Iran: Beyond the cotton fields and unruly goats

Jeremy Atiyah takes a taxi along the river Euphrates in Syria to the Iraq border

Published: 26 March 2001

How do you find a cab driver willing to take you down the Euphrates? Easy. Go to the Baron Hotel in Aleppo. Hang around next to the wall-map entitled "Antiquités de Syrie". Pay attention to the drawing of the Valley of the Euphrates marked in bold black ink with diagrams of Hittite lions and Roman temples. Then wait to be ambushed by a globular hotel attendant called Abdu.

It worked for me, anyway. "I'm a taxi driver on my days off," was Abdu's gambit. "I've got an icebox in my car." He could recite the names of the sites along the river with such confidence that I accepted without hesitation his proposal to drive me to the Iraqi border for $200 (£140).

Setting off the next morning, Abdu was irrepressible. "Great to get out among the real Bedouin again," he kept exclaiming. "No tourists here!" In an hour we had exchanged the travel agents and lingerie shops of Aleppo for flat desert with houses the colour of dirt and a sun so hot that even the dry mud gleamed. The only things around were sheep and melons. "There you are," said Abdu as we drove past a great crowd of parked scooters and bundled up sheep. "Good people, simple people."
But when we stopped, he soon began calling them cheats and con artists. "And you call these melons ripe!" he was huffing. I suggested that they had raised their prices for the benefit of the foreigner. "My friend," Abdu explained disdainfully, "I am the one they want to cheat. I come from the city, it is plain for all to see."

As the sun climbed we came to the chalky, turquoise waters of Lake Assad, where the Arab citadel of Qalaa'at Al-Jabba sits alone on an outcrop. "You go up," urged Abdu. "I'll mind the car." And he insisted on staying below under a shady vine drinking ice-cold water while I dutifully picked about the hot stones by myself.

There was to be a lot more of that. The next stop, rearing up in the middle of a bare desert, was Rasafah, the ruins of a summer palace once belonging to the Omayyad caliph Hisham. Abdu made a big issue of dropping me at one end of the site, declaring his intention to pick me up later at the other end. "How long do you want? Three hours? Four hours?"

After I had negotiated Abdu down to one hour, I watched him drive off with sudden enthusiasm to a remote tent in the desert, for what I later understood to be some rest and relaxation with the Bedouin girls: leaving me, a speck of living flesh, to survive the white-hot stones of Rasafah alone. When I emerged, frazzled, an hour later, I noticed a small white Peugeot rolling up. A tourist got out. "Hello, I'm Jeremy," I said dourly. An unsmiling man in dark glasses walked forward and shook my hand. "I'm French," he said, and walked off.

Abdu eventually reappeared, and on we drove: on past the irrigated cotton fields, the dead dogs, the unruly goats, the dust clouds, the men sitting in shadows, the brown children splashing in brown canals. And past all the Bedouin hitch-hikers.

The rules concerning hitch-hikers are as follows. If it's a man, accelerate past with annoyance. If a woman, screech to a halt and reverse at great speed to pick her up. "We're from the city," Abdu would boast into the rear-view mirror, gesturing between himself and the foreigner. And the women would laugh coyly as they rearranged their veils.

Later, at the site of the ancient fortress of Halabiyya, built by Queen Zenobia, who once ruled Palmyra, we stopped for tea with a Bedouin family right on the river front, with the sun disappearing behind craggy hills to the west. Women squatted about, wringing out clothes, kneading dough and brewing tea, while Abdu lounged regally on a mat, making pronouncements about cars and money and big-city affairs. It transpired afterwards that he had been discussing ­ for purely academic purposes ­ the price for a Bedouin girl's hand in marriage: $4,000.

Away from the family, Halabiyya was a sinister place. Boulders with long angular shadows leered down on the river front; two fortified walls climbed up in giant steps to a desolate citadel at the top of the hill. I was scrabbling my way up the rocky slope when what should I behold down below but a white Peugeot. I scrabbled faster. The shy Frenchman, having caught sight of our car, drove off at speed.

At dusk we finally arrived at Deir es Zur. Minuscule donkeys trotted past in fast motion, some disguised as huge panniers of mint on legs, others loaded with large ladies in purple cotton, riding side-saddle. When we arrived at the very dark little town centre, there seemed to be only one hotel and one restaurant, both of which the Frenchman had already bagged.

The next morning it was on to the Iraqi frontier. We forked away from the irrigated area, and found ourselves in a featureless desert. But there, on a cliff-top, overlooking the river, was the vast site of Doura Europus, now guarded by one gloomy Bedouin with a motor-scooter and a shotgun. As Abdu noted with piteous contempt, the ancient shotgun looked as though it had been discarded by Lawrence of Arabia.

