Trans-Siberian Railway: Trip Overview

Posted by Phil Adams on Oct 6, 2010 in Trans-Siberia 2010 | 11 comments

Sara and I have just returned from our 36-day Trans-Siberia trip and we had planned on it being an epic adventure, so our expectations were high. The actual journey far surpassed anything I could have imagined. I had very high hopes and not only was I not let down, but my hopes were blown out of the water. Do you know how sometimes when you are doing something, it doesn't seem great at the time, but when you look back on it, you realize that it was, in fact, really cool? Well, this trip was not like that. It was really, really cool the entire time and we knew it.

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Sara and I were joined by our two very good friends, Charles and Vina, whom we have camped with and even traveled to Hawaii with for a week several years ago. This trip was a bit longer than that, so I was nervous that we would be at each other's throats by the end. Over the next several months we will be posting about the trip, so we will have to wait to see how that all turned out. I will say that politically Sara and I lean to the left, while Charles leans to the right. Vina did not share her opinions until 15 days into the trip when she finally unleashed how she really thought. The trip began in Shanghai, China and through many trains, a few buses and one short airplane ride, we arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia a little over a month after we began. We climbed mountains, visited ancient burial and religious sites, attended a festival and a Buddhist religious ceremony, camped in the desert and the steppes, bathed in a very, very cold river, rode horses and camels, ate lots of sheep, mastered the squat toilet, put our feet in a very, very cold lake, visited an ice cave, stayed in a log cabin, stayed in a 4 star hotel, stayed in several youth hostels, the girls got kissed by several drunk Russian men, had tea with a real Russian family (friends of Vina) using their family heirloom Samovar, almost went to a Russian banya, saw Red Square at night and during the day, stumbled upon a 5K run which we tried to crash, and met many, many interesting locals and fellow travelers, including the writer of one of the guidebooks which we were using who gave us lots of tips and even translated the tour of the ice cave for us. Being gone for so long makes you change your habits and some of the things that I have noticed since our return include: 1) In public, I still scan the crowd, looking for someone who might speak English 2) I momentarily panic when I realize that I have put my toothbrush under running sink water when I am brushing my teeth 3) I still spit in the shower to avoid swallowing water 4) My bed no longer feels like my bed 5) I attempt to throw my toilet paper in the trash can rather than flush it 6) In public, I truly hope to find a squat toilet rather than the sit down variety (especially in that Taco Bell by LAX) These are all small things, which are slowly going away. However, this trip has changed me in some pretty major ways as well. I can honestly say that if Sara and I did not have two daughters, whom we missed terribly, waiting for us at home, we would have come home merely to sell everything so we could keep going. The American dream of home ownership, a BMW, and a week-long vacation at the beach no longer interests me. My home is where the majority of my underwear is. Please join us over the next several weeks and months as we try to recreate our adventure for everyone to share. If you are interested in duplicating all or part of this trip, we will be preparing a detailed itinerary with exactly where we stayed, what we did, etc. We will have tips all along the way, but if you would like a copy of the itinerary, please email us at info@flyingcoach.org. YOLO

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