Ticket to Ride

by Tom Chesshyre

  So there's an added dimension to our journey: we are, you could say, travelling along the 'gulag line'.

  During afternoons, after a late breakfast and perhaps a bowl of borscht for lunch – a purple-hued dish consisting of beef and red cabbage that quickly becomes my favourite – I return to the cabin at around four o'clock, where John may or may not have put away his bed. If he has risen, he is probably listening to music on his iPhone. John wears his pyjamas until it is necessary to make his daily trip to the dining carriage, which he endeavours at around six o'clock, usually accompanied by me. At other times he eats noodles from plastic pots, using hot water from samovars maintained by the provodnistas. We greet each other with nods. Sometimes we enter into conversation, though we mostly amuse ourselves. I'm steadily wading my way through War and Peace, enjoying the portrayal of nineteenth-century aristocratic life with its soap opera of love triangles. In this manner, days slip by as we pace through the forests of this enormous nation.

  Russia, like Finland, I can testify, has a lot of trees. There are also plenty of grassy plains, grain silos, and freight trains carrying grain. These are extraordinarily long and come every few minutes or so.

  'I think this is the furthest I've ever been from friends or family,' says John, during a thoughtful moment.

  The blur of forests, never-ending plains, hooting horns, trips to the samovar, the unfolding and refolding of cabin beds: the TransSiberian Railway has a time warp, Groundhog Day quality. It also throws up some wonderfully unusual place names: Krasnoyarsk, Zaozyornaya, Nizhneudinsk, Chita, Omsk. We come to Ilanskaya station. This was where Vitus Bering, the naval explorer after whom the Bering Strait is named, set up a town in 1734. He had been surveying Siberia on the way to Russia's east coast. We are, I'm staggered to discover, precisely 4,375 kilometres from Moscow. The Urals, crossed during one of the nights, are well behind us.

  At Ilanskaya, the train pauses for a few minutes and Yeleyana indicates that it's OK to take a look about on the narrow platform. Women wearing blue and pink aprons are selling bread rolls and smoked fish from trays. I buy a fish and a couple of 'fish rolls' (bread with a fishy flavour). I take these to the cabin and give one to John, who is back after hopping off to smoke a Lucky Strike.

  'Now my mouth tastes even worse than smoking,' he comments.

  They're not exactly great. The fish is no better: burnt on the outside with a mushy texture. We dump them in the rubbish bag.

  'Help yourself,' says John, pointing at the pretzels from Moscow, which are still hanging on the top of his water bottle. 'They're a bit stale, but they taste all right.'

  I decline his kind offer.

  John goes for another smoke between the carriages. He had been nervous about this at first – 'if you see me getting chucked off, you'll know why' – but no one seems to care.

  Later on, we get talking to a Russian in a cabin down the corridor. He's a paramedic from Krasnoyarsk, a Siberian city that we called in to at the 4,098-kilometre mark. His name is Alexandr and he's in his thirties, with an olive complexion, dark bags under his eyes and ruffled, oily hair. He is drinking Nescafé iced tea and offers us a cup each. He invites us to sit in his cabin and we converse via a Russian–English translation device on his smartphone.

  We establish, slowly, that bears and tigers are to be found in the countryside around Krasnoyarsk. He tells us that he shoots 'two bears a year for security'. There is also a 'good fish lake'. The inhabitants of Irkutsk, another Siberian city on the line, 5,185 kilometres from Moscow, are 'crazy people'. Alexandr is not, we discover on asking him, actually referring to the citizens of Irkutsk but to 'Roma railway people', who he says will try to rob us. He is heading to Irkutsk, despite its crazy people, to buy a wardrobe from IKEA. This, he says, will cost him 34,499 roubles (£492). He would also like to buy a child's duvet for 999 roubles. Alexandr shows us the items in his IKEA booklet.

  He discusses politics for a bit: 'I like Putin. Yes, yes, Putin good. Big Russia! Lift! Lift! He brings people work. Business! Lift! Lift! Ukraine–Russia!' He holds his hands together tightly. 'Russian people not in war.' John and I ask him if he is sure of this. He shrugs his shoulders. 'Maybe a small number.'

