Around the World in 80 Trains

by Monisha Rajesh

  It was Tuesday evening, our second on board the train, and we were now sharing with a Dutch father and son duo named Franz and Rens, who had joined us at Yekaterinburg. Out of the purple flash of an electrical storm, they had appeared in the doorway, water pooling around their boots. Rens had just finished his degree, and the two were on a six-week bonding trip, travelling by train from Amsterdam to Beijing. Franz and Rens were full of fun, and thanks to them we were now sharing traveller tales over metal mugs of Nescafé, fresh bagels, and cups of tiny, sweet strawberries we’d bought on the platform at Perm. They were serious travellers – staying only with Russian families with allotments – and were happy to share ice cream. Subsequently, after our evening of bonding, Aleksandr I had got off at Kirov, and Aleksandr II had spent most of the night arguing with his girlfriend, the rest of the night being sick, and the next four days ignoring us.

  ‘The Trans-Siberian was never meant to be about luxury among a travelling elite intent on sipping champagne in a spectacular wilderness. It was to facilitate the resettlement of Russian peasants to Siberia. Did you know that between 1891 and 1914 over five million new immigrants sought a better future there?’ asked Jem.

  ‘Did you? Or are you just reading out loud from Rens’s guidebook?’

  Jem peered up from his berth. ‘I might be. At least we know we’re taking the appropriate peasant service instead of some fancy fake tourist trap.’ He pressed open the page and read on. ‘It used to be known as “track of the camel” because it wound and bypassed so many towns and ran through the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘I don’t like that term,’ said Rens, retying his pony tail. ‘It’s only city people who say “middle of nowhere”. It’s so presumptive.’

  ‘Like “lost” tribes,’ said Franz, making air quotes with his fingers.

  I’d never really considered what was a flippant and commonly used phrase, but now that I thought about it, ‘the middle of nowhere’ was loaded with disdain. Nowhere was only nowhere from the perspective of those who didn’t live there. But for those who did, nowhere was home. From my berth, I had spent most of the day staring out of the window, the monotony of the countryside broken up by smatterings of villages that had names, shops, schools, communities. The phrase chimed with the same arrogance as ‘lost’ tribes, who were only lost insofar as the Western world hadn’t yet succeeded in arriving on their shores to haggle for hand-woven rugs and rate their local brew. Assuming these tribes were sitting around all day waiting to be discovered by some Old Harrovian striding along with messy hair and malaria, was conceited at best and reckless at worst. They were evidently content in their habitation, having chosen not to venture further afield. Guiltily, I made a note not to use the phrase again.

  Taking temperatures to both extremes, Siberia’s heat was crippling. The air conditioning barely functioned and the windows served only to channel hot air into the compartments. Tangled in damp sheets, I spent a lot of the journey lying limply, watching leafless trees roll past like rows of unsharpened pencils. Every few hours a farmhouse or two would appear with a Lada parked outside. Scarecrows tilted in potato patches and dirt tracks wound into woods. Having picked up our location on Google Maps in Moscow, I followed the blue sphere as it bobbed across blank territory. It was as though we were crossing a hinge in the earth. By air, the notion of being in-between was constant, but by rail there were always villages, towns and seas emerging like stepping stones between destinations. Neither west, nor east, we were hurtling through the borderlands.

  At dusk, halos of mist swirled above ground, orbiting forests like a magical force. Five days on board a continuous train had presented the rare opportunity to read great tomes, and in keeping with our surroundings, I’d downloaded War and Peace, Crime and Punishment and Young Stalin onto my Kindle, hoping to emerge in China a more refined and cultured person. But each time I began War and Peace, the heat and the swaying did nothing but lull me to sleep: I never made it past the list of Kuragins before dropping off.

