LAND CRUISING
few to board the front of the locomotive and perch above the iron cow-catcher as the train rolled westwards, hugging the Baikal coast as we bronzed ourselves under the hot Siberian sun. We were on our way to Irkutsk, a leafy and industrious capital that had long rivalled Kamchatka as the most desirable property in games of Risk. The city was once a critical caravanserai stop in inter- continental trade – an extension of the Tea Road from Ulan Bator – and later became a scientific powerhouse and point of de- parture for explorations to eastern Siberia. Bering, for one, began his expeditions here.
I
rkutsk is known in Soviet history as the destination for 14 million Russians exiled by the gulag from 1929-53, to work tire- lessly in forced labour camps. But I came to know it as a place with a bit more promise: a city with an absurdly high number of drop-dead gorgeous women. Everywhere. One morning, I grilled the only one of them interested in speaking to me: Katja, a tall, slender hairdresser who could easily double for a Eurasian Christy Turlington. Access to Katja required commitment to a bargain $20 haircut. “Yes, it’s sad but true,” Katja confided in her best Boris and Natasha accent, primp- ing her bob in the mirror before she lath- ered up my locks. “The women out here are all beautiful. Only sadly not the men.
magical about downing shots of vodka, lingering on small crystal plates of caviar and singing Russian folk songs as Siberia whizzes past.
Outside the window were
handsome Novosibirsk, home to well-preserved 19th
century buildings; Omsk, whose Irtysh
The men are smart, but not pretty. But it’s what we’ve needed out here to survive.” It was only post-shave, as she was sift- ing talcum powder onto my neck, that I glimpsed the elephantine diamond ring on her middle finger. My heart turned cold. “But you married a Russian guy,” I nodded towards the ring with a grin of Schaden- freude, uneasily consoled by the thought of her remaining ever-moored in Siberia. “Oh this? No,” Katja chirped. “My
husband’s American.” I paid Katja the extortionate $20 for my lackluster haircut and boarded the train to sulk and stare out the window at a million birch trees. It was west of Irkutsk the birch trees really began – millions of slender white branches zooming by as we cruised through the wilderness. The birch isn’t just the national tree of Russia, it is sacred flora in this part of the world and is used as a shamanic gateway for ancestral spirits in traditional Buryat ceremonies. The Russian taiga, or coniferous forest, is more than twice the size of the Ama- zon, and its repetitive scenery allowed for a retreat back into the self-indulgence of train travel. There is definitely something
TRANS-SIBERIAN FACTFILE
RAILBOOKERS offers custom-tailored trips on rail journeys across the world. There are still cabins available on the Trans-Siberian railway for departures between May and September 2011 & 2012. For more information, call 020 3327 2444 or visit
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river connects the Arctic Sea with the Altai Mountains; Yekaterinburg, where Asia ends and Europe begins; and Kazan, whose tacky aquamarine mosque towers over the capital of Tartar Russia.
O
ur day in Yekaterinburg was particularly moving. At the mag- nificent Cathedral of the Blood, visiting Russian tourists wept for Tsarevich Alexei and his sister Maria, bayonetted to death after the diamonds and emeralds they were wearing during Tsar Nicholas’s execution in 1916 had dampened the fir- ing squad’s bullets. As the locomotive docked at Kazansky
Vokzal, Moscow’s gargantuan, bustling eastern railway station, I said farewell to my rolling dacha and disembarked the Tsar’s Gold one last time. Moscow – and Natalia’s lovely, lambast-
ing voice – awaited. I had just traversed the longest continuous rail line on the planet. It’s a journey that is merely a 50th
of the
distance from the Earth to the Moon, but I felt as though I had been there – and back. And, as far as I know, they don’t yet serve vodka and caviar on the Moon.
84 WORLD OF CRUISING I Winter 2010 / 2011
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