Behind me was crumbling desert; before me, 90ft below, were blue sparkly waters, green islands, sand banks, wheeling birds and grasses rippling in the breeze. Only one noise could have distracted me from the beautiful Euphrates at that moment: the whirr of an approaching white Peugeot. When I heard it, I nodded to Abdu. It was time to get moving again. Next stop: the Iraqi border.

Winter's tale

It's cold enough to make your eyes water - and then freeze the teardrops on your face. So what made Jeremy Atiyah swap a London flat for an apartment in Siberia?

Jeremy Atiyah

The Guardian,            Tuesday 13 March 2001

Twenty people have so far frozen to death," the BBC World reporter was explaining, in a cloud of white steam, "and hospitals in Irkutsk, Siberia, are performing 60 amputations a week on frostbite victims." That was in January, and I only took notice because, funnily enough, I was just off there myself - to Siberia, that is - for some peace and quiet to write a book. What was more, I had chosen the little town of Irkutsk on the grounds that nothing from the real world could possibly disturb me out there. And now here it was, two days before my departure, in the news.

I wasn't going to Siberia to get a tan. But writing a book in a cosy flat when it was cold outside was one thing. Writing a book in a cosy flat when it was -45C and people were dying of frostbite outside was quite another. Not that I was going to change my plans. Cold snap or not, I had picked Irkutsk because of its remoteness. Even Moscow was five time zones and 5,000km away. The nearest major city was Ulan Bator in Outer Mongolia. I wanted to live in a place that was too insignificant for anyone even to care whether it counted as Europe or Asia.

Or so I tried to reassure myself, boarding my Tupolev in Moscow, bound for one of the coldest places on earth. In fact, I was dressed in an outfit that might have saved Scott of the Antarctic. But disembarking five hours later, I discovered that the temperature had risen to -30. In my long johns, ski-trousers, down jacket and rabbit-skin hat, I found this rather comfortable. Only the instantaneous freezing of the moisture in my nostrils and on my eyelashes was unpleasant (it is a feeling I have since grown used to).

Off I drove over impacted snow, passing men with their ear-flaps pulled down, in search of my very own Siberian apartment. I had already arranged this by email, through someone I met on holiday ("Is it heated?" I remember asking, anxiously. "Of course it is," had come the terse reply). To live here for a year would cost the same as to rent out my flat in London for a month.

Furthermore, all Russian apartment blocks are communally heated: no one worries here about gas bills. They do worry that the heating might break down when the temperature is -40.

I confess that my block, when I got there, did not look much like my block back home. To open the outer door, force was needed to break ice on the hinges. Up a dark and stinking stairwell, I found old ladies peering fearfully from doorways. Unseen dogs barked. My flat turned out to have a solid steel door with eight locks on it, which, I am assured, is very fortunate for me.

Apartments right across the former Soviet Union tend to share certain endearing features such as cosy kitchens and crockery labelled "Made in the GDR". But the best aspect of my new flat, I soon found, were the radiators, which blasted heat into every room 24 hours a day (and would continue to do so for seven or eight months of the year). By now, I had seen enough television pictures of people in the Yakutia and Primorsky regions, to the north and east of Irkutsk, shivering in flats with cold radiators.

Admittedly, the insides of my windows were coated with ice-sheets so thick that I could see nothing out of them at all. I recall celebrating my arrival by quietly opening a bottle of something called Russian champagne, which then exploded all over the walls and ceiling, leaving barely a thimbleful in the bottom of the bottle.

Out in the streets, though, I found a certain pleasure in the extreme cold. Every passer-by wore a vast hat and went about enveloped in a personal cloud of steam. Exotic tapestries of frost hung from trees, walls and balconies. As for the Siberian pavement ice, I fancied that it had a mineral permanence to it: when chipped with pickaxes, it had the appearance of marble, millions of years old.

Siberian children, too, I was soon pleased to see, got their kicks from sliding on ice and attacking each other with snowballs. In the centre of town, I found an ice-chute: the children (alongside their elegant mothers in long fur coats with waists and pleats and Duchess of Windsor hats) spent their Saturdays hurtling down it on their bums with their feet in the air.

A fortnight after my arrival, we were informed on the news about the imminent invasion of more outlandish temperatures. Minus 40 and below loomed. "Have you heard?" people kept asking me, in excitement. "Are you ready for it?" Now when I went to market I found women with their faces wrapped to the eyeballs, standing behind piles of congealed fish, bent and frozen stiff. Ice-cream was sold in unpackaged, naked blobs. For a few days we went around with hats and collars covered in hoar frost.

In these bitterest days, I heard no word in the tram-stations or the bus-stops, just the sound of crunching snow and silence. For a Siberian to admit to feeling cold is as difficult as for an Italian man to admit that he is no good with women. "What?" they would shout. "If you're cold, drink more vodka!"