  Between Moscow and Irkutsk, the train stopped at around eighty stations, for no more than two minutes at a time, with the odd one-hour break when the toilets were bolted and anyone inside was collared and hauled out to continue their ablutions on the platform. This was usually Jem, who picked inopportune moments to clean his teeth, and was left spitting Sensodyne in between the tracks. For the rest of us, these hour-long stops presented an opportunity to break free from the tedium, to stretch our legs, and to remember that a world existed beyond the four corners of our compartment, which had begun to smell like an old laundry basket. Russian stations are handsome affairs: painted peppermint with white piping and adorned with old clock towers. Wandering from one buxom babushka to the next, I’d buy a hunk of cheese or cake, or pass the time watching large women in tiny shorts selling rows of omul fish bunched like keys and hooked through the eyes. At one such stop I rifled through the trolley of a lady too busy chatting to a friend to bother with me, and offered her 90 roubles (£1) for a pack of playing cards. She laughed in my face, nudging her friend, who also laughed in my face. Even her son, who was sitting in the bottom of the trolley, covered his eyes with disbelief that anyone would offer more than a cursory glance for what turned out to be a pack of thirty-six cards.

  By Wednesday evening I’d stopped bothering to change my clothes or brush my hair, and lounged in my pyjamas in the drinking car where the air conditioning worked, and it was marginally cooler than the sun. Oksana kept bringing me plates of fried mushrooms covered in dill, patting my head and flapping her cloth at anyone who came near me; watching closely as an elderly man offered me cottage-cheese blinis, repulsed by my instant mash. She chatted in Russian, wholly unbothered that I replied in English, neither of us understanding the other, but happy in each other’s company. Provodnik Sasha went to and fro presenting me with commemorative coins from the Sochi Winter Olympics and books left behind by passengers, until I’d gathered a small jumble sale of wares I could hawk. I was beginning to run out of things to offer in return, plying him with toothbrushes that Jem had collected from various hotels. The initial iciness with which the Russians greeted us had thawed, and as the miles accumulated, our shared experience of pleasures and pains spurred the natural symbiosis unique to train travel.

  By Thursday afternoon I had lost all awareness of place and time, convinced it was Wednesday, comfortable in my ignorance. Two soldiers were playing cards at the next table, nursing the first bottle of vodka I’d seen since we boarded. Challenging us to a few shots, they chased each one with mouthfuls of Tropicana fruit juice, which defied the hardy Russian image I’d once feared. Swapping souvenirs, I gave them a couple of second-class Christmas stamps, and was amply rewarded with a smoke grenade. It went nicely with the gas mask Jem had stolen from our hotel in Moscow.

  On Friday, we arrived in Irkutsk at dawn. Since Moscow we had passed through four time zones, yet every station’s clock was set to Moscow Standard Time, and we were now jet–lagged and roaming around in a state of total disorientation.

  ‘Mongolia doesn’t look all that different from Russia,’ said Jem.

  ‘We’re not in Mongolia.’

  ‘I thought we were stopping in Ulaanbaatar?’

  ‘We are, but not for another four days. We’re in Irkutsk.’

  ‘Where’s Irkutsk?’

  ‘Siberia. Russia.’

  ‘We’ve been on the same train for five days and we’re still in Russia?’

  Like most tourists, we’d stopped in Irkutsk to visit Lake Baikal – the deepest, oldest and largest freshwater lake in the world. Franz and Rens had chosen to hike its longest trail, but considering the heat – which was even more vicious in the open – we were opposed to any activity more strenuous than sitting down, and chose to see the lake via the Circum-Baikal Railway, a fabulous old steam locomotive. After the first shower in five days, we had a breakfast of dumplings at the cafe over the road, then set off on foot past rows of shuttered wooden houses to take the local train to S
lyudyanka from where the Circum-Baikal train departed. Passing through thirty-nine tunnels and crossing around 200 bridges, the train travelled around a now-disused section of the Trans-Siberian railroad. However, we had passed no more than four tunnels and nine bridges before it broke down, conveniently overlooking a bay where we could skid down to the pebble beach and paddle in the icy water. Formed in the middle of a giant crack in the earth’s crust – the Baikal rift – Lake Baikal is dubbed the ‘Galápagos of Russia’ by UNESCO, owing to the unique species of flora and fauna, most of which are endemic to the area. Scientists had predicted that one day the entire continent of Eurasia would split into two along the lake, and I hoped it wasn’t today.

