Vladivostok and away
The Trans-Siberian ready to depart from Vladivostok.
Our last day in Vladivostok, like all the others, was very pleasant. While I tapped away writing on the computer, Niamh went into town and met our lovely new friend, Kate, and wandered around town more. Once my labours were complete I joined them and we fulfilled another wish – to swim in the Russian Pacific!
We went to a small beach in the centre of town and, with trepidation, got into our togs and ventured in. It was with both disappointment (that it wasn't as cold as expected) and relief (that it wasn't as cold as expected) that we found the water fairly warm, or at least not frigid. We got in, waded out, ducked under a few times and splashed about for ten minutes or so and got out, with that wonderful refreshing feeling that you can only get from ocean water and sat in the now warm-feeling sun on the beach, feeling clean and contented!
We then spent the afternoon wandering around, sitting in the sun and searching for somewhere for dinner, finally settling on a Georgian restaurant where we ate yet more lovely food, accompanied by blasting music and voluble, tipsy Georgians who insisted on us drinking a vodka or two with them and making lengthy toasts to world peace and respect between cultures.
We later on went searching for a bit of night life, eventually, after a few no-goes, settling on a slightly underground-y place, from whence we didn't escape until four in the morning.
Not usually a problem, but the indefatigable Kate was meeting us at 10:00 to go down to the station for our 11:30 departure and somehow we didn't hear Niamh's alarm and I was only awoken, at 09:55, by the dogs jumping on us wanting to go to the loo! After a hurried pack we headed off, not as clear-headed as would be optimal, and got to the station with plenty of time to spare. We said a fond farewell to Kate, our indefatigable companion of the last few days and were away on the famous train No. 001 “Rossiya”, the premier trans-Siberian train (although such a term doesn't actually exist for any train or train line, there being a number of variants of routes across Siberia and two eastern destinations, Vladivostok and Beijing).
From long-dreamt of Vladivostok, we were bound for far-away (and relatively recently coveted) Yakutsk, capital of the huge province of Yakutia, a region the size of India! Our journey would take three trains over 30 hours then some type of road transport a further 450 km.
Vladivostok was not just pleasurable, but fascinating – a colonial outpost, established by Russia in the second half of the 19th century, very close to Korea, not far from China and across the water from Japan. It apparently had a large Chinatown for a long while, which was cleared out in late Soviet times, but is now very Russian – but all the Russians we met felt very warmly towards the nearby neighbours, especially the closest, Koreans and there were many Korean, Chinese and Japanese restaurants, including some Russian-Asian fusion restaurants.
In Harbin, and more so the border town Suifenxe, there had been much evidence of Russian influence, from the occasional church, old buildings around town and the more general European layout of the streetscape. As mentioned in an earlier post, in Suifenxe there were bilingual Russian-Chinese signs everywhere, but almost no English. It's hard to put into words, but it really felt like the border between two civilisations, two huge countries with very different cultures. In most places we'd been through (and throughout the world I'd guess) the border signified a different state, possibly a different language, cuisine, etc., but there were also many similarities, but China and Russia are very different places, China obviously an ancient, pre-eminent Asian power and Russia, simplifying things overly, a European power – Vladivostok is much more similar to Hamburg than it is to Beijing! It's quite hard to describe what a jolt this sudden transformation was, particularly while still reeling from the magnitude and energy of China. Russia, two and a half times the size of Australia, is without doubt huge, but doesn't have anything near the frenetic social and physical change that China is experiencing.
As we left on a rainy late morning from Vladivostok we were heading into Russia's vastness, more or less due north from Vladivostok for the first half day – in contrast to China's new cities, miles of grain production and small patches of forest, Russia is covered in endless, pretty, forest. For the first half hour or more we travelled right next to the ocean, then headed inland, admiring the rolling hills from our quiet, clean platzkart carriage.
Scenes from the train Vladivostok to Tommot
Platzkart is a type of open sleeping cars, similar to the normal four-berth sleeping compartment, except that there is no door or wall separating the beds from the corridor; and, along the corridor there are also sets of two beds along the far wall. It's a cheaper, though less private, way to travel and perfectly comfortable, even if the beds are slightly too short and a little narrow!
We travelled all afternoon and evening more or less north, arriving around 11:00pm at Khabarovsk, where we stopped for about an hour – many of the stops are quite lengthy, so you can get off and wander around, as I did in the dark rain, looking at the handsome, recently renovated railway building and, again, marvelling at how Russia has changed since I was here in the 1990's! Gone are the queues, the sense of dislocation, the fading paint and chipped tiles, the tiredness and strain. Not that, for your average Australian, people are full of smiles, or the cities citadels of light and joy, but there is a very definite change for the better and people seem much more at ease than back in those hard days of the early-mid '90s.
