From Russia with love - slow travel

Regular plane travel is getting to be a pain in the butt.  No liquids, limited hand baggage,  crammed in like sardines, paying for seat choice, paying for hold baggage, paying to get on the sodding plane before everyone else.  Argh, where will it end?  Yes, it gets you there faster, but only sometimes, and it's stressful, unpleasant and increasingly expensive.

So I embrace wholeheartedly the recent trend for slow travel - that is, taking your time over getting to your destination.  Making the journey part of the experience.  This means train, boat, car, bus, barge or bike.  I've always thought that train is the most romantic and luxurious of all the ways to travel and see a country.

You can fly from Beijing to Moscow in a matter of hours.  But, unless you're very pressed for time, why would you?  Take the Trans Manchurian train; which I did some almost 20 years ago when it was still a bit risque to travel around Russia independently.  All very post cold war, stringent documentation on person at all times, military inspections and minders aka  'helpful official state travel guides'.  7-10 nights on a train from Beijing to Moscow in a tiny 4 person bunk berth is enough to test the resolve of even the hardiest train journey enthusiast.  But breaking up the journey in Siberia made it the experience of a lifetime.  That journey gave me lots of things to remember: Dimitri the train guard casting scraps of food to the wolves by the train, the little blue flowers that grew in swathes around Lake Baikal, swimming in that very same (newly defrosted)lake, and partaking in fresh peaches and vodka with the Russian train crew (below).

Like many of the best travel experiences, it was by no means high luxury.  The meals in the buffet car were standard communist fare - melancholy selections of borscht, dumplings and potato.  So we lived on whatever the samovar could provide for us - 10 solid days of Jasmine tea, steamed noodles, and soup (sounds like a new fad diet). 

We met so many different and eccentric people, travelled through different cultures and landscapes, and I would like to think we saw so much more of the real Russia than most visitors do.  I would recommend it to anyone.  Why not whet your appetite by taking the virtual Trans Siberian Railway trip which Google has lovingly put together, with the option of Russian music and novels as cultural accompaniment.  http://www.google.ru/intl/ru/landing/transsib/en.html

Closer to home there's a new company, 'Road, Rail and Sea' scoping out romantic, adventurous road, rail and sea journeys to facilitate your slow travel break.  This seems like a very good idea and I really wish them well.   They launch this summer.  http://www.roadrailandsea.co.uk/

On their new website they're quoting the inimitable Mark Twain:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

I couldn't have said it better myself.