  A couple of French tourists were skimming stones at the edge of the water, and never one to shy away from Anglo-French rivalry, Jem began to whip a few of his own, pleased at the way his stones bounced just a couple of times more than theirs did, before disappearing with a plop. But when the Russians stripped off and plunged in headfirst, he sat tight. Numb to the ankles, I watched the water twinkle in the light, green and blue hues bleeding into one another’s paths. From time to time concentric circles emerged and expanded on the surface where freshwater seals turned somersaults. Dwarfed into insignificance, I clambered back up to where the train was beginning to exhale, pumped up and ready to go.

  From across the bridge we could see the train on the platform, convinced it would leave for Ulaanbaatar without us. Staggering beneath the weight of our rucksacks, and breaking into short, pitiful sprints, we made it to the station with five minutes to spare and stumbled up the steps, each one blaming the other for the delay. As the train pulled out of the station, I leant back in what was a lovely, plush berth with carpets and air conditioning. We were now on board the Rossiya, the train we had expected to board in Moscow. There was something I knew I was supposed to do before we left Irkutsk. I racked my brain, then shrugged it off.

  That night I awoke with a start and emptied my rucksack onto the floor. The soldiers had reminded us to get rid of the smoke grenade before crossing into Mongolia and I was now standing in my pyjamas staring at what looked like a tiny atom bomb in my grip. Wondering if I should leave it in the toilet, but knowing it would be discovered and cause a commotion, I wrenched open the window and tossed it out into the darkness, hoping for the best.

  Now fully awake and curious about where we were, I eased the door ajar and slipped out into the corridor. I could hear the provodnitsa cackling with her pal, the Russian equivalent of Pat Butcher with an orange perm and a sneer, but everyone else was asleep. Holding back the curtain, I stilled my breath as a glow lit my face. It was 2 a.m. and the train was curving around the southernmost point of Lake Baikal, which shone like a spill of mercury. The sun had set hours earlier and I couldn’t understand where the light was coming from. A strip of red sky lay against a sliver of silver lake as though fire danced on the water. I wanted to capture the moment and keep it alive, touching my head to the glass to bring it closer. Until now I had taken the train for granted, dismissing it as just another long-distance service to endure. But I saw now that this train carved up the earth, shining a light into its darkest corners. It unlocked the land and threw open the skies, revealing forests tall and fearful, the night gold and bright.

  *

  ‘Well, that was a total waste of time,’ said Jem, banging the door and kicking off his shoes.

  ‘Did you get the tickets?’

  ‘No, they were sold out.’

  ‘Then where have you been for the last hour?’

  No one comes to Ulaanbaatar for a city break. Every summer the Mongol Rally lures petrolheads, students and adventurers who come careering in by jalopy, bringing tales of foreign police, bribes and breakdowns, while others arrive on the train, hostage to timetables that prevent exploration of the countryside. It was into the latter category that we fell, hoping to make the most of a two-day stopover. Our hotel was behind the opera house on Sukhbaatar Square, so we had decided to book tickets for Swan Lake with the help of our concierge, who had promised to take Jem there first thing, as soon as he finished his night shift. Jem had set his alarm, creeping out before breakfast, and he now looked thoroughly annoyed.

  ‘Did he manage to help you?’ I asked.

  ‘I had to wait an hour for him to shower and change before he finally took me to the opera house, where they told us they’d sold out of tickets ages ago. He then said we didn’t have to go to the opera and could do something else.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘No, we, as in he and I.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I told him that I’d wanted two tickets to go to the opera with you, my fiancée, and he suddenly turned all cold and mean, and said: “That woman is your wife? Is she Indian? I’ve been to India, it’s dirty, the people are dirty.” He then walked me back to the hotel and said he had the day off, and asked if I wanted to go for breakfast.’

  ‘Poor guy. He thought he had a date all lined up, and you broke his heart!’

