By Train to Shanghai

In exchange for my ticket, the blond provodnitsa gave me clean sheets, told me the other three travellers would be arriving soon, and that they would be very close companions as we were about to endure four days together! The first to arrive was a young Russian chap who introduced himself as Sasha, and promptly disappeared to his allocated upper berth. Then the provodnitsa returned, and this time with Bridgette and Sidonie, two French ladies. My French isn't too bad and I could have managed some conversation but luckily both spoke excellent English. They were somewhat surprised to have been berthed with two men until I explained that the Russian railways never allocate by sex - it's just a pot-luck arrangement! Although both were experienced travellers, they too were undertaking a 'first' in travelling to China by train.

As train No. 10 with its eighteen carriages slowly pulled out of the station at   precisely 23.25, I disappeared to the restaurant car, which was conveniently placed in carriage six, so that Bridgette and Sidonie could get ready for bed in some privacy. Others obviously had the same idea and the bar soon filled up with Russians, and the German and Dutch travellers I'd seen on the platform. Other than the Russians who had to travel this way for convenience or economic reason, most of the other passengers were on a special journey - either because they were railway enthusiasts, or backpackers at the start of their world trips. For certain, they had chosen this route, not for an economy fact, but out of choice - for the unique experience of travelling the longest train journey in the world. We all quickly became friends and enjoyed a few beers together as the train moved smoothly past the drab and dreary Moscow suburbs. We were on our way to Irkutsk, capital of eastern Siberia - a mere 5,133 kilometres from Moscow, and this train hauled by a powerful, Czech locomotive, would be my home for the next four days.

The first Russian railway, built in 1836, was a private line from the Tsar Nicholas I summer palace at Tsarkoye Selo to St. Petersburg - a distance of only twenty kilometres. The next fifty years saw a massive expansion of the railway system, linking the towns and cities in western Russia to the Ural Mountains. To the east lay Siberia, an inhospitable land where people only went if they had been forced into exile. Siberia, whose name comes from a Tatar word meaning “sleeping land”, comprises the eastern and greatest part of Russia – itself the biggest country in the world. Indeed, Siberia – stretching from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific – is so vast that, were it a sovereign country, it would still be the largest in the world.

Before the railway was built, people had to travel along a rough track, known as the Great Post Road, along which were many stations where they could hire horses, carts, sledges or carriages - depending on which season it was. This route had been firmly established over two hundred years earlier by the Cossacks, who established a thriving fur trade, and were very much a law unto themselves. For those early travellers, life could be extremely uncomfortable and rather dangerous - wolves and bears roamed around and didn't discriminate when it came to attacking horses or men.