But we all knew that Irkutsk, unlike Vladivostok, was not suffering from energy shortages. "If our flats are warm and we can make ourselves cups of tea," one woman said, "what do we have to worry about?"

Some people did worry. In the local theatre, I heard of a troupe having to practise their dance movements in giant felt boots. Buses drove about in pairs, in readiness for the extreme likelihood of one of them breaking down during the day. Schools closed. But one teacher told me she liked the cold: "It keeps the delinquents off the streets."

Otherwise, suffering went on in silence. Walking home through the town centre one night with the temperature at -38, I came across a cluster of old women attempting to sell sunflower seeds from little paper cups. They had built a fire from cardboard boxes, which had attracted a few squabbling down-and-outs. Some of these people could not have had a life expectancy of more than a few hours.

But stories of alcoholics found frozen to death on public benches arouse little sympathy in Russia. Daily survival here in wintertime is joyless. If the peace and quiet that I came to find in Siberia was turning out (for a few winos) to be the quiet of the grave, it was hard to find people who cared. I remember wandering home that same evening in my down jacket and ski trousers, admiring the glitter of the snow under brilliant stars.

And now? Here we are already well into March. Daytime temperatures sometimes reach zero degrees and the ice on my windows is gone. Outside, long fur coats are being replaced by short ones. The pavement snow is slowly turning grey and reverting to stones and grit, and I'm still sitting here writing my book. For those who have made it, another Siberian winter seems to be almost over.

St Petersburg: Russia's imperial city that time forgot

Jeremy Atiyah explores St Petersburg and discovers that little has changed there since the days of the empire

Published: 11 March 2001

St Petersburg is stuck in the past. Eighty-four years after it ceased to be the capital of the Russian empire, it seems unchanged from the city of Rasputin and Tsar Nicholas II. Russia's window on Europe? The show-off, showcase city? The palatial capital to rival Versailles? It is still all of those things. Great news for the tourist - if not for a resident.


Why go?
Even better news is that for the reasonably affluent, St Petersburg is as easy to visit as ever. Continued visa restrictions means day-trippers, backpackers and coach-loads of foreign teenagers are kept at bay. So, if you make it, you will not be forced to share (with millions) your views over frozen canals to neo-classical facades redolent of Pushkin and Eugene Onegin, or to glorious old military barracks, with bile-yellow stucco and white columns, suggesting handsome uniformed officers in one mood and Dostoevsky's nightmare vision in another.


Why now?
As a city of architectural and cultural riches the seasons need not impinge on your trip. That said, winter - when vistas of snow and ice lend character to your photos - is a popular time to visit. Another is the 20 days following 21 June, known locally as the "white nights", when St Petersburg scarcely sees darkness thanks to its northerly latitude, and its residents lose themselves in 24-hour bacchanalian celebrations for days on end.


The mission
To go to Dvortsovaya Square. It is hard to imagine a more historic space in Russia. For here it was, on 25 October 1917, that the "storming" of the Winter Palace by Lenin's Bolsheviks took place (in fact, almost no opposition was encountered). Little, if anything, has changed since then: Alexander's column still towers over all, and the baroque palace continues to dominate the north-west side.
Inside the old palace is the Hermitage Museum. Based on Catherine the Great's private collection, it is one of the great art institutions of the world, and a reason in itself to visit St Petersburg. Even if you don't like paintings, you can appreciate the palace's interior.

Then go to the Russia Museum - somewhat more manageable than the Hermitage - which is confined to the work of locals and probably contains the finest collection of Russian art in the world.


Remember this
Traditionally, all tourists to Russia go to the ballet, and although some will argue that performance standards have dropped, the Mariinsky Theatre (in Soviet times known as the Kirov) still offers a fabulous venue. Unfortunately, tickets for foreigners are no longer outrageously cheap: you'll spend £35 on a half-decent seat. Book a couple of days in advance, or preferably before you leave home. Serious enthusiasts might try Travel for the Arts (tel: 020-7483 4466; www.travelforthearts.com).


Where to stay
There are various options, from five-star luxury to cosy private home-stays.
Starting at the top, the historic Grand Hotel Europe on Mikhailovskaya ul (tel: 00 7 812 329 6000; www.grand-hotel-europe.com) has entertained guests including Rasputin and Bill Clinton and is the place to stay if money is no problem.

A few hundred metres down the road - and at the other end of the scale - is the dilapidated but not dirty Oktabrskaya Filial at Ligovsky Prospect 10 (tel: 00 7 812 277 6330). The Filial is, in fact, attached to the slightly more expensive (but good value) Oktabrskaya Hotel.