  John and I go for our regular six o'clock beers in the dining carriage. Each evening we have two Kozel beers (a Czech lager), accompanied by chicken stew, borscht, or fried potatoes and ham. We always have a side order of dark-brown bread, which is usually freshly bought from vendors at the last station. Over such a meal, I meet Pete and Ryan, retired teachers from the Midlands, who have a fondness for golf shirts and gold chains. They have taken the train all the way from London's St Pancras station. Pete does not rate the Trans-Siberian Railway.

  'Five out of ten for comfort,' he says.

  'What about value for money?' asks Ryan, challenging him.

  Pete ignores him. 'The tap doesn't work properly in the toilet,' he says.

  Ryan, in turn, ignores Pete. 'When I was a kid we never had enough money to go anywhere. Then, in 1996. Yes, 1996.' He says this in a very precise manner, as though the year was a watershed. 'I realised in 1996 that at the age of fifty I could do all these travel things. The internet! Book it!'

  They're heading down through Mongolia to Beijing, and then onwards to Hong Kong.

  We're joined by Julie and her teenage daughter, from Manchester. They're going via Mongolia to Beijing and then to Shanghai, where Julie has secured a three-month international-relations teaching job at a university. Her daughter does not like flying so they are taking the train in both directions.

  'I am now moving at a speed that my brain can deal with,' says Julie. 'Looking out the window, the language, the sounds: it's lovely.'

  We tuck in to the thin chicken stew, and politics crops up once more. Having met Russians and been charmed by them – and by the country – Julie has formed an opinion: 'This is not what the press tells us about Russia. Apologies to your profession but I think there's a political agenda behind it all.'

  She's talking about anti-Russian press in the West.

  'You can't say that to a right-wing paper,' says her sharp-eyed daughter (she seems to be under the impression that I'm representing the 'right').

  Julie pays no attention. 'We can't communicate well with the Russians, but at all times we have been made to feel welcome,' she says.

  Daughter: 'Please can you make it sound less like you believe in a conspiracy theory, Mother.'

  The final pair of Brits do not talk much at all. They are Bridget and Pete, the couple sharing with Jane and Tony, and are finding the conditions cramped. 'My husband made me pack hand luggage only,' says Bridget during a quiet moment when her husband has gone to the toilet. 'Can you believe it! The advice I read was to pack for a whole week.' Apparently her husband hates waiting for luggage carousels at airports. This baggage row appears to be ongoing.

  Extra Kozel beers are ordered. Fervent discussion ensues.

  On UK property prices: 'House prices go up and my son says, "You bastards, you stole the wealth from our generation,"' says Bridget.

  On the Labour Party's Ed Miliband: 'He just looks weird,' says Tony.

  On Prime Minister David Cameron: 'Toffs. The working class is still deferential to toffs,' says Pete.

  On the state of Britain in general: 'Britain is quaint but broke,' says Julie. 'If I was just finishing uni, I'd want to move abroad.'

  We seem to have turned into a rolling middle-class dinner party as we rattle onwards through the Russian taiga (forest)… deeper and deeper into the Siberian wilderness, into the coal-black night.

  Changing bogies and Chinese trainspotters

  Ulan-Ude to Beijing on the Trans-Siberian Railway

  At Ulan-Ude, the 5,642 kilometre point, all the Brits disembark. Except me.

  We are well over halfway now, beyond the semi-legendary station of Slyudyanka, where it is apparently possibly to go for a dip in Lake Baikal during the time the train pauses at the station. John and I had been too afraid of missing the
train to give this a try; anyway, the water must have been pretty cold.

  John is in a philosophical mood as he leaves: 'I've been stuck behind a desk for three years. I could have stayed there until I was forty-plus. Got married. Had kids. But people have done that a million times over. I keep saying this to my friends.'

  He looks along the platform. 'I don't suppose I'll ever spend so long again on a train, but you never know, you never know.'

