Adler Trans-Siberia Railroad Trip

After setting the clock back 2 hours, I’m waking up pretty early and waiting until it is reasonable to get up. It was light at 5am as we are at the very eastern part of the timezone. We are now in the Moscow timezone, 7 hours ahead of New York. It is a pretty dismal morning, overcast and sprinkling with the temperature just above freezing. We see some large fields but can’t tell what was being grown. There are some dairy cows grazing on both sides of the track – hopefully they know to get out of the way when the train comes through. All the people with intestinal problems are up this morning. My mother still has a nasty cold and is going to stay on the train today. We are stopping in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, the Tatar Republic of the Russian Federation, with a population of 1.2 million. It was founded over a 1000 years ago. It has a complicated history, being conquered by the Mongols in the 13 th century and then by the Russian Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) i...

Another beautiful but very chilly morning as the sun came up. Only 32 degrees with heavy frost and some fresh ice on small ponds along the train. Fortunately, my mother is feeling better this morning but 3 others in our group are down with intestinal problems. I’m religiously washing my hands, using hand sanitizer and keeping my fingers crossed. At 8:30 we are stopping briefly in Tyumen, the center of gas and oil production in Siberia. The railroad station here was constructed in 1915. In the morning, Tamara gave a presentation on the very convoluted history of the Romanov Dynasty from 1613 to 1917/1918. The last czar, Czar Nicholas II abdicated in May 1917 to the demands of the people who wanted a Russian Republic. This was very short-lived as the Bolshevik revolution was in October 1917. His entire family was murdered in July 1918. This afternoon we are getting off the train in Yekaterinburg, the second largest city in Siberia with a population of 1.5 millio...

Yet another beautiful morning, lightly overcast and in the 50s. The train stopped at 8:30 to change engines for some reason and we were able to take a walk outside. Most people were bundled up in heavy jackets but I thought it was comfortable to walk to the end of the train in just a t-shirt. It is such a nuisance to open and close all the doors between the cars that it was much more convenient to walk outside down to the dining car for another lecture at 9am. Tamara gave a talk on various aspects of Russian society, in particular the strong role that women have played, especially after WWII when so many men were killed in the war. Andrei gave a short talk on the Russian language and gave us an exercise to write our name in Cyrillic. There was a PA system talk about the history of Siberia as a place for exile and punishment. Starting with the Cossack opening of Siberia to Russians in the 1660s, it was actually a positive development as many of the exiles were educat...

We were up bright and early for breakfast in the hotel at 6am as the bus was leaving at 7:15 for the train departure at 8:15. Another beautiful morning. One thing that was amazing in Irkutsk was the observance of the pedestrian crosswalks. As soon as someone stepped off the curb onto the white lines, traffic would immediately stop. Much more consistent than in Woodstock or China. We are on the train all day today as we are going through relatively unpopulated areas of Siberia. We are going through the “taiga”, very dense forest, mostly silver birch, red pine and some larch/tamarack. In some places the silver birch looked like skeletons, with smaller branches broken off as the trees were dead from fire – we could see the trunks were black. In other places, the trees still appeared to be alive but the bark was burned as well – it isn’t clear whether they will survive. It looks like some of the fires are from low brush and grass that burned, so only the lower trunks were dam...

Day 11 route (not very far and hard to see)  We woke to the sun rising over the mountains on the south side of Lake Baikal and the sun reflected on the lake – very spectacular. It is another beautiful morning. We have been extremely fortunate to have clear days and no rain for over a week. We are now traveling through mountains covered with pine, Larch (Tamarack) and golden Aspen trees. We pulled into Irkutsk around 9:30. Irkutsk was founded by the Cossacks in the 1660s as a trading city on the tea route. It is now the main city of Eastern Siberia with a population of 600,000. It is on the border of the Angara River as it makes it way to the Arctic Ocean. We first had a walking tour of the city, visiting a number of the notable churches and monuments. One of the monuments at a church was to Alexei Chirikov who was the first European to set foot on Alaska. Vitus Bering, a Danish captain, is given credit for discovering Alaska but he never actually set foot there. W...