Ost-West Kontaktservice (tel: 00 7 812 279 7045) can arrange b&b "home stays" in private apartments with local families from about £20 per night: a highly recommended option. A British operator, such as The Russia Experience (tel: 020-8566 8846; www.trans-siberian.co.uk), can also set up home-stay accommodation in St Petersburg.


What to buy
Pirated music CDs and computer software - at your own risk; matryoshka dolls; floral-patterned babushka scarves; and loads of cheap vodka.


Eating out
It has to be said that Russia, in general, is not a place you visit for the food. You face a choice between extreme luxury in top hotels, or cheap snack bars serving greasy chicken Kiev for under a dollar. The only sure way of dining well is to stay full board with a family, where you will be overwhelmed by the excellence of local cooking; above all zakuski, small snacks such as salted fish, gherkins, cold meats, salads and caviar, can be washed down with chilled vodka.

But if you insist on going out, options include the Idiot Café at nab Reki Moyki 82 (tel: 315 1675), which serves vegetarian dishes (unusual in Russia), and the dingy but atmospheric Georgian restaurant Tbilisi at Sytninskaya ul 10 (tel: 232 9391), with a menu including khachipuri (cheese-flavoured bread) and tsatsivi (cold chicken in walnut sauce). One of the best-known restaurants is 1913 god at Vosnesenskiy pr 13 (tel: 315 5148), which is not cheap but does serve excellent traditional dishes such as potato pancakes and cabbage soup.

Winter Garden in the Astoria Hotel, Bolshaya Morskaya ul 39 (tel: 210 5906) is very old world and elegant as you would expect from a restaurant in a five-star hotel. The food's not bad either.


Getting about
The St Petersburg metro, like that of Moscow, is one of the most efficient things in Russia. You rarely wait more than three minutes for a train. Buy jettons for single journeys (or multi-ride passes) in the stations. All rides cost a flat-rate equivalent to a few pence. Taxis have become cheaper and safer in recent years. A taxi, in Russia, means any passing vehicle. Stick a thumb out, and one will stop for you. They do not run on meters, but then neither do so-called licensed cabs; make sure you agree a price in advance.


Getting there
Flights from the UK to St Petersburg cost somewhere between £200 and £300. British Airways (tel: 0845 7733377) flies direct. Austrian Airlines (tel: 0845 601 0948), specialises in convenient connections to Russia and often offers the cheapest fares. If you are on a very tight budget, fly with the low-cost airline Buzz (www.buzzaway.com) to Helsinki, and then take an overnight train to St Petersburg. The return train fare is about £70 and it takes about seven hours. For a specialist operator, try Interchange (tel: 020-8681 3612). Three nights start from £441 per person, including return flights, transfers and b&b accommodation, based on two sharing.


Further information
There is no such thing as a friendly Russian tourist board offering information for free. But useful reading includes The Rough Guide to St Petersburg (£9.99).

All visitors to Russia require a visa. If booking a package through an operator, you are advised to leave visa formalities to them. If travelling independently, you will need to buy something called "visa support" from an organisation inside Russia first; many hotels can do this for you, as well as travel companies. After they have telexed the "visa support" to the embassy in London, you can apply to the Russian Consulate, 5 Kensington Palace Gardens, London W8 4QS (tel: 020-7229 8027). Two photos, a completed application form and a further £30 is required for five-day processing.

Jeremy Atiyah stayed as a guest of the Grand Hotel Europe, and flew to St Petersburg as a guest of Austrian Airlines.

Jeremy Atiyah on a winter break in Siberia

Published: 04 February 2001

This might seem eccentric, but I'm taking a winter break in Siberia. Seriously. I was here last autumn and asked myself then: why pussyfoot around? Just as Arabia is best experienced when the sun is sizzling your brains, so the only sensible time to do Siberia (I reckoned) was in the depths of winter when your ears were liable to shatter into splinters if you lost your hat.

That's why I'm here now, sitting and reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, in an apartment that doesn't need curtains because the windows are opaque with ice. Am I nurturing an obsessive desire for extra ladles of porridge or fishbone soup, or grams of bread if I am lucky? Not at all. Because as I keep saying: Siberia these days is more of a winter resort than a gulag.

Take Irkutsk, for example. All these funny, crooked wooden houses encrusted with deep snow and ice sparkling in the sun. Steam rising. Every single person in the whole city wearing furs. I don't mind the temperature dropping to minus xC, if it allows me to see groups of young men wearing Rod Stewart-style wigs which are, in fact, hats; not to mention armies of stunning women dressed up like the friends of the Duchess of Windsor.

All right, the cold creates some inconvenience. The front door of my block freezes on its hinges so that the colder it is, the more force I need to open it. Step out, and my nostrils and eyelashes then freeze equally solid. I also need to watch out for the open manholes in the pavements, which sometimes disappear under piles of snow. This morning, near my home, I noted footsteps leading to one of these holes, then vanishing. Another wino bites the dust.

