Russia — the journey of a lifetime
It’s hard not to think of train journeys when you think of Russia, and for good reason. It’s home to the Transsiberian, the longest train journey in the world. Russia’s rail infrastructure is extensive and efficient — even the Moscow metro has been voted the best in the world. Having travelled on countless train journeys both long and short (personal record: 51 hours), I only experienced one delay and this was due to a broken train. That’s quite something, considering that there are over 53,000 miles of railroad to manage. The longest non-stop train takes you from Moscow to the Far Eastern city of Vladivostok, and without stops it takes almost a week to travel over 5,700 miles.
What’s really interesting — and very Russian — is to travel thousands of miles and arrive in a town that looks almost the same as the one you left. Shops and the products they sell could be the same, as might the architecture, shopping complexes and road layouts. It’s hard to believe but it is a sign of how consecutive Russian governments have tried to maintain uniformity — and to some extent, equality — throughout its territory.
Yet Russia has almost every type of landscape you might expect and more (though it’s hard to find something like Antrim’s rolling hills). There are plenty of birch forests, but you’ll also find majestic mountain ranges, tundra (treeless plains commonly found in areas of extreme cold), taiga (hardy Northern forests) and steppe (areas of few trees in regions characterised by extreme temperature fluctuations).
Despite the photos, Russia is not just a snow-filled Winter dreamland. The extreme winters are real but so too are balmy summer days and sandy beaches. Sochi, the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics, has palm trees galore and its beaches are lapped by the warm Black Sea. Siberia’s huge Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world, is reportedly warm enough for a swim in July and August (I had a go in April — at 2 degrees, it’s not for the faint hearted). Thankfully, we haven’t experienced anything below -17 degrees centigrade in Moscow this year but we frequently had 30 degrees plus in July and August 2018.
To anyone who hasn’t been, a trip to Russia is definitely worth the effort. All UK and EU passport holders must apply for a tourist visa in advance. If you want to know more about travelling in Russia, I recommend you check out www.thebaltican.com. This new website is full of pictures and advice about how to visit lesser-explored gems in Russia’s many regions and it helps you choose which cities to visit on the Transsiberian trip.