We woke to a view of Lake Baikal outside our window as we rounded the southwest corner of the lake. Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world with a depth of over one mile. It was said to have been formed 15 million years ago by the Siberian Rift, with the southern plate moving under the northern plate and creating a very deep trench. We are on one of the early sections of the Siberian Railroad which has 30 tunnels leading up to Port Baikal at the mouth of the Angara River which drains Lake Baikal to the Arctic Ocean. The train would be disassembled onto a ferry to cross the Angara River and then reassemble on the other side to continue its journey. A route along the southern border was created later and this section was largely abandoned except for tourism use. Our trip included a scenic boat ride crossing the river and along the shore to the village of Listvyanka. The hillsides are turning a beautiful golden yellow from the Aspen trees – it is difficult to capture with photo...

Route to Ulan-Ude Around 6am, the Mongolian border agent opened our door and took our passports which were on our small table. I barely realized she was there before she was gone. We had to wait for our passports to be returned. The train started up and we were able to go down to the dining car for breakfast. We are traveling through the Selenga River valley which has very different terrain. The hills are largely tree-covered and have a mix of deep green evergreen trees and Aspen that are turning a beautiful golden color. The train is following the meandering river with marshy areas along the side. The small villages we started passing are looking pretty decrepit, with many houses in poor repair and concrete buildings that are falling apart or were never completed. We don’t know why – maybe it had to do with the economic collapse under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. Then we started seeing villages that looked more prosperous, with some new houses under construction and old...

The hotel had a very nice breakfast buffet with just about everything you can imagine, salads, fruits, cheeses, sausage, yoghurt and hot foods. The pollution this morning is making the air almost unbreathable – we can only see a short distance through the yellow-brown haze. Along the road are many apartments buildings under construction as well as what looks like partially completed buildings, empty concrete skeletons. Due to changing exchange rates and rising building costs, foreign investors have found it impossible to continue construction. A rather dismal sight. More positively, as we headed out further, we are passing through grasslands where nomads are grazing their sheep, goats, cattle and horses. The bus regularly has to stop due to all of these animals crossing the road. There are gers (more commonly called yurts) scattered around the countryside. Due to road construction, it took us over 2 hours instead of 1 hour to get to our first destination, the 131’ tall s...

Route to Ulaanbaatar We did not sleep very well on the train, although the beds were quite comfortable. The rocking is more than "gentle" and it is often quite loud. Several times during the night, the train stopped to let other trains pass as in many sections there is only one track. We woke to a bright sunrise over the Gobi Desert, more rolling terrain with low grasses. We passed herds of camels, horses, cattle and sheep. Overall it looks pretty barren. Amazingly, I was able to call Carmen on my cellphone! Sunrise over the Gobi Desert Mongolia is most famous for Genghis Khan and his descendants. In the 13th century, the Mongolian empire was the largest in world history, extending from Korea in the east to Prague and Budapest in the west. From Siberia in the north to Persia, India and China in the south. It was considerably larger than the Roman Empire and Alexander the Great Empire. All good things must come to pass and the Mongolian Empire eventually collapsed...

We are taking a Chinese train to the Mongolian border. The gauge of the Chinese and Mongolian/Russian train tracks are different so one needs to change trains at the border. So much for rocking gently to sleep on the train. The seat/bed is like a yoga mat on a wooden plank, very “firm”. The tracks are not very smooth so there is considerable rocking back and forth with a fair amount of noise. I didn’t get much sleep. The train car has a “squat” toilet on one end and a “regular” toilet on the other end. There is a wash room with three sinks. We woke to a bright sunny day. The landscape looks fairly similar to parts of the southwest US, rolling grasslands. We did pass fields of sunflowers, corn and wheat were the soil looked good but the soil along the train generally looks pretty sandy. There have been large flocks of sheep, herds of cattle and some horses. In the distance we’ve seen many wind turbines for generating power. Breakfast was served in the dining car at tables of 4...