Travel | Planning For Trans-Siberian Railway Adventure

Trans-Siberian Railway journey is undoubtedly is among the most epic journey one can make, it is the longest railway network in the world. The journey from Moscow to Vladivostok is 9289 KM  in seven days and if you take the train from Moscow to Beijing via Trans-Mongolian it will take six days for 7865 Km distance.

The question here, is, is it for you? To be honest this route is not for everyone, not many people can feel comfortable spending few days on the train, yes off-course you can spend few night here and there along the Trans-Siberian Railway but still it took long hours to reach your destination. Russia is one big country, the largest country on earth.

First you need to know, is it for you? Most of my blog readers here are photography enthusiast, even though occasionally and quite often I will write something about travel related story but mostly came to my blog for photography related material.

Back to photography, is it worth it? Well, it depends, if you like street photography, documentary photography or something like photojournalism work, then, yes, there is plenty of stories to be told or captured along the way, but on the other hand if you like a landscape photography, then I will not suggest it to you. You will be wasting much of your time on the train without getting a shot of your dream.

But Russia is one large country, if you still wanted to photograph the beautiful landscape of Russia, there is plenty of it, from the magnificent Lake Baikal to the beautiful Altai Mountain Range, but then, you need to have plenty of time because the distance from one place to anther is quite far. For an example if you were to visit Altai Mountain, the nearest train station is Novosibirsk and from that point you need to travel about 600 KM to reach  Gorno-Altaisk the nearest town. (Gorno-Altaysk is the Capital Town of the Altai Republic).

On the other hand if you like to photograph the iconic Lake Baikal, then from Moscow it will take around five days by train to reach Irkutsk, the nearest town  to Lake Baikal. But then again, if your purpose is for landscape Photography in Russia, you don’t really need to start from Moscow, there is a flight to Irkutsk and Novosibirsk and this will cut the traveling time tremendously or you can start from Beijing, take the flight to Mongolia and spend few days there to Photographs the Mongolian Steppe and spend few night on the famous Mongolian Yurt. After that take the train to Irkutsk, approximately 32 hours train journey between Ulaanbatar to Irkutsk by train.

As a photographer our priority is different, and I cannot suggest which city that you need to spend few days because each city has its own story to tell and one is more picturesque than the other. For landscape photographer, remote area in Russia offer plenty of photographic adventure but then, as I said earlier, it is quite far and hard to reach.

For casual travel photographer like me, there is plenty of option, in fact you can easily spend a month in Russia traveling here and there and spend few night at each city along the way.

When to go is another great question, I love winter because to see real Russia, nothing beat in winter but then, during winter daylight will be limited, the sun rose around 9:30 – 10:00 am in the morning and sunset usually around 5:30 Pm, so your photographic adventure are quite limited, some people like summer around May to September because the daylight is longest. When to go is totally up to you, both offer plenty of photographic opportunity but for me, I will always choose winter, Russian Winter is strong but despite the cold, I like it personally.

Within Russia, there is plenty of train, it should be no problem buying it directly at the train station but I highly suggest that you buy it online if possible, it will save you a lot of time and furthermore it is quite tricky to buy train ticket at the train station if you don’t speak Russian but it can be done, I’ve bough a train ticket for Beijing from Irkutsk personally at Irkutsk train station and have no problem with that.

Before you decide to buy Trans-Siberian railway tickets, asked yourself, whether it is for you or not? Just because someone said it is among the greatest trip of all time, it doesn’t mean it is also great for you, it is not cheap either to make this trip happen, so don’t get crazy over it. Think deeply, only you have the answer and for me, will I do it again? In a Heartbeat…

*Related Post : Traveling Trans-Siberian Railway Alone