The only other drawback of severe cold is that Siberians tend not to talk if they can help it. I can understand this. To open your mouth, is to undo a layer. Some walk with fags in their mouths, apparently as a means of generating extra warmth, and the local trams are foggy with their wordless breath.

But this needn't bother a tourist. I walk around town, exclaiming aloud over weird snow and ice formations: one great pile of frost, for example, sits three metres thick, like a shaggy beard hanging from a wall-vent; and the rubble of months of impacted snow, when ripped up with the help of pick-axes, resembles marble shot through with rich seams of soot. I liken my interest in these phenomena to the interest of desert-dwellers, arriving in England for the first time, in wet-stained paving stones and puddles.

So there you have it. At the end of the day, you can sit in a cafe that looks like Catherine the Great's bedroom. Siberia is not one big gulag any more. In the middle of Irkutsk, a giant slide has even been built out of ice-bricks, for no conceivable reason other than fun. Last Sunday I watched the massed ranks of citizenry hurtling down here, ten abreast: toddlers in fur hats the size of sheep, sliding with their feet in the air, followed by elegant ladies in heels and long coats with waists and pleats, going down standing up, only to be sent flying at the last moment by some out-of-control babushka on a plastic tray.

Everyone was laughing. And this was Siberia. In mid-winter.

The complete guide to The Trans-Siberian Railway

It's not glamorous, the food is appalling and you'll probably have to share a bathroom. And if that isn't enough to put you off, there's a tangle of complications to be negotiated before you've even sorted out the necessary visas. But that's all part of the charm of the world's longest unbroken train journey, says Jeremy Atiyah - it's an experience you'll never forget

Published: 03 February 2001

Why can't i find a train called "the Trans-Siberian Express" in my railway timetable? Because there isn't one. There is only a railway, loosely called the Trans-Siberian, which has lots of different trains running along it. Some of these make short hops from one Siberian town to the next, some go straight through from Moscow to Vladivostok. There is even one which starts in Berlin and terminates in Novosibirsk, bypassing Moscow altogether. A branch line goes from Siberia through Mongolia to Beijing, while yet another goes via Chinese Manchuria to Beijing (a few years back, one more line opened up allowing passengers to travel between Moscow and China via Almaty in Central Asian Kazakhstan, though there this line carries no straight-through service).

Some purists argue that the true and authentic Trans-Siberian railway is the wholly Russian line running from Moscow to the Pacific port of Vladivostok. They say that the original purpose of the railway was precisely to link these two cities, as indeed it first did in 1904. They prefer to describe trains which go via Mongolia or Manchuria to Beijing as "Trans-Mongolian" and "Trans-Manchurian" respectively.

But let us not get bogged down in semantics. The fact is that, these days, the majority of Trans-Siberian trips do not involve a visit to Vladivostok, but begin or end at the Chinese capital Beijing and end or begin in Moscow.


Is it the longest train journey in the world? Of the several different routes that run right across Siberia, the longest of them all is indeed the longest unbroken train ride in the world. This is the Moscow to Vladivostok train, the Rossia, which departs on alternate days from both ends of the line throughout the year. To cover its 9,289km (5,773 miles), it is scheduled to take 153 hours and 49 minutes, which works out at about six and a half days and 60km/h (38mph). Of the two weekly trains that run in both directions between Moscow and Beijing - one Russian train via Manchuria and one Chinese train via Mongolia - the longer one covers 9,001km, via Manchuria, and takes a mere 148 hours and 57 minutes.

(Delays, by the way, are surprisingly infrequent on the Trans-Siberian railway. You may arrive a couple of hours late, but after six days is this bad? Tracks are seldom, if ever, blocked by the Siberian snow and frost).


Can I travel by rail all the way from the UK? You certainly can, though the London-Moscow leg of the journey, which only takes two days, is far more expensive than Moscow-Vladivostok or Beijing. Tickets are available from Rail Europe (08705 848848, www.raileurope.co.uk) for between £300 and £400 one way, depending on the route. To pick up a Moscow train, the fastest way is to get to Cologne, which is less than six hours from Waterloo via Brussels. Note that you will also need a transit visa for Belarus if you take this option. The overall rail time from London to Vladivostok or Beijing, without stopovers, will be between eight and nine days.

For those interested in very long train rides, incidentally, it is worth noting that the world's longest train journey including changes, is probably from Faro (on the southwest tip of Portugal), to Saigon in southern Vietnam - via Siberia, of course. Assuming your connections work out all right, it should take between two and three weeks to cover the 20,000-odd km.


