How to Plan a Trans-Siberian Railway Trip
If you’ve ever dreamed about taking a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway from one end to the other you’re not alone. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the logistics of how to plan a Trans-Siberian Railway trip from one end to the other you’re also not alone.
This is by FAR the most involved and complex trip I’ve ever planned. But it’s also the trip that made me feel the most like WONDER WOMAN when it all came together! 💪 💪 💪 I’m going to explain exactly how I got to that point; the Wonder Woman part after the planning all came together. 💪 💪 💪 😉 I’m going to give you the LONG version first- the version of what I actually did to plan this trip (maybe it will remind you that you’re not alone if you’ve ever tried to plan a Trans-Siberian adventure and didn’t really know what you were doing 🤷♀️), followed by the short version- the much simpler “knowing now what I didn’t know then” version. (Spoiler alert: it’s like 3 steps in 5 sentences. 🙄🤦♀️😉) So without further ado… Here’s how to plan a Trans-Siberian Railway trip:
The Long Version…
Step 1:
My first step in planning this trip was the same first step that I take with ANY trip I plan: Reading through the Lonely Planet guide’s top recommendations for the country or region I’m going to.
(Lonely Planet has a guide specifically for the Trans-Siberian Railway, so that worked out well. 😊)
As I read through the top recommendations I flipped to the page numbers they listed and read more details about the recommendations that interested me most. If everything I read sounded interesting enough that I would love to see it in person, I circled it on the map (in the first few pages of the Lonely Planet guide). Like so:
(You’ll see A LOT of circled up maps on this blog. I need that visual when I’m making plans 😄).
Step 2:
From here I did some additional research on Google and decided on which cities interested me MOST of the ones I had circled on the map. I also made sure these cities were along the correct Trans-Siberian Railway route that my travel compadres and I had decided to take. (As you can see on the map above, there are a few different colored routes. As far as I’m aware the whole train system is referred to as the Trans-Siberian Railway, but there are specifically named routes within the Trans-Siberian Railway that you could potentially take to make your way across Russia. My travel compadres and I decided on the Trans-Mongolia route [which I’m pretty sure is the most popular]).
Step 3:
Next it was time to start looking up train schedules; not because it was time to buy tickets already, but because I needed a rough idea of how often they run and how long they take to get between each of the cities I had chosen.
I ended up using rome2rio.com to gather a rough estimate of all the information I needed on the train schedule. (I say “rough” because I didn’t use the Russian Railway website directly to find the information [that website intimidated me. 😳 More on that later. 😉], so I allowed some room for error in the back of my mind). Even just from the rome2rio website I learned that the Russian Railway system operates on an “interesting,” we’ll say, schedule… By that I mean, some trains on the Trans-Siberian run every day, others run every other day, some go twice per day (one in the morning, one in the evening), some run once or twice per week depending on the season, etc. (That doesn’t complicate plans or anything. 😳🤦♀️).
Step 4
With this knowledge in the back of my mind as well as the Lonely Planet and Google research I had done, I wrote out an itinerary on a date-less “calendar” based on how many days I estimated we would need/want to spend in each city. (I figured we could go back and alter the number of days we spent in each city after we 100% confirmed the train schedule and nailed down the exact dates we would need to book trains on).
***An important “heads up” for you: It is absolutely IMPERATIVE that you make sure you’ve planned your trip around the train schedule and booked your tickets IN ADVANCE on the EXACT days you’ll need them. (This isn’t a trip I would recommend doing the whole “plan as you go” thing on). As I’ve said before, not EVERY route operates EVERY day on the Trans-Siberian Railway so if you don’t want to risk running into sold out train situations (especially in high season or on those “once or twice per week” routes 😳), getting stuck somewhere for longer than planned, or potentially overstaying your visa 😳, DEFINITELY BOOK IN ADVANCE.***
This was the final draft of our itinerary but I’m pretty sure I wrote out like 3-5 of these calendar-like schedules until we perfected our plans.
Step 5
Now that we had our itinerary nailed down it was time to confirm the EXACT train schedule, make any necessary adjustments to the number of days we would stay in each city (based on the train schedule), and book our tickets.
At this point I tried using the Russian Railway website again, and gave up on it once again. The page can be translated into English which is great, but the part that makes the whole “checking the train schedule and/or booking train tickets” thing so tricky on this website is that the train schedules for ALL of Russia are in Moscow time. There are ELEVEN time zones in Russia and our journey would be taking us through most of them. Because we needed to book EXACT trains on EXACT dates at EXACT times my travel compadres and I all didn’t feel comfortable working in Moscow time to do that. (Too much room for error 😳).
