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Getting a Russian visa in Hong Kong

Posted on November 22, 2011 by strippedpixel

Getting a Russian Visa in Hong Kong for travelling the Trans-Siberian Railway shouldn’t be a problem. With the required documents correctly filled out, and assuming that your reason for visting Russia isn’t listed as espionage, terrorism or political assassination, you should be able to pay your fee and receive your visa within the allotted time.

As a UK passport holder, getting a Russian visa was a relatively painless affair. If you can negotiate the almost comically foul-tempered staff that work at the Russian consulate in Hong Kong, then whatever passport you carry, you should likewise have no problems getting everything in order for you Trans-Siberian trip.

A Trans-Siberian termination

Posted on September 4, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

After 90 hours of trans-Siberian incarceration, it was the last that lasted longest. All packed up with nowhere to go, bed made, sheets gone, shoes on and waiting, as we trundled through the outskirts of Moscow towards our journey’s end. We weren’t institutionalised quite yet, but after four days living by timetables and routines, doing whatever we could to pass the time, rejoining the real world would still be an eye-blinking experience. In less than forty minutes we’d be released into a new and disorienting capital. I had no idea what to expect.

Somewhere in Siberia

Posted on September 3, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

What day is this? Is this our second or our third day? What time is it? Is that Moscow time, Beijing time or local time? It’s almost eight o’clock by my watch. Outside it’s as bright as if it were four. Maybe it is four. But it can’t be. In Moscow it’s four. And we’re still two Trans-Siberian days away. Maybe it’s six o’clock now, here, in Siberia, as we travel through what seems like the same forest of birch we’ve been travelling through for the past 2000 miles.

From Ulaanbaatar with a train full of Buryats

Posted on September 2, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

After Irkutsk the train had emptied. Most of the Mongolians that had been travelling Trans-Siberian train 005 from Ulaanbaatar had left us at the station. Since then, we’d been travelling less than half-full. But still, the majority of passengers were Mongolian and on their way to Moscow. They were Buryats, I suspected, a Mongol people comprising over 400,000, that is, about 30% of the population of the Buryatiya Republic near the Mongolian border. This made them the largest indigenous group in Russia.

Towards Lake Baikal

Posted on September 1, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

We’d passed through Ulan-Ude before dawn and woke to a Trans-Siberian sunrise with over 5000 km still to go. The low-rolling hills and Mongolian pasture of the afternoon before – that had shone after the morning’s rain – had morphed into hillsides forested with fir and spruce as we approached Lake Baikal. We were in a different land now, where the taiga would soon stretch seemingly forever with the same despairing permanence and the faces outside were no longer Asian. But I was too hungry for such window gazing just yet. I felt like I hadn’t eaten a proper meal for at least four days and in truth, I probably hadn’t. I jumped off my top bunk bed and made my first tentative journey to the dining carriage.