The Trans Siberian after twenty years

It is hard to believe that it has been twenty years since the first time I took the Trans Siberian railway. The last time was in the other direction, from Moscow to Beijing. And it has also been twenty years since I last visited Moscow. If it were not for the war and strife along the countries in the silk route, I may not have taken this train ride again. But given the situation, this has become an opportunity to see how a train line, a country has changed in two decades. And in many ways, to see how I have changed in this time as well.

I was not all that impressed by the sights from the carriage of the Trans Siberian Railway when I took it twenty years ago. Expect for several hours around Lake Baikal, most of the trip is of forests, interspersed with drab, functional looking towns. The forests are nice and I am happy that Russia has so many trees left standing. But five days of trees, more or less close up, can become monotonous. Perhaps it is more romantic in the snow of winter, but the less than luxurious toilets and cabins would also be less than romantic in the sub zero temperatures of winter.

Like the first trip, the most interesting thing is the people that you meet on the train. For the first day and night on the train, I shared my cabin with a Mongolian business woman. She claims to be going to visit her family in Irkutsk. I think she has a lucrative business smuggling clothes bought cheap in China into Russia. When I entered my cabin in Ulaanbaatar, it was like a store room cramped with goods. I thought that I was going to see Mongolian business happen first hand. But instead, the Mongolian lady separated the merchandise into small packets which she paid other travelers a small fee to keep. Coming to the Mongol-Russia border, the customs officer could smell something fishing from her office in the train station, but she could not see the smuggled merchandise. After crossing the border, the merchandise started to appear in the cabin again. Fortunately it was only a day to Irkutsk from Ulaanbaatar. The Mongolian lady and a good sized street store alighted at Irkutsk. There was one good thing staying in the same cabin with her. The Russian restaurant on the train refused to take Mongolian money. The shrewd business woman was able to change Mongolian money to Russian money for me and other foreign travelers, for a fee of course.

Also getting off at Irkutsk was a frenchman Mattais and an English retired water engineer, Geoffery. We had a nice and short talk just before their alighted about how countries were carved up in an arbitrary fashion after the second world war.

In the cabin next to me was a relatively rich Russian teacher, Ludmilla and her horny black bull dog, Aslouf. She was very popular with the train attendants. I think it is the food she shared with them, fresh vegetables and cheese. In return, the train attendants would give her some of what they prepared for themselves. I had a taste of the food, which was much better than the cut throat train restaurant. Unfortunately, I was not as charming as Ludmilla, and only got to taste the food once. It was strange though, one train attendant hogged my iphone and she sat through the night shift and played with the games that I have on it. The other demanded that I give her some Singaporean notes but when I finally caved in and gave her a five dollar note, she gave me a Russian metal cup holder and cup. A nice souvenir from the train.

An young Israeli, Omri, had just started on photography and moved into my cabin where I showed him slides from my photography lectures. I taught him about editing images and my favourite topic of crafting images to convey meaning and emotion. Omri shared with me his Jewish music. He was a true lover of women, but he was completely hung up on a Mongolian girl in Ulaanbaatar who got angry with him and dumped him. He was shell shocked.

What was not so pleasant was a group of Mongolian army soldiers on their way to Leningrad for training. It was unbelievable that they were drunk the entire train journey, day and night. They had huge bellies, from all that alcohol. I had the usual invitations to drink vodka and smoke cigarettes. I managed to avoid most of it except I had a mouthful of Vodka. However, one Mongolian got beligerent. He somehow got it into his head that I would buy him beer. When the train stopped he would wrap his big arm around my neck and try to steer me towards the shops selling beer. This happened a couple of times. Then on the morning we arrived in Moscow, I was having breakfast and he and another Mongolian sat opposite me. He indicated that I should buy them alcohol. I just looked at them and said no, he got angry stood up and grabbed me by my collar. I screamed him back and told him to 'Fuck off!'. I am sure he does not understand what I was saying, but the sound of 'Fuck off!' conveys the correct message. His comrade ushered him to another table. The aggressive Mongolian got enough sense to know he did something wrong and kept apologizing to me and hugging me. I wish that he had stayed sober and been civil.

Photographically, I was intrigued by the hugeness of the towns and how they were run down. I took a lot of images of machinery and buildings. I get this sense of things from another era, working, but aging. Strong and fragile at the same time. Like a circus strong man, who is past his prime., still muscular, but has a weak heart.

In the twenty years I have changed too. Although the trip was not a visual spectacle in the usual sense, the characters that I met and the aging communist machinery, set amidst forest and open sky, had a lot for me to contemplate. I have begun to accept all of life, not just the peak experiences.