Doesn't it get boring after the first few hours/days? Well, the scenery isn't as variable as it might be. In winter, it's birch trees and snow; in summer it's birch trees and sodden grass. But that is only a quarter of it. The main joy is the sensation of having slipped into a parallel universe where all sense of time disappears (an effect of entering a new time-zone every 20 hours or so). For a week of your life, all your worries and responsibilities will disappear, to be replaced by vodka parties, chess matches and profound ruminations on life. As for watching heaped-up ice-rubble glow blue on the surface of a frozen lake hundreds of miles long, or waking up before dawn to catch long-skirted Russian soldiers running through thigh-deep snow to commence the border inspection - well, these are certainly not the sort of thing you do every day.


Are there luxury trains for tourists? No, thank God. That'll be the Venice-Simplon Orient Express you're thinking of. The trains that cross Siberia are designed for local traffic and your travel companions will largely comprise Russians too poor to fly, plus the odd Kiwi backpacker, slouching around in tracksuits and slippers rather than in dinner suits. Furthermore, the food in Russian restaurant cars is reassuringly appalling. And in the second-class compartments, two toilets will be shared between as many as 40 people. Taking a shower, of course, will be completely out of the question (except in Chinese deluxe-class; see below).

Having said that, I should add that conditions are by no means bad. Carriages are warm, even in the depths of the Siberian winter. Clean bedding is provided for everybody in second class and above. Compartments contain not more than four beds, and people without reservations are not allowed to enter the carriages. The toilets are kept clean by the carriage attendant. A samovar of boiling water is available in every carriage for drinking and washing at all times. And edible, even tasty, food can be purchased from freelance grocers at station platforms along the way.

For plenty of people, then, second class on a Trans-Siberian train will be fine. The difference between first and second class, in fact, often doesn't seem worth paying for. The one upgrade that might strike some as worthwhile is to a special deluxe class which exists on the Chinese train only, running between Beijing and Moscow via Mongolia - this is the only class in any train on the Trans-Sib which allows passengers to take a shower.


If nothing else, is the train a cheap way of getting to China? In the unlikely event that you are travelling between Moscow and Beijing only, the answer is yes. A one-way train ticket (about £200, if you buy it in the station) will be cheaper than the equivalent flight.

But if you're starting from Britain, you would have to be mad to take the train merely as a means of saving money. Flying to China is cheap, after all: low-season return flights from the UK to China are often available for less than £400 through discount agents. Air Tickets Direct (0870 8761199, www.airtickets.co.uk) is currently quoting £343 while Bridge the World (020-7911 0900, www.bridgetheworld.com) proposes a one-way ticket for £276.

The only people for whom the train might conceivably work out cheaper are those who need to travel just one way - such as those going home to Australia. But even in this case, don't forget that the actual train ticket from Moscow to Beijing will only form one component of your trip. One much larger expense will be the cost of getting to/from Moscow before/after your train journey. As mentioned, the one-way train fare between London and Moscow is getting on for £400. Even one-way flights between the UK and Moscow are unlikely to cost less than about £150. If you are fortunate, you'll currently get a Finnair ticket via Helsinki for £151 from Norvista (020-7409 7334; www.norvista.co.uk). Otherwise, there's Aeroflot (020-7491 1764), direct, at £218.10.

Another significant cost will be your visas: a set of Russian, Chinese and Mongolian visas currently costs a minimum of £85, even assuming that you do all the running around yourself. On top of all that, you will have to add in the cost of a night in Moscow.

In other words you'll be lucky to have any change from £500 to get from London to Beijing, one way only. And this does not take into account the cost of food and drink for the six days that it takes you (though this needn't be much: the price of food bought from platform vendors is almost negligible). But what you have to tell yourself is that as a means of seeing both Moscow and Beijing, and having a great holiday of 11 or 12 days, the basic Trans-Siberian experience - at about £1,000 including the flight out and the flight home - is a bargain.


How do i get visas? Russia is the only tricky one. If booking a package through an operator, you are strongly advised to leave visa formalities with them to deal with. If travelling independently, you'll need to buy something called "visa support" from an organisation inside Russia first. Many hotels can do this for you, as well as travel companies such as Maria Agency based in Moscow (e-mail maritour@online.ru - you'll need to pay by credit card for the service, an amount up to around US$70/£45). After the company has telexed the "visa support" to the embassy in London, you can apply to the Russian consulate at 5 Kensington Palace Gardens, London W8 4QX. Two photos, a completed application form and a further £30 is required for five-day processing.

For Chinese and Mongolian visas, the procedure is much simpler - but again, get your operator to do it if you have one.


