vladivostok and then the short hop by air to Japan. We also have a little Russian boy (between 1 and 2) who every now and again totters into our compartment, smiles, laughs and then falls over. All makes the time pass easily although we are making some small book reading progress.

The scenery today has been a mix of light forest (mainly silver birch) and at times flat open spaces stretching to the horizon as we travel across Siberia. As we head further east we are starting to notice that the trees are beginning to turn orange and red as Autumn approaches. We’ve been told that the first snow could well arrive here in the next three to four weeks.

Every now and again we stop at a station, usually it’s a 2 minute stop in the countryside with a few people jumping on and off but in bigger towns and cities it can be 15 or even 30 minute stops. At the longer stops it’s good to get off and stretch your legs but you have to be careful not to wander too far as the train will depart on time with or without you. There are usually kiosks on the platform if you need anything and also the occasional independent fur hat or smoked fish seller.

Due to the vast distances we are covering we continually move forward through time zones. We started the trip in St Petersburg and Moscow 2 hours ahead of the UK, then in Yekaterinburg we were 4 hours ahead, by mid-morning today we moved to 5 hours ahead and this afternoon we have just advanced to 6 hours ahead of home. It can be hard to keep pace with this although the world clock on our iPhones does help as long as you have a signal.

It was decided that the small British contingent, that is us and Tony, would have a couple of drinks in the bar at 5.30 pre dinner. One thing led to another and we were joined by Danish Kirstine and then a young lad travelling alone named Will from Swansea who is having a few weeks in Russia before commencing his degree in Russian History at Durham University in late September.

Dinner was being served in our compartments at 7pm but we didn’t manage to prise ourselves from the bar until 10:30 - you know how it goes ‘let’s have one more’, ‘one for the road’, ‘one very last one’ etc etc. And several beers later you’re still there! Our final hour of a five hour session at the bar was spent in the somewhat strange company of four seemingly pleasant but rather threatening looking, non English speaking, Serbian lads with interesting facial scars, missing teeth and tattoos who were most definitely ‘on the beer’ and had been for some hours. They seemed keen to engage with us heartily even though there was no chance of effective communication but after a while we made a tactical withdrawal and left them in the bar with a rather nervous looking young Will. We believe the Serbians are due to leave the train around mid-morning tomorrow. We didn’t manage to establish what they do for a living but they would certainly pass the first interview stage for a ‘mercenary’ vacancy on looks alone.

We went back to our compartment and attempted to eat our ‘Cutlet and Buckwheat’ (sounds and tastes like a clothing brand) airline style dinner which had been waiting for us for several hours. John ate all of his but Janet gave it the big thumbs down. We were joined for supper by Tony who is sharing his compartment with two Russian ladies and as he is living in a top bunk it wasn’t ideal for him to eat his dinner at 10.30 pm when his roommates were asleep in bed under him.

We had brought a half bottle of vodka with us (drinking spirits on the train is actually illegal) so the three of us enjoyed a couple of vodka and tonics in an attempt to enhance dinner before crashing out just after midnight. Our first full day of the main train journey has gone quickly and it has been fun.Read more