Russia will always have a special place in our family’s heart,
writes
Aquin Dennison-Mathew
.
I
t’s ironic how the most
challenging travel destinations
turn out to be the ones we
look back on with the fondest
memories. My husband and I spent
most of 2009 travelling extensively
with our 18-month-old son, Isaac,
weaving our way through 23
countries. But Russia, with all its
eccentric charm, was the country
that held a special place in our
voyaging hearts.
For both of us, the
fascination with
Russia had
started early.
days. However, we chose to take our
time, absorbing the languages and
landscapes, and visiting cities that
owed their existence to the Trans-
Siberian railroad. Hoping to keep
it enjoyable for Isaac, we broke up
the journey into bite-sized overnight
rides. With single entry visas valid for
only a month, we shortlisted seven
stops along the rail line: Kazan,
Yekaterinburg, Omsk, Novosibirsk,
Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude.
The planning had proved difficult
and not terribly effective. Unlike the
Euro Rail, the Russian railways do
not have a monthly pass that can be
used for hop-on hop-off journeys. The
travel agent had mixed up our ticket
bookings, so my husband spent four
lengthy hours at the railway station
using his rudimentary Russian to buy
separate onward tickets, each time
identifying the exact train number,
departure date, class of ticket and
requesting lower berths for Isaac.
We learnt the ropes of settling
in and making the most of the 12-
to 18-hour train rides. Every train
car was fitted with a samovar – an
electric water boiler – which seemed
to compel everyone to drink copious
amounts of hot tea. The samovar was
the undisputed lifeline of the car, used
My husband had travelled to Russia
with his father in 1990 when it was
curtained off from the world and the
only way “in” was through exhaustive
paperwork and joining a monitored
tour group. Two decades later, he
still talked about those ornate metro
stations and the Parisian beauty of
St Petersburg. I remember spending
summers in India in the 80s, poring
over
Misha
–
a popular Russian
children’s magazine named after the
bear mascot of the 1980 Moscow
Olympic Games. I was intrigued
by Russian folklore and spent hours
scribbling letters to pen pals in obscure
and hard-to-pronounce Russian cities.
The right track
Arriving in Russia with our small
son, we spent our first week exploring
the labyrinth of streets and palatial
museums of St Petersburg, the
candy-coloured domes of St Basil’s
Cathedral, and Stalinist skyscrapers in
Moscow. But the highlight of our trip
to Russia was travelling approximately
6,000
of the 9,200 kilometres that
make the Trans-Siberian the longest
continuous rail service in the world.
If we rode it nonstop, this eastbound
route from Moscow to Ulaanbaatar,
Mongolia, would take about five
January 2013
47