farewell at Yaroslavl

It was 7:30pm. There was no sign of budget travelers hanging around, like the previous times when I took the same train. They would arrive at least half an hour before departure. But no, no one around. This was only the tail end of summer, albeit quite cool – where have all the travelers gone?

I was shivering in the wind, looking up at the train timetable.

‘Where you go?’ A Russian man asked.

‘I’m going to Beijing. I’m taking the Moscow-Beijing train.’

‘Ah! Peking. You are on wrong platform! It’s there!’ he pointed to an empty platform at the far-east end of the station. Now that rang a bell – I remember the platform being the last one…I thanked the man, pulling my rucksack back on my exhausted shoulders, and headed towards the right platform.

The train had pulled in. Three or four young, European budget travelers had just appeared. Then a number of Asian-looking men and women walked pass me, discussing their train tickets in Mongolian, and boarded the number 4 train, my train.

I was surprised to find that the train conductors are Chinese. (I was expecting the usually grumpy-looking Russian conductors.) ‘Ni hao!’ one of them greeted me endearingly with a heavy Beijing tone as he checked my ticket.

‘So this is a Chinese train?’ I asked.

He pointed to the Chinese characters written on the train: Mo-si-ke (Moscow) to Beijing. This was the first time I’ve been on a Chinese-staffed trans-Siberia train. Should be fun.

I staggered into my cabin, right next to the conductors’ cabin. There were two Mongolian women and a man sitting in there on one of the lower bunk beds. ‘Hello!’ I said to them.

‘Hello!’ the older woman of the two replied, looking distracted though. I realized I was probably interrupting their farewell to each other – it’s just I didn’t know who was leaving and who was staying with me in the cabin?

They carried on chatting in Mongolian for a while when I settled in and put my luggage under my lower bunk bed.

‘Come out to take a picture with us!’ the Mongolian man said to me. He meant, also, to take a picture for them. Now the platform was empty again – it was 9pm and most passengers had all settled in their cabins waiting for the train to depart. A few feet from us on the platform were a group of east-Asian-looking men and women displaying electrical rainbow-coloured lights on the floor. It reminded me of the goodies sellers outside the East Ham underground station. I heard them speaking Chinese.

‘My name is Urnaa,’ the older of the two Mongolian women suddenly introduced herself to me. She’s got a really round face and distinctively tiny eyes. When she smiled, she has lovely dimples on her pink cheeks. The other thinner and younger-looking woman, with black long straight hair tied back, told me her name’s Gunje and she’s Urnaa’s sister. They looked completely unalike. Unlike Urnaa, Gunje didn’t put any make-up on, revealing tiredness on her face.

‘We travel with you,’ Gunje told me, smiling.

I stepped back into our wagon and watched them say good-bye to the Mongolian man, their best friend who lives in Moscow. I could sense their sorrow. I was to understand that this is the pattern of interaction throughout the rail journey – you will part with people, and you will meet new people and establish new connections, until you part with them, too.

‘Look after each other!’ the Mongolian man waved at us from the platform as the train departed at 9:35pm, Moscow time. Thus began the five-and-and-a-half-day journey of the Great Siberian Railway, the longest railway in the world.