Furthermore, the official Russian Railway train schedule only shows timetables starting from 60 days before the date of departure. And the earliest you can book tickets is 40 days before the date of departure. (That complicated the whole “checking schedules and booking tickets” thing because not all of the dates we needed to book tickets were within those windows 🤦♀️). And if all of THAT wasn’t enough, we had also heard that the Russian Railway website wouldn’t accept North American bank cards. (WHY DOES PLANNING THIS TRIP HAVE TO BE SO COMPLICATED?!?!?! 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️). We were stuck. We’d known from the start that we didn’t want to book a full tour through an agency. But we had also heard that some agencies have more services to offer than only booking full Trans-Siberian Railway tours for you.
Real Russia
We had heard good things about Real Russia from multiple sources so we decided to check that out.
“If you have already tried the “do it yourself approach… then you know why you are here!”
I DIED when I read this on the Real Russia home page. 😄😄 We found that we could book train tickets through Real Russia and it was probably the EASIEST part of this whole process. We were able to book ALL of our tickets at the same time even though the last two legs of our journey weren’t within the 40 day window. (Real Russia basically just saved the last two legs of our journey as “ticket requests” and they notified us immediately when they had officially booked our tickets for those segments of our trip [which they did just as soon as they fell into that 40 day booking window]).
Side Note:
*** Real Russia provides a PROJECTED train schedule if you’re looking outside of the official 60 day window and I *BELIEVE* it’s pretty accurate. I also *BELIEVE* that you can book tickets outside of the 60 day window through Real Russia and that they would do the same as they did for us when we booked tickets outside of the 40 day window; save your booking as a “ticket request” and then notify you immediately when your tickets were OFFICIALLY booked. Again, I *BELIEVE* this is possible, but it’s ultimately a question to ask Real Russia. 😊 ***
Booking through Real Russia was also the best way for us to go. Everything is in English, the train timetables are written in local time, and they accept North American bank cards.
The Cost:
This is what our train ticket confirmation/itinerary looked like. And because I know you’re probably wondering 😉, the total cost of my Trans-Siberian train tickets through Real Russia was $834 USD. (Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be 😃)
So from all this my point is…. REAL RUSSIA IS WHERE IT’S AT for all your train timetable-checking and ticket-booking needs. Knowing now what I didn’t know then I would have used Real Russia from the very start! I would have checked out train schedules and booked our tickets even further in advance! This way we would have gotten an earlier start on acquiring the necessary visas for this trip. (Which brings me to the next step in the planning process…)
Step 6
Visa applications. Now that we had our tickets booked our travel dates were therefore set in stone. So it was time to apply for visas. (This is why I said that knowing now what I didn’t know then I would have booked our train tickets even FUTHER in advance than we did; so we’d have our exact travel dates set in stone and could therefore start the visa application process [which, in my experience, required a few weeks of waiting] even sooner).
With our US passports we would need visas for both Russia and China (Mongolia gives visas on arrival 🙌🙌🙌). A friend recommended using Visa HQ to apply for our visas and I’m SO glad we did! With their visa service I only had to fill out ONE online application. I just checked the boxes for which countries I wanted to apply for visas to. From there I printed, signed, and mailed in the application along with a few other required documents, passport photos, and my passport itself to their headquarters then BAM. A few weeks later they mailed my passport back with both visas inside. I couldn’t recommend Visa HQ highly enough! They were great about answering all my questions and keeping me posted on the status of my visa applications. And they got my passport back to me just as soon as my visas were completed!
The Cost:
The total expense of getting visas for Russia and China through Visa HQ was a little high, (I paid $532 USD [because I know you were probably wondering 😉] though the majority of it was for the cost of the visas themselves [and the letter of invitation to Russia]) but I still say using their service was worth every penny, guys.
And I think that sums up the way I planned this trip. It sounds so much less complicated to me in writing than it felt in real life!
And now, as promised…
The Short Version of How to Plan a Trans-Siberian Railway Trip:
– Do your research and determine which stops you want to make. Create a visual “calendar” (if that helps you like it helps me)
– Use Real Russia to check the train schedule, alter/adjust your itinerary if necessary (to align with the train schedule), and book tickets. (Well in advance if possible so you can get started on visa applications).
– Apply for all necessary visas with Visa HQ
– Enjoy your trip.
(So much simpler, right?)
I hope this gives you some hope. (And maybe even answers a question or two about how to plan a Trans-Siberian Railway Trip). I know there’s a lot involved and I know it’s intimidating but I also know it’s not impossible. Do your research and utilize your resources. Take the planning process one step at a time and I promise it will all come together. I PROMISE. 😊 ***And when the time comes, check out my Trans Siberian Railway Packing List , too. *** 😉
Safe travels friends.
CE
