Head for The Ponderosa
Not the worst idea I’ve heard
Used to be a great spot. Haven’t been in it for years.
More of a restaurant now, not much local clientele to keep a pub going
Ah I see. I’m talking a long time ago … sort of time I’d have had to be posting on the drink driving thread!
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BRIEF BUT STILL QUITE BORING DESCRIPTION OF THE TRANS-MONGOLIAN RAILWAY AND UNICUM FOR THE BENEFIT OF @glenshane
Not much to say. Caught the train for Beijing around 11pm in Moscow. Stayed on it for 6 days through Siberia and Mongolia. Drank a lot of Unicum with some Hungarian mates. It means “tonic” or “medicine” in Hungarian. They said they had been given it by the Unicum company who wanted them to make a video log of them drinking Unicum across the world. They recorded everything. Siberia is a complete shit hole but has nice wild flowers. Mongolia is cool. Beijing is a great spot.
The Hungarians told stories of how their grandfathers were captured by the Russians after World War 2 and had to walk home for thousands of miles through Siberia. They hated Russia.
When you leave Moscow heading East you go through a massive swamp that takes about 24 hours of non-stop travel to get through. It is flat as a table and has no distinguishing features or living animals whatsoever, not even any birds. Finally after over a day you pass a shitty little shack with a goat outside it and you get very excited because you’ve seen something alive. Mongolia seems a grand spot with wild horses and cows and camals just wandering around, not a bother on them, just having the craic. Also Mongol nomads driving around the desert on Harley Davidsons carrying yurts and big solar panels in trailers. Huge towns in Mongolia where the houses are all yurts with fences around them, like everyone in the town is a settled traveler. Mongolia is very beautiful in a bleak and powerful sort of way, it’s a place that completely meets the expectations of your imagination and I’d go back to it. Russia is fucking awful in my opinion, I couldn’t stand them. The Chinese seemed a great bunch in comparison.
Lake Baikal was very beautiful, like nothing else I’ve seen really and will always stay with me. You’re starting to get into the powerful and primal Mongolian-style landscape at that stage, even though you’re still in Russia.
You don’t get to see the Great Wall of China because you pass under it in a tunnel but you can come back in a bus because it’s only a few hours from Beijing.
6 days is too long on a train. It would be a great holiday if you could get out once or twice but I couldn’t get enough time off work for that. You think “oh I’ve been to Leitrim and Leeds, I’ve seen some shithole towns”. You’ve never seen a shithold in your life until you’ve been to Siberia. Dirty little collections of shacks literally days from anywhere and that’s a town. There’s usually one nice house in each Siberian town which is either for the government worker of the mafia lord, I couldn’t tell, and everyone else basically lives in sheds.
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You could ghostwrite a review of bandages ill fated trip to iceland. Where did you sleep, what was the grub like on the train. Id hate to be sitting for that long
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Food on the train was class, I literally ate caviar and pancakes twice a day, for breakfast and supper, with mash and beef for main course. The caviar was about €4 a go. It was hard being on the train that long and I’d change that Andy break it up if I was doing it again, which I obviously won’t. The train took about 20 minutes to walk to the end though so I did that a few times a day. I think it was the world’s 2nd longest train journey. If I had have gone one straight to Vladivostok that would have been the longest.
Where there many on the train?
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It started off pretty empty, like barely 100. It it picked up more as it went along and by the time it arrived in Beijing it was packed out.
It sounds like a great experience, Have you read the great railway bazaar? I fancied a trip like yours after reading it.
Sign in chiefs fans
Beijing is also a shithole, horrible place
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Kevin Mcaleer?
Aye. I was trying to find a link
I can confirm this. Avoid that kip
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Brian Lenihan, the ex-footballer
Blackpool would do that to anyone.
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