Vodka with Nikolai

My train mate Robin had limited time. From Ekaterinburg, he rushed ahead to Moscow and St Petersburg while I took a deviation to the scenic villages of Vladimir (the old capital of Russia) and Suzdal. I travelled for 26 hours on an older train with a new companion, Nikolai, a handsome and fit Russian in his 60s from somewhere north of the Urals. He gestured that he played volleyball for a pensioner’s team and was on his way to a tournament in Moscow. I gathered from his gesticulations that he was once a pilot, or somehow involved in the aviation industry. He had a military aura and who knows, maybe he flew sorties over Afghanistan.

He wanted to know where I was from. I explained and showed him my passport. It didn’t help. Charlize Theron and Nelson Mandela didn’t help either. At a station he opened his phone and called up Google Maps. I showed him the southern point of Africa. He shook his head, pointed at my skin and uttered something that sounded like “impossible”.

He fetched a volleyball teammate called Sergei from a few doors down. Sergei was the epitome of a Russian who had lived a tumultuous life: His nose was knobby and sequinned with a roadmap of broken veins, and he was rude and loud. Sergei wanted to know why I was in Russia. I showed him my used train tickets and he shook his head in amazement. I opened my computer and showed him my photographs of Vladivostok, Siberia and Irkutsk. He barked something to Nikolai, who scratched in his bag and produced a label-less bottle that was obviously meant for after-match celebrations in Moscow. He unscrewed and passed it to me. I took a deep swig that stung me all the way down. We almost finished the bottle and chattered non-stop, over one another. When I arrived at Vladimir at 6 am, Nikolai insisted on carrying my suitcase to the platform.

I had made friends for life.

Vladimir and Suzdal, only 200 km from Moscow, are chocolate box pretty with golden domes dominating the horizon, bright-coloured wooden houses and centuries-old monasteries that bear witness to a nation’s rebellious past. By then, an ashen-coloured sky had blotted out the pale autumn sun and an icy wind ushered in dark clouds from the Arctic north. The next morning, Suzdal was covered in a white blanket. Winter had arrived.

Suzdal is also a famous hunting ground for day visitors from Moscow. Flag-bearing tour guides ushered busloads of tourists through World Heritage sites.

I couldn’t wait to get back onto the train.

Siberia stays with you

Three weeks after leaving Vladivostok, I arrived at Moscow’s Yaroslavsky station. The Russian capital is one of the most alluring cities in the world, where communism has given way to hypercapitalism. Nowhere is this more visible than on the iconic Red Square, once home to vast military parades that rolled past Leonid Brezhnev with intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear heads that could obliterate the world.

Today, communist austerity, ancient history, devout orthodoxy and Russia’s new capitalist indulgence live side by side. The mausoleum for Vladimir Lenin, where his preserved and publicly displayed remains rest softly under white sheets, was once the dominating feature on the square. He now shares the space with the ultra-luxurious GUM store, a playground for the rich that hosts brands such as Louis Vuitton, Zara, Calvin Klein and Dior.

The square is surrounded by a series of concentric ring roads. It is almost as if power oozes from the Kremlin down the ring roads to every suburb in Moscow and beyond, to every city, town and outpost in the Federation – as far as Vladivostok, seven time zones to the east.

Altogether, I travelled 11 700 km on Russian rail. Besides doing the TransSiberian from Vladivostok to Moscow,

I also travelled by train to glorious St Petersburg and onwards to the birthplace of Russia, Veliky Novgorod, not far from the Estonian border.

Long after I had disembarked from the train, the musical note of wheels on track and the gentle swaying of the carriages revisited me again and again.

I will always remember how the train rolled through the afternoon, into dinner, past midnight and out into the first rays of the morning sun, towards another day on the rails.

Which route? There are three Trans-Siberian trains: the traditional and longest route between Moscow and Vladivostok (9 288 km); the Trans-Mongolian between Moscow and Beijing via Mongolia (7 621 km); and the TransManchurian, which also travels between Beijing and Moscow but bypasses Mongolia (8 986 km).

All three routes take six to seven days if you travel non-stop, and they all meet at Ulan-Ude in Russia, close to the Mongolian border.

Each route has its advantages and drawbacks. You need a Mongolian visa for the TransMongolian, and that country does not have an embassy in South Africa. The Trans-Manchurian only travels once a week. I decided on the Vladivostok-Moscow route because I wanted to experience the vastness of eastern Siberia. A good website to help you plan your route is seat61.com.

How long? Set aside at least three weeks for the whole trip. You want to spend three to four days in Moscow, and if you end or start in

Beijing, another three to four days. You can experience Vladivostok in two days.

You can break up the train trip by visiting some great places en route. The highlight is Lake Baikal and the nearby city of Irkutsk (spend another three or four days here).

It’s also worth pausing in historical towns and cities like Ekaterinburg, Ulan-Ude and Veliky Novgorod.

How to get there? Do your homework and plan two or three months in advance. Try and find an air ticket that will, for example, allow you to fly into Moscow and out of Beijing. I flew with Ethiopian Airlines from Cape Town (via Addis Ababa) to Beijing and back home from

Moscow to Cape Town. My ticket on Ethiopian cost about R8 500 return – almost half of what Emirates and Qatar quoted me – but to get such a cheap ticket your travel dates must be flexible, and when the ticket comes up, book!

Which time of year is best? The peak season is summer – June to August – but the trains are packed and everything is more expensive. Remember that Siberia is a place of extremes. Temperatures might plummet to -40° C in winter, but you can also get 30° C+ days in summer. The trains are heated, but they don’t have air conditioning…

Siberia in winter is an immense wonderland of white valleys, frozen lakes and planes of trees standing like ice skeletons in the snow. If you go at the height of the season, however, you’ll only get about five hours of daylight.

I chose autumn for the fiery foliage and before the real cold set in. I’m glad I did, since Siberia had erupted into a magnificent golden canvas. For the first half of the journey the train was only half-full.

What does it cost? My first-class ticket on the Rossiya (the most modern train on the line) cost about R13 000. Second class is half of that, and third class is half of second class. You don’t need to go through a travel agent to book you berth – I used russianrailways.com.