Can i get decent photographs from the train? In theory, yes. The snag is that you probably won't be able to open any of the windows and if you find one that will open the carriage attendant will shout at you if you try opening it. What's more, the exterior of the windows is usually extremely grimy. But here are a couple of tips: first, borrow a rag from the carriage attendant to clean your own compartment window while it stops at one of the first stations (you'll need to be tall to do this). Second, walk right through to the back of the train, from where you can get great pictures down the track along which you have passed.


Can I get off the train along the way? Two or three times a day the trains stop for about 20 minutes, giving you time for a leisurely amble round a Siberian train station. But if you actually want to get off and spend the night somewhere, then you will need to decide in advance where and when you are going to do it. This is for two reasons. Firstly, because there is, as yet, no such thing as a Trans-Siberian rail-pass, allowing you to get on or off wherever you feel like it. There are only point-to-point tickets, issued with reservations for particular trains on particular dates. In other words, you need a new and separate ticket for each leg of your journey. And note that tickets for repeated short journeys become much more expensive than one straight-through ticket.

The second reason is that to obtain a standard Russian tourist visa, you'll need to specify in advance where you are going to be on each night of your trip. This usually requires having already booked (and paid for) your accommodation and tickets when you apply.


Is that as horribly complex as it sounds? Frankly, yes, which is one very good reason - especially if you are a first-timer in Russia - for putting the whole thing into the hands of a tour operator from the very outset. An affordable, experienced agency such as the Russia Experience (020-8566 8846; www.trans-siberian.co.uk) can book all your connections and find you affordable accommodation in all those obscure Russian towns that you had never heard of until you read its brochure.

The Russia Experience also has ways of booking tickets cheaper than buying them independently (it does the basic Moscow to Beijing, including visas, accommodation in Moscow and airport transfers for £330). You may dislike the inflexibility of travelling on a pre-arranged itinerary, but when you get off your plane in Moscow and the temperature is 20 below, and you are surrounded by thuggish taxi drivers, you will be glad someone is waiting with your name on a piece of paper. Other specialists include Regent Holidays (0117 921 1711; www.regent-holidays.co.uk); Intourist (020-7538 8600, www.intourist.co.uk) and Gateway to Russia (07050 803 160; www.russiangateway.co.uk).


Can I use the Trans-Siberian railway as a means of getting to Japan? In the old Soviet days before tourists were allowed to cross the border between the USSR and China, Japan used to be the main destination of tourists travelling across Siberia. Trains pulled into the ferry terminal of Nakhodka, the civilian port close to Vladivostok, scheduled in time to meet the boats bound for Yokohama and thence Tokyo.

But these days, unfortunately, ferry services are much curtailed, and they no longer dove-tail with train arrivals. Only in the summer time are there some occasional sailings linking Vladivostok with Niigata and Fushiki; the journey takes nearly two days and it is very likely to cost upwards of US$400 (£280). These services are operated by the Far Eastern Shipping Company (15 Aleutskaya Street, Vladivostok, 007 4232 497403).


Where can find out more? One essential companion is the Thomas Cook Overseas Timetable (£9.50). The best specialist guidebook is the brand-new fifth edition of the Trans-Siberian Handbook by Bryn Thomas, published next Monday by Trailblazer (01428 607571, www.trailblazer-guides.com), £12.99. The Lonely Planet Guide to Russia, Belarus and Ukraine (£16.99) has a useful section on the Trans-Siberian railway. Slightly dated, but still readable perspectives on the journey are to be found in Eric Newby's The Big Red Train Ride (Picador, £6.99) and Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar (Penguin, £7.99). For a melancholy overview of Siberia in general, see Colin Thubron's latest book, the superb In Siberia (Penguin, £7.99).

Jeremy Atiyah on a babble of Judaism and Christianity

Our history is reduced to a laser- and pyrotechnic-enhanced babble of Judaism and Christianity

Published: 28 January 2001

Our history is reduced to a laser- and pyrotechnic-enhanced babble of Judaism and Christianity

I've never been a fan of theme parks. Aren't there enough real places in the world, not to need to invent new ones? In fact I'd probably rather join a tour of, say, a defunct nuclear power station in Ukraine than go to Disneyland, on the grounds that it would be less artificial. There'd be less danger of running into giant mice with mutated ears.

At least a place such as Chernobyl might offer the potential of changing your life; of inspiring you to go out and do some good in the world afterwards. (To the credit of Disneyland, I have never heard it claimed that Mickey Mouse has made the world a better, nobler, more beautiful or more meaningful place.)

But as of now, I've decided that Disneyland is a great benefactor to this world. Thank God for Goofy, I say, and thank God for bringing this beacon of good taste, of reality, responsibility and meaning, into our children's lives. For the sake of their souls, I now want them to spend as much time as possible being sick on scary roller-coasters.

Why? Well, to save them from the latest theme park opening in Orlando, Florida, in a week's time. It's to be called - wait for it - the Holy Land Experience.

