train travel | StrippedPixel.com

The not quite so high-speed rail to Wuhan

Posted on May 25, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

If we’d been really prescient in our planning, we could have been part of Chinese locomotive history today. Maybe akin to those who first rode Stevenson’s Rocket, we could have said, “I was there. I was on it,” as train G1012 left Shenzhen North at 07:00 on its maiden journey to Wuhan on this, the latest section of China’s high-speed rail network to open for business.

It had been delayed for months already, but this was the day central and southern China became only four-and-a-half hours apart by land. And who really measures distance in kilometers anymore anyway? In this high-speed present, time is all that matters, and China is getting smaller by the day.

Hong Kong to UK by train debriefed

Posted on November 21, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

It may have looked the unlikeliest thing on the agenda for the majority of the trip, but after all the drama of the previous two and a half weeks travelling through China, Mongolia, along the Trans-Siberian Railway and finally through Europe, I reached Manchester at the expected time, on the appointed day, on the train I’d originally intended. The immigration bureaucracies of several nations along the way had tried their best to thwart me, but whatever source of fortune had sustained me on my course, it held good enough to get me home on time and still (pretty much) alive.

Rat dodging and vagrancy in the City of Love

Posted on September 8, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

My Berlin to Paris train arrived at Paris Gare de l’Est in the early afternoon. No need to book a hostel I’d thought. Peak season in Paris was coming to a close. And when was the last time I’d turned up at a hostel and been refused a bed? It had never happened. But after walking along the canal up to Rue La Fayette, predictably, there was no room at the inn.

“The women looked as though they dreamt of murder”

Posted on September 5, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

I’d travelled six thousand miles over thirteen days, the Trans-Siberian Railway was successfully behind me, but this was the first time I’d felt nervous. Boarding the train as darkness fell for the Moscow to Berlin leg of my journey, speaking one word of a language I couldn’t escape from, about to spend twelve hours travelling overnight to Kiev with no relief.

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.

The death of the nomad: Erlian to Ulaanbaatar

Posted on August 29, 2011 by strippedpixel / One comment

Though we left Erlian at 17:10, it was 21:25 by the time train 685 departed Zamyn-Uud for Ulaanbaatar. The Chinese officials did their thing on the one side of the China-Mongolia border, while the Mongolians did theirs on the other. We then had a couple of hours waiting around at Zamyn-uud station while the train’s bogies were changed to fit the wider Mongolian rail gauge, before we were finally on our way again.

Erlian to Zamyn-Uud: For real this time

Posted on August 29, 2011 by strippedpixel / One comment

The Mongolian visa office at the consulate in Erlian opened at 8am. I was there at twenty-to. There was only one other guy there. Another arrived at around ten-past. The office still hadn’t opened and there was no one that looked like doing so. I needed to get my visa and get from Erlian to Mongolia forthwith.

It got to about 8:20 before someone emerged from the rear door. From shoes to belt he was as uniformed and official as could be. From belt upwards, it was vest all the way. He was a young guy with a cigarette hanging from his bottom lip as casually as he was dressed. He told us to come back at 9:00. The office would be open then. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Beijing to Hohhot

Posted on August 26, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

Leaving Beijing for Hohhot at 09:19 would get me to Hohhot by 20:30. The train to Erlian left at 21:38. I had to hope there would be tickets left when I got to Hohhot station, or my crossing the border into Mongolia and getting to Ulaanbaatar on time was looking increasingly unlikely.

Escape from Beijing

Posted on August 26, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

I needed to be out of Beijing. In a couple of days there was a train from the Mongolian border town of Zamyn-Uud to Ulaanbaatar that I need to be on in order to catch my Ulaanbaatar to Moscow train on Tuesday. If I made that train, it was a leisurely coast home along the Trans-Siberian Railway Siberia and Europe. If I didn’t, I’d be stranded in the middle of Mongolia with a wallet full of useless train tickets and a big plate of “what the heck now?”.

Train T98 to Beijing

Posted on August 22, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

<p style=”text-align: justify;”>Even a journey of 9000 miles must start with a first easing of the breaks. Leaving Hong Kong as the rain arrives, train T98 to Beijing, groaning in metallic protestation like a geriatric creaking into early morning rhythm as we pull away. Within the hour we’d be in China, crossing the border at Lo Wu where the motherland would claim us, to Beijing and onwards for seventeen days until home.</p> Read More →

Hong Kong to UK by train

Posted on August 17, 2011 by strippedpixel / One comment

And so it’s almost time. After a couple of months planning and a couple of years dreaming, I’m finally ready to hit the rails and travel from Hong Kong to UK by train on a journey home that Odysseus would be proud of. By train or bus or boat or car or my own two legs – anything that isn’t airborne – I’ll be leaving on Monday to embark on my seventeen day, 8885 mile, nine train trip through China, Mongolia, along the Trans-Siberian Railway and finally through Europe towards home.