I thought when planning my Trans-Mongolian stops it would make sense to stop off in the odd place for the day and travel at night to avoid accommodation costs, sounds logical. Well I've gone on enough about my Kirov 20 hour mistake, but today it has dawned on me that the main problem has been that I'm only on the train for 7 hours at a time, meaning on those nights I only get about 5 hours broken sleep. When you follow that by 12 hours in a place on my feet no wonder I'm knackered all the time!!!
I'd also be interested to know if anyone else who's done the Trans-Mongolian stopped off in any of the places I have. I can't believe I'm the only traveller following this route in October! But I haven't met anyone other than (admittedly nice) Russians.
Anyway Novosibirsk.... It has lots of big squares and a top flight Russian football team and er....a big theatre...
I managed to sneak into the stadium to have a snoop about It is what i would call a classic Soviet style stadium. I reckon it was about 15,000 capacity with a running track around the middle and only had seating on 3 sides with the 4th side being a monument / scoreboard / place for dignitaries to sit and be seen. Well I found it interesting anyway....
My train to Krasnoyarsk leaves in 5 hours which I intend to spend in this bar drinking very slowly....
I didn't stop off when I travelled from Beijing to Moscow, just spent six solid (and awesome) days on the train. But it was still an exercise in coping with sleep deprivation - the first two nights were both insanely bureaucratic border crossings which lasted from 9pm until 5am both times. I was in a carriage full of Chinese, and when we crossed from Mongolia into Russia and the forms were in English and Russian only, I made a lot of friends very quickly.
ReplyDeleteIf I go that way again I'll stop off in places along the route - I'm getting pretty jealous reading about your various stops. Keep on having fun!
I still have the boarder crossings to come.... Something to look forward to!'
ReplyDeleteMy journey tomorrow from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk will be my first Trans-Mongolian journey during the day so I'm looking forward to that. I leave at 2pm arriving at 9am