Start to finish, there were a lot of surprises on this journey and there are a lot of little mental images that keep popping up. Some – not nearly enough, but some – I managed to photograph at the time. Here are a few, along with the impressions that remain. First, the traffic congestion in…
We have seen only a small part of Siberia, a narrow slice running west to east from Kazan through Nowosibirsk and Irkutsk to Mongolia. In the process, our train has covered just under 6,000 kilometers. My first and most overpowering impression seems to be universally shared with the rest of the group: Siberia is nothing…
Apologies going in. It’s been a week since the last post and I have just spent an hour downloading over 200 photos into the laptop (after weeding out an embarrassing number of dark, blurred, badly-framed, totally uninteresting or otherwise unworthy shots). It’s 10:30 p.m. here in Irkutsk and the relentless people running this train have…
I’m in the final stages of planning what can legitimately be called a once-in-a-lifetime trip, built around a private train from Moscow, through Mongolia, to Beijing. I’ll spend a few days in Beijing, then take the train to Shanghai, flying home from there. But first I’ll fly from here to London and take the train…