  Then he brightens up: 'I've left you a Pot Mash in case you're desperate, but I won't be offended if you don't eat it.'

  With that, John departs and I enter a new phase of the journey – on my own in carriage number three of the number 19 train to Beijing.

  Apart from almost getting into fisticuffs with a drunken Russian, this is the most peaceful ride of all my journeys so far.

  The scenery opens up beyond the Soviet-era tower blocks of Ulan-Ude. Wide, perfectly still lakes sit by undulating grass-clad hills. Winding roads taper into the hazy horizon. Piebald cattle graze by the tracks. Settlements of pale-blue wooden houses appear. Layers of pink and red light up the dusk sky.

  As the sun goes down over Siberia, I enter the dining carriage and drink a Kozel and eat a bowl of borscht. Two Russian men devour stews accompanied by a half bottle of vodka (tidily put away). The calculator-controller reads a new romantic novel. His wife pops off for a smoke. I stay for a while, enjoying Napoleon's campaigns against the Russians in War and Peace.

  Returning to my cabin, though, the calm is shattered.

  I almost have a punch-up. My potential pugilist is a sozzled man with a crew cut, a bowling-ball belly and an attack-dog facial expression. I appear to have caused offence by being presumptuous enough to take to the corridor in his presence. His face is livid. His pupils are like bullet holes. He mutters Russian curses and looks as though he would dearly like to strangle me and throw me off the train.

  Margarita witnesses this encounter and shoos the man away. 'Don't worry, don't worry,' she says softly. 'He drinks too much.'

  Hills tumble onwards as we make progress southwards. These Russian tracks through Manchuria were controversial at the turn of the twentieth century. The Japanese, who were coming out of a long period of isolation, perceived the railway as an imperial threat to their interests in Korea. The Russians wanted an allyear-round warm-water port (Vladivostok, further to the north, was summer only), so they had cut a deal with the Chinese and built a line to Port Arthur, within China on the Yellow Sea. At the time, China was in the midst of its Boxer Rebellion, so many thousands of Russian soldiers were stationed to protect the railway from potential attack by insurgents. The Japanese did not like the look of Russia's movements. They struck Port Arthur by surprise in 1904, beginning the Russo–Japanese War of 1904–1905. With a slow supply line, Russian troops were vulnerable, and the Japanese army proved formidable. The result was a treaty overseen by President Theodore Roosevelt, in which Russia evacuated Manchuria and recognised Japan as having a sphere of influence in Korea.

  Nicholas II came out of it all badly, highlighting what many saw as the rash stupidity of his expensive railways. In 1905, he was forced to see off an internal revolt that was a prelude to greater troubles to come. Yet there is a retrospective point to be made here, as the train historian Christian Wolmar highlights in his illuminating To the Edge of the World: The Story of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Wolmar says that there is 'no little irony' regarding the fact that constructing the Trans-Siberian Railway was 'more Soviet' than much of what the autocratic communist rulers would go on to achieve. In other words, the railways gave Nicholas II a bad reputation and contributed to his downfall, but the future politburo would surely have been proud.

  Just before the Chinese border, the train is taken to a shed to have its bogie changed. As fascinating as this may be to witness (I know, I know, a true rail enthusiast would have stayed on the train and watched the 'changing of the bogie'), I decide instead to go for a walk around the sleepy town of Zabaikalsk, 1 kilometre from the People's Republic. The bogie change will take at least 2 hours. I've been cooped up in a train for a few days; I want to move about.

  I tip Margarita and Yeleyana the remainder of my roubles and buy a 2014 Winter Olympics teaspoon with SOCHI written on it from Margarita, who sidles up to me in my cabin, twisting the spoon before her face as though it might hypnotise me into a purchase. I go to send some cards at a sleepy post office. The town is almost empty and those locals I come across ignore me – I'm obviously just 'one of those people from the train'.

  Back on board, I am grilled about my Iranian passport stamp by a female Russian immigration official.

  'You only tourist?' she asks.

  I respond in the positive.