Sorry, but this has to take the biscuit as the biggest chunder-inducing exercise in the history of tourism. No roller-coaster can touch it. I haven't been there (nor am I planning a visit), but I am going to pontificate anyway: after all, pontification is what this park is going to be about.

Visitors, I am told, will be able to enter a replica of Jesus's tomb, climb the stairs of a copy of Herod's Temple and travel down a re-creation of Jerusalem's Via Dolorosa. Presumably they'll be able to queue for tickets and stop off for refreshments of Coca-you-know-what whenever they need to, as well, before buying souvenir T-shirts in the gift shop.

Apparently the Jews of Florida are already outraged by this latest attraction, since its owner, they claim, is a man who may have an interest in converting Jews to Christianity.

And without getting technical, I think I can see their point. By all accounts the park reduces thousands of years of human thought and experience into a laser-and pyrotechnic-enhanced babble of Judaism and Christianity (You know the kind of thing: "Moses. Jesus. The greatest story ever told ... Say, we could get all those biblical guys in!".)

The mere thought of overweight kids puffing down a fake Via Dolorosa having "shaloms" said to them by women in "biblical era" robes is almost turning me into a religious fanatic as well, in order to be outraged by it.

As far as I am aware there is only one Holy Land in the world, and funnily enough it's not in America. It's in a part of the world that those Coke-guzzling, burger-gobbling folk may never have heard of, but let's call it the eastern Mediterranean, and what's more it is currently being fought over by competing groups of unfortunate people whose livelihoods are at stake.

If you want to go on a holiday to learn something about the meaning of life, I suggest that there is where you should go.

Otherwise by all means go to Disney. But do yourself a favour. Just don't go to a theme park called the Holy Land Experience.

Some Russians see St Petersburg as a cancer in their midst

Some Russians see St Petersburg as a cancer in their midst, as an insult against God

Jeremy Atiyah

Published: 21 January 2001

I'm in St Petersburg, being shown around by a gloomy intellectual in a tweedy, threadbare old coat. Just what I need.

A few people are out under the lamp-light, trudging the snow-clogged banks and bridges of the canals. Beneath a row of white columns, fronting a long wall of yellow stucco, my appointed guide, Slava, stops and lights a cigarette. "Yellow is the colour of St Petersburg," he sighs, staring straight ahead for approximately 8,000 miles. "It is the colour of bile. It symbolises total alienation. St Petersburg is an artificial European city, which was built where no city should have been built. Some Russians see it as a cancer in their midst, as the insult against God, which was the cause of so many disasters in their country."

Er, well, gosh. To acknowledge this, I join Slava in staring over a bridge at the ice-dead Moika Canal. "The Russian Soul," say I, with a dainty little post-modern laugh. "How does it feel?"
I am assuming that "soul" does not exist - except that this is Russia. "It is the nightmare claustrophobic experience of imperial St Petersburg," Slava replies seriously, glancing this way and that, as though in fear of the Tsar's uniformed officers. "But it is worse than that. It is a sense of eternal sameness. You see, Russia is our mother. And sometimes she ignores our cries." I am wondering if this is the official policy of the St Petersburg tourist authority: posting characterful depressives on the streets, as a ploy to increase airport arrivals.

Perhaps it is time to move the conversation along a little. But only while racking my brains for more optimistic gambits. "Yes but now you have home-delivery pizzas!" Of course, I have conveniently forgotten about the 70 years of Communism, not to mention the 900-day Nazi siege of the city.
I try the subject of Moscow. If the Europeanness of St Petersburg is so disturbing, I suggest to Slava, then the swirling domes of the old Khanate of Muscovy might be more appealing to him. "Moscow?" he echoes, with sadness in his eyes. "The Third Rome, you mean? But I have not been there for many years."

Next I try asking him which century he prefers, the 19th or the 20th. He replies: "Each century is worse than the one before. The 21st century will be the worst of all. Siberia will be sold to China. We will work as slaves for the West. But let's not talk about that. I don't want to get depressed." Instead we discuss for a while the relative merits of the different 19th-century Tsars, which is still a surprisingly hot subject in this city (as a rule of thumb, any Tsar called Alexander seems to have been nice, while those called Nicholas were either cruel or stupid).

Meanwhile we are passing Moika 12, Pushkin's house - yet another pale yellow mansion fronted by fake fluted pilasters. Slava gasps, in the grip of more emotion. "Do you realise that not a single beautiful woman of his age was not courted by that genius? Can you imagine that even Pushkin had to be killed to become a true Russian hero?"

Hmm, I mumble, stamping my feet against the cold. All I am really wondering at this moment is: how do normal countries cope, which can't offer tour guides with Russian souls?