From Khabarovsk we headed in a westerly direction until late the next afternoon, when we got off at Skovorodino, a junction station with the Amur Yakutsk Mainline, the line that heads north, crossing the Baikal-Amur Mainline at Tynda. The Baikal-Amur Mainline is a northerly alternative to the main trans-Siberian line, meeting the Pacific far to the north of Vladivostok, traversing the north side of Lake Baikal and meeting the main trans-Siberian line again to the east at Tayshet. These northerly lines are feats of engineering and construction, built in severe conditions, much of it over permafrost – so much so, that the Amur-Yakutsk mainline is still being built and – despite promises over the last year – doesn't run services to Yakutsk yet, instead terminating 450km to the south at Tommot.
After a brief change at Skovorodino we were on our next train, this time in a compartment, on an overnight trip to Neyungri. We had one cabin-mate, some sort of railways inspector, and, along with a colleague in the next compartment, Niamh was introduced to the railway travel I'd experienced in former times, but was decidedly absent on the first, 30-hour, leg. Soon beer was passed around, conversation started, dictionaries were out, off we went to the restaurant car where there was a table of food, and – contrary to regulations (I think!) - a bottle of vodka, and the toasts began! The talk of souls and the Russian essence began soon enough after that...
This was the first time I'd seen much drinking in Russia – again, a huge change from my trips in the '90s, when drunkenness, public and private, was rife and seemingly accepted, if not always enjoyed, by most people. Apparently, regulations have come in over the last few years that severely limit alcohol consumption, and punish drunkenness, on trains, and so they're much more sober and orderly places. It does take some of the colour out of the journey, but drunks everywhere can be irritating or aggressive, so it also makes life more pleasant, especially for the non-drinkers, of whom, despite the stereotype, there are many in Russia. Actually, most of the people under 30 that we've met, drink little or none, and generally dislike vodka, a formerly classless and universal Russian drink!
Anyway, our particular vodka experience was limited to one bottle between four, at the point when the soul soliloquies had started to become repetitive and boorish, and we retired to our cabin to see photos of winter trips to the north, where it's -35 outside and the hot springs are +25! There is a feeling of the Northern Territory about eastern Russia, the vastness, the lack of people and the natural beauty – and a feeling that you are free of some of the shackles of rules and regulations and narrow thinking that pervade cities and more thickly settled areas.
After a midnight wander around Tynda station, we hit the sack and were up fairly early to change trains again, this time on to Tommot. I'd usually say we were up about dawn, as we were woken by the conductor at 5:30 to prepare for our 6:30 arrival, but dawn was probably about 3:00. In Vladivostok dusk was at 10:30, but as we headed north, the period of darkness was decreasing rapidly.
At Neyungri, still unsure about how exactly we'd get to Yakutsk from our final station, we waited a little sleepily for and hour or two and got our final train, a seven hour or so trip to Tommot. Clear information about how to get from the train to Yakutsk is hard to find, but I had some faith in answers on a couchsurfing forum that we should go to the last stop, Tommot, and get a bus or shared taxi from there. That faith was somewhat misplaced, but I was unsure about the conflicting advice I got at Neyungri station and on the train to Tommot that I stuck with what I knew – which turned out to be poor advice! A few hours before Tommot, most of the train got off where we should have and we continued on to the last stop, a fascinatingly-designed small station where we failed to get a bus onwards! After various undertakings and delays, one of the station staff, who'd all been very helpful, was trying to help us and a local they knew said they'd drop us off at a petrol stop on the main highway, 800 metres away, as we intended to try hitch-hiking; then he talked to some people stopped, Niamh asked someone and in less than two minutes we had a lift all the way to Yakutsk!
We were with a Russian driver and his passenger, a Tajiki man who'd grown up most of his life in the region. He was extremely friendly – the local Imam, a former boxer, and generally nice guy. I was a bit unclear about the purpose of their trip, as my Russian is definitely not what it was, but a few hours in, after much animated phone conversations, he announced that they'd have to turn back (a long story involving Russian bureaucracy!), but insisted, despite our protestations to the contrary, on taking us to a good place to get a lift, a process which took another half hour at least of further driving. We got out, Niamh again taking the lead, and had another lift within a minute!
Our new saviours were bringing back three cars they'd bought new in Moscow – over 9000 km and ten days driving away – to sell in Yakutsk. It seems there was a busy trade in cars in Yakutsk; apparently many people buy Japanese cars in Vladivostok and drive them there to sell. Our convoy of three (two brothers and one of their wives) headed back out onto the road and drove … and drove and drove! The road is partly sealed, but mostly unsealed, in some parts a fairly good dirt road, although with lots of potholes, but a great deal of it is in the process of being sealed and in its current state in very poor condition and extremely dusty, so progress was slow and uncomfortable.
My estimation of our arrival, originally thinking sometime after 10pm, kept retreating! At midnight, with the sky still quite light, and the horizon a soft pink and purple, we arrived at the mighty Lena river, one of Siberia's (and the world's!) biggest rivers and here a few kilometres across. We got on the car ferry and waited for it to fill – and finally got going well after 1am, back on the road sometime before two. There was another 100km of mostly sealed, but poor, road on to Yakutsk, where we arrived dusty and tired not long before 4am.