yatb

Taken from the train - A small Siberian station.

Siberia whilst being beautiful is certainly unchanging. The train journey lasted four nights, when I look back on it, it was worth undertaking – the longest train journey I shall ever take. On the forth day I think I had a bit of ‘cabin fever’! We were located in a comfortable four berth cabin. Sharing it with only one other guy. Vladimir, the name I shall give him for lack of being able to find out his true identity, was a quiet sort. This suited us just fine.
We had rushed through Europe and taking a ‘holiday’ from travelling for a few days was very relaxing. I spent many hours staring out of the window at great plains dotted with copses of spindly birch trees. Apart from the odd small station accompanied by an even smaller village. I saw little sign of life – no wildlife at all.
There were dirt tracks weaving this way and that where a vehicle might have passed this year of last. A perfectly still wilderness.

Wilderness - Siberia

Prior to boarding the train, taking the advice from our MonkeyShrine handbook (an invaluable resource), we had stocked up on instant noodles of various sizes and flavours. I had also purchased some rice pudding which turned to be mashed potato; and some couscous which turned out to be red wine gravy granules. Given this they provided a very welcome change from the noodles I had being eating in excessive amounts! However as the days passed my hunger left me as the stock of noodles was depleted. Not doing anything for hours, days at a time I did not need my normal amount of sustenance.
All trans Siberian trains have a boiler, either fired by coal or wood to boil and therefore sterilize water. Knowing this in Istanbul we had purchased 500grams of apple tea, and 500grams of orange. The tea was said fruit, diced, in the case of the orange was just the rind. Needless to say the tea turned out to smell wonderful, but be disappointingly tasteless. As boiling water was the only form of liquid we had the tea would have to suffice. We found by filling our French press half full with the apple bits, brewing it for five minutes then depressing the plunger almost to the point of breaking the pot; you could extract something which was okay at best – at least it made the cabin smell pleasant. The orange tea was unpalatable.
On the last night Vladimir purchased a couple of large cartons of beer from one of the platform stalls. This intake of beer seemingly allowed Vlad to come out of himself – perhaps he was also suffering from cabin fever. Chatting away in Russian interspersed with violent impressions of a bear, like we understood and like such things are normal. What I understood from his ramblings was that he drove a Volvo (of all things), lived in a large house and that Siberia was his garden – I can only hazard a guess that that is where the bear came into the story?! I shall never know. A bizarre end to a long ride.