  'Thomas Doyle Chess-he-yer,' she repeats a few times, eyeballing me.

  My facial characteristics are checked against my passport photo. A man goes through my bag and asks what my mouthwash is, as though it might be illicit hooch of some sort. I am quizzed whether I have been to 'Wesh Reefer'. This, I work out after a while, is how Russian border officials pronounce 'West Africa'. I respond in the negative. They go away, taking my passport with them.

  About 20 minutes pass, making me fearful I'm going to be rumbled as a journalist–spy of some sort. The Russians return and ask how I got into Iran. I tell them I went by train. 'I like trains,' I say, playing the rail-enthusiast card. They seem to accept this and depart, handing over my passport.

  We roll into China, where we stop at a station looking out across impressive skyscrapers that are quite unlike anything I've seen on the 6,661-kilometre journey so far. The Chinese officials happily stamp my passport, although they seem suspicious about my bag. Then I eat noodles bought from Margarita, having mixed them with hot water from the samovar, and get an early night.

  From the border to Beijing is a distance of 2,323 kilometres, though I spend much of this asleep as two nights take up the majority of the journey. From a train point of view, the track is noticeably smoother in China. We also switch to 'Beijing time'.

  At Harbin station I make a friend. I'm on the platform getting some air during a 20-minute stop around lunchtime, watching a man with a hammer tapping the train's wheels. This is done to test whether they have picked up any cracks on the journey. Wheels with a true sound are safe; those that do not resonate correctly could be dangerous. I had never known that this wheel-tapping business went on.

  A man with spectacles, bright blue and orange trainers and a large grin approaches. He is one of the few passengers in the carriage and I think he joined at the border town. He says 'you and me' and points at the train. Then he uses a translation device on his phone to say, 'I work for the government.' Which doesn't exactly narrow things down much: doesn't everyone in China?

  Anyway, we stand together watching the wheel-tapper for a while and he writes his name, Sun Wei, in my notebook.

  'See you later,' he says.

  I don't, but I do hear him.

  In the afternoon, after passing through the usual Chinese haze of many mini Manhattans, factories and cooling towers (China really does seem to be booming to the point of blowing up), I hear Sun Wei singing. His cabin is about three down from mine and he sounds as though he's been hitting the rice wine.

  'Ohhhh, oh, oh, travel is the friend of mine!' wails Sun Wei, who is almost completely tone deaf. This is his song's refrain; perhaps he looked up the English words on his phone. I may be wrong, but he seems to be singing for my benefit. 'Ohhhh, travel is a friend of mine! Oh! Oh! Oh! In my heart, travel is a friend of mine. Oh! Oh! Jolly! Jolly! Yah! Oh whoa, whoa! Jolly! Jolly! Yah! Ohhh, travel is a friend of mine! Whoa, whoa, whoa!'

  I don't think he'll be making the cut for the next Chinese X Factor, but at least he's got a few lyrics going. Luckily, the cabins on either side of his seem to be empty. I hate to think what the sozzled Russian, long since departed, would have made of it. I expect a few sparks might have flown.

  The change of bogies also came with a switch of di
ning carriage; I never did get to say goodbye to the calculator-controller, his wife and Igor. I go to take a look. A new dining carriage is a very big deal on the Trans-Siberian. This one has a simple interior with booths in which there are worn red seats, tables with white cloths and vases of red plastic roses. Two guards near the galley drink beer from bottles concealed from view beneath the table – perhaps to avoid detection by a superintendent. I order 'diced chicken with green pepper' from the 'ME NU' – plus a couple of beers.

  The chef and the guards enter into an animated conversation. They appear to be arguing quite vehemently, but just as the disagreement is reaching its seeming crisis point, one or the other shrugs indifferently as if to say, Whatever. This is just my point of view. Silence ensues and then a similar heated debate rises and falls. I suppose you've got to find a way to kill time on a long train trip.

  We pass paddy fields and pull into towns with familiar-looking bullet trains on the other platforms; I'm a bit of an old hand when it comes to Chinese trains now.