If you take a plane, it’s possible to breakfast in the UK and have dinner in Taiwan. But have you ever wondered what you miss in between? After a cup of tea in London, how about moules et frites in Brussels, followed by a weissbier in Cologne, then solyanka in Moscow, a vodka in Siberia, teppanyaki in Japan and finally a bubble tea in Taipei?
Of course, this can’t be done on the same day, but it’s easy if you travel from the UK to Taipei by train and boat. The journey is naturally much longer than flying — the 14,000km trip takes about three weeks — but it’s an experience you will never forget. And the food is only a part of the fun.
Adventure was my main motivation when I began planning my trip. I wanted to visit Taiwan but I dislike the sterile confinement of airplanes. So, inspired by the writings of other flight-free travelers — particularly Paul Theroux and Michael Palin — I decided to investigate the possibilities.
It was not as difficult as I’d imagined. In Europe public concern about the environmental impact of airplanes has made international travel by train and boat increasingly popular. This is evident from numerous newspaper articles and Web sites, such as www.seat61.com, which describe how to travel to just about anywhere without leaving the planet’s surface.
Traveling from the UK to continental Europe could not be easier. The Eurostar train whisked me from London to Brussels in a little over two hours. After a day in the Belgian capital, I took a fast train to Cologne in Germany and, following dinner in the shadow of the famous cathedral, a sleeper train to Moscow.
This train was not as modern as the previous two, but there was ample compensation for the lack of facilities on the 36-hour journey. And it was somewhere in Poland that I began to appreciate the uniqueness of train travel: the unpredictable joy of meeting new people.
I shared a sleeping compartment with, Eddie, an 11-year-old boy from Moscow. He was returning home from a holiday in Paris with his mother and grandmother who were in the compartment next door.
I was particularly pleased to meet Eddie’s mother, Natalia. Soon after the train crossed the border into Belarus, a green-uniformed and heavily armed immigration officer thrust a form into my hand. I was horrified to see that it was printed in Cyrillic script only. One wrong answer, I thought, and I could be in prison before nightfall. Thankfully, Natalia miraculously appeared at the door and helped me complete the form.
In Moscow I stayed the night with an old friend, and the next day he showed me some of the tourist sites. Although the buildings surrounding Red Square are impressive, they pale into insignificance when compared to the next stage of my trip: the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Arguably the most famous train journey in the world, the Trans-Siberian connects Moscow with Vladivostok, some 9,300km — and seven days’ travel — to the east. In the hundred years or so since it was completed, the railway has been Russia’s central artery.
During World War II the railway played a crucial role in supplying food, armaments and soldiers to the Red Army in the west. These days the traffic is commercial freight and a huge diversity of passengers.
As I waited in the evening sunlight at Moscow’s Yaroslavsky station, I was joined by Russian families — from babies to great-grandmothers — gathered around stacks of belongings; a squad of 20 teenage gymnasts dressed in red-and-blue tracksuits; lone, cropped-haired soldiers nervously smoking cigarettes; and small bands of Western tourists standing by their bulging backpacks.
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