  Mongolia grew more intriguing by the minute. Until now, I’d expected steppes, gers, and men who looked like Genghis Khan; yet here was a city of skyscrapers, towering cranes and cruising concierges. Gold, copper and coal mining had spurred economic overdrive to the extent that new offices, condos and hotels appeared almost overnight. Here was Singapore in its infancy. Ulaanbaatar was apparently surrounded by mountains, none of which we could see through the yellowy cloud of smog blotting out the sky. Disappointed, we set off in search of anything ancient, finding a couple of scrappy Buddhist monasteries, subdued during Soviet rule. It took us a couple of hours in the National Museum of Mongolian History, looking at armour, costumes and jewellery, to gain any sense of the city’s old culture, which had collapsed under the might of eleven KFCs and an IMAX. The rest of the afternoon was spent in shopping malls, trying on cashmere, and watching young Mongolians flirt and buy shoes. While the country’s past was hard to fathom, its future was patently clear.

  The following morning at breakfast we got chatting to Steve and Caroline from Cumbria, who had just returned from a weekend at a nomadic homestay and were aghast that we hadn’t ventured further afield.

  ‘You can’t say you’ve been to Mongolia if you’ve not been riding on the steppe,’ said Steve, his cheeks browned by windburn. He had on a tight Rip Curl surf top, and wore his sunglasses on the back of his head.

  ‘How did you find out about your homestay?’ I asked.

  ‘Google.’

  I didn’t doubt that our opinion of Mongolia was cemented by a skewed first impression, but observing the evolution of the capital was more fascinating to me than riding horses. That afternoon, before the final leg to Beijing, we stopped at a restaurant called Modern Nomads, a popular chain where the staff dressed in warrior costumes. Sipping from a broth blobbed with fat, I looked around at the other diners drinking Johnnie Walker and watching bad music videos. Perhaps I had tasted only one slice of Mongolian life, but my experience was as genuine to me as Steve and Caroline’s was to them. In a year, even six months, neither truth would be valid: here, in the city, hotels would multiply, bars would open, business would thrive, pollution would choke, and the population would explode. Meanwhile on the steppe, climate change would dominate, temperatures would rise, grass would dry up, livestock would die, and herders would migrate to the city. If we ever returned, this Mongolia would no longer exist, and another one would be waiting.

  A slim man wearing a black T-shirt appeared in our doorway, looked in, then returned to the neighbouring compartment. ‘Their bed looks loads more attractive without that blanket on it. Get it off.’

  ‘You get it off,’ said a second voice.

  ‘Give me a hand at least.’

  ‘This is amazing,’ said the second voice. ‘It’s like moving from a maximum security prison to a low-level one. I’m actually allowed to operate my own fan and open my own window.’

  ‘I wouldn’t though, unless you want half the desert in h
ere.’

  ‘And look! Hang on, where’s the toilet?’

  ‘You’re looking for a rabbit in a hat, mate, it’s not there.’

  ‘It’s just a sink. If only it didn’t smell like a Victorian sewer.’

  Ed and Alex were two brothers travelling to Beijing. As a Christmas tradition, they treated each other to experiences instead of presents, and one had bought the other a trip on the Trans-Mongolian.

  Having gradually upgraded along the route, Jem and I were now in first class for the final night, in a private compartment with red-velvet berths. This was also a Chinese train – which was infinitely nicer than the Russian ones. Pulling open the door that led to our shared bathroom, however, I immediately slammed it shut as the stench of urine soured our compartment.

  ‘Shame we didn’t keep that smoke grenade,’ said Jem.

  Ed appeared at the door again. ‘You don’t want to open that too much. I’m a bit worried about why it smells of piss when there’s no actual toilet in there. Rest assured I won’t be washing my hands in that sink.’

  After leaving Ulaanbaatar we’d travelled through parched grassland where double-humped camels knelt by gers, smoke funnelling from the tops of the tents: round and white, the gers looked like giant cupcakes with candles. While the others got chatting, I sat by the window, looking out, waiting for the symmetry of sand dunes whipped into peaks by the wind, but they never came. The Gobi Desert here is flat and rocky, mottled by sad tufts of grass. Taking the train is the best way to cross any desert. Jeeps cause whiplash, and no one really wants to ride a camel for more than ten minutes. At least by train, you can speed across the whole expanse and be satisfied not to have missed anything, while escaping boredom, sunburn and saddle-sores. I was still marvelling at the notion that this desert would soon spill into China, when Ed appeared again, holding out a packet.