Image by Martha de Jong-Lantink vi Flickr
If you’ve booked your long-awaited Trans-Siberian trip, we’re sure you cannot wait. So, to get you even more excited, here are a few things you can look forward to during the journey.
1. White nights and green landscapes
The landscapes stretch as far as you can see. In the summer, it’s covered with green pastures and pine trees, and loads of beautiful flowers. It changes as you enter Mongolia where it is more deserted. In winter, expect beautiful stretches of snow on the trip which is just right for you. Overall, the landscape is fairly flat up until Lake Baikal. In the summertime, the sky never fully grows dark, and the sun sets for just a few hours, giving the landscape stunning sunsets and sunrises.
2. Most people live along the railway’s line
The Trans-Siberian is more than a century old and give the unfavourable conditions along most of its route, many people living in Siberia actually live along the railway corridor. You’ll notice a continuum of towns and villages every couple of minutes, with thousands of green and blue wooden houses.
3. Lake Baikal was once crossed by ferry
The route today surrounds the lake, but it was once that ferries would transport passengers during the winter across the frozen lake.
4. The Trans-Siberian is actually not a tourist train
The “Trans-Siberian” is actually the description of the route that stretches from Moscow to Vladivostok. It’s not actually the name of a train. If you want to cover the entire route, you can buy a ticket and jump on a particular train along the way, but you may not get a chance to stop and see the sights. The frequency of the train is around every 12 minutes. For a more tourist-friendly journey, you can book tickets for the private Golden Eagle or Tsar’s Train, both of which stop a number of times and visit the main points of interest along the route. You can also book your journey at https://www.thetranssiberiantravelcompany.com.
5. The route offers a chronological tale of the history of Russia
This journey provides arguably the best insight into Russian history. From Kazan with its Tatarstan history, to St. Petersburg, all the way to Moscow, Novosibirsk’s largest opera, Yekaterinbug’s Nicholas II assignation, the birthplace of Yeltsin, and so much more. You’ll get to see the border between Asia and Europe, and even the Siberian border marker where many, many prisoners waved goodbye to their friends and family before being exiled and held in Siberia’s Gulags.
Due to Russia’s historical importance, the train tends to trace all the most important sites of the country’s history. The train was also used during the most important Russian wars and was a key element in the Russian Revolution. During WWII, the train connected some of the most important centres across Russia and was even the reason that so many new cities were constructed along the route.