Today is my final day at Machu Picchu, but my ticket is for a noon entry time. So I spend the morning wandering through town. I’ve had so many early mornings on this trip that I am just now always waking up at 6 a.m. So I get up anyway and wander the city. Exploring Aguas Calientes This is really one of my favorite things to do when traveling. I love wandering a city in the early morning hours, before it’s bustling with tourists and activity. It’s quiet. The only people out and about are pushing carts of supplies up to the restaurants and stores. It’s quite physical work to…
-
-
Moscow part deux
My last train ride Now it is the final leg of my trip. I am taking the train back to Moscow to celebrate New Years Eve before coming home. It has been an amazing adventure and while I’ve written as much as I could on the road, There’s obviously so much more. I have a 4 hour train ride now and I am just going to reflect a bit on all that I’ve seen. Siberia Traveling to Siberia was really the highlight of this trip. Honestly, before I left, I had given little thought to the ‘culture’ of Siberia. When I thought of traveling there, my imagination was of lakes…
-
Final Trans-Siberian Train
Getting to the train My guide picked me up at 9 and we went directly to the train station. It’s kind of cute and also a little demeaning that every guide is mandated to put me ON the train. Like I haven’t already figured out the platform/track situation and can’t find my carriage. The train arrives late, so we spend maybe 20 minutes awkwardly staring at the timetable, since we arrived an hour before the train departs. Finally I board the train for my final leg of the actual trans-Siberian railroad. Technically, I guess the Moscow-St. Petersburg line isn’t part of it. First Class This time, I am booked into…
-
Final Stretch
Train Living I am on the commuter train, stopping at every stop, seeing all of the cool things. I’m also in a tiny room for 56 hours. Things start to get…interesting. My hair is oily. My face is oily. The train bathrooms are nowhere you’d want to brush your teeth. I do not smell worse than anyone else in my carriage. Also, the carriages are all full, so there are lines for the bathroom and the trash bin is constantly overfull. The Russian and Mongolian train do, at least, have toilet paper, where the Chinese train was a BYO-TP. The dining car is my only respite from my room, and…
-
More Random Thoughts from the Train
Content note: Just FYI, I do most of my writing on the train. The chromebook has a text editor, but not spell check or autocorrect. So if you spot some bad grammar, punctuation mistakes, fully misspelled words, or notes to myself that I forgot to remove like this: (?), that’s why. Second content note: This is new for me, writing a blog. And it is super weird, like screaming into the void. There’s no feedback, so I have no idea if anyone is reading it. So…if you have any comments, please hit the contact button. It just sends an email to dr_tina_white at yahoo. Or you can email there… or…
-
Train Life
Tales from the Rails A roommate Just before the train departed, another person joined my room. An older guy, traveling for work. He introduced himself and immediately he was kind of a jerk. After exchanging names and where are you from, I don’t really possess enough Russian to have deep philosophical conversations. At which point he begins speaking English with me, asking why I am traveling alone. And how can you travel alone when you can’t even speak the language. Ok, condescending jerk. We don’t generally expect tourists to be fluent in every language of every country they visit. I have done just fine until now and I don’t like…
-
Arrival in Listvyanka
Train Living My lack of sleep has finally caught up with me and I am exhausted. I get on the train at 2:30 and take a nap from 4-5. I try not to sleep too much, afraid I won’t sleep tonight. I wake up, chat with Joe a bit, and eat a ton of cookies with some fruit tea I picked up in China. But the rocking and the darkness and the constant hum finally lull me back to sleep at around 7, so I set an alarm for 9 p.m., as the border crossing is at 9:50 and I need to fill out my customs forms. The train is…
-
Train Musings
Reflections on Beijing When I was planning this trip, Beijing was actually the place I was least interested in. Not that I specifically didn’t like it, it just hadn’t cracked my top 10 list of cities I would want to travel to. But Beijing was the starting point for this tour if I wanted to go through Mongolia, which also wasn’t ever on my top 10 list, but seemed more interesting and exotic because who has ever been to Mongolia? So I was really surprised at how much I liked Beijing. I really loved the city. It’s huge, unfathomably huge and populous. And yet things run pretty smoothly, at least…
