Archived:NightOnTheGalacticRailroad

This is the crazy plan, that attempts to combine trains, lots of trains, with getting to Japan.

Viable, finished plans

The Trans-Mongolian

• Days 1-4 (Sat - Tues) - Assemble in London, make our way to Moscow (in time to catch the Tuesday TSR) by $MEANS following $ROUTE.
  • Day 1, Saturday: Train to Cologne and a day there. Overnight train east
  • Day 2A, Sunday: Warsaw, explore it, overnight train to Kiev (or Minsk)
  • Day 2B, Sunday: Miles and miles of catholic monarchist farmland
  • Day 3A, Monday: Kiev, explore it, overnight train to Moscow
  • Day 3B, Monday: Arrive in Moscow early in the morning, do tourism.
  • Day 4, Tuesday: Explore Moscow, catch TSR in the evening
• Days 4-8 (Weds - Sun) - Miles and miles of godless fascist taiga
• Day 9 (Mon) - Arrive Beijing, depart for Shanghai on the Beijing-Shanghai sleeper
• Day 10 (Tues) - Arrive Shanghai, board ship for Osaka
• Day 11 (Weds) - Miles and miles of akitsumikamiless democratic ocean
• Days 12-14 (Thurs - Sat) - Japan
• Day 15 (Sun) - fly home

Fear and loathing in Kazhakstan

• Day 1 (Fri): Catch the 05:25 Eurostar to Paris, arrives 08:50 Gare du Nord. Then RUN LIKE FUCK to the Gare d'l'Est for the 09:09 TGV to Mannheim. Connecting trains take us to Berlin, finishing in Warsaw at 23:15 in time to catch the sleeper to Moscow. Alternately, catching the overnight ferry from Harwich at 23:15 on Thursday would be a little more expensive but lessen the opportunity for lol.
• Day 2 (Sat): Train train train to Moscow, arriving in the evening in time to catch the sleeper to Astana
• Day 3-4 (Sun-Mon): Train train train
• Day 5 (Tue): Arrive Astana at like 10:30AM, a bit of time to explore there before getting the 15:10 (?) sleeper to Urumqi.
• Day 6 (Wed): Train train train
• Day 7 (Thur): Arrive Urumqi early in the morning, explore very briefly before catching the train to Langzhou at 11ish, which I hope is a sleeper.
• Day 8 (Fri): Train train train, broken only by a brief change of trains (maybe 2 hours) in Lanzhou
• Day 9 (Sat): Train to Shanghai, arriving an hour and a half before our ferry leaves.
• Day 10 (Sun): Boat boat boat
• Day 11 (Mon): Arrive in Japan early in the morning

When to go?

• optimised for Comiket (December or August)
• optimised for all that cherry blossom bznss (March?)
• optimised for temperature in Siberia not being silly (Jun-Aug, probably)
• optimised for leave allowance (March?)

Costs

Train fares beyond Warsaw are taken from RealRussia and some chinese travel website. Cheaper flights may be available. These costs are for travel (which essentially includes most of our accomodation), but do not include food or other expenses.

Trans-Mongolian

• London-Cologne: £92.50 urk, guess saturday's a bad day for eurostaring
• Cologne-Warsaw: #42.4550258 if booked in advance
• Warsaw-Minsk: £71.89 in 2nd class, possibly less in third. Warsaw-Kiev: £126.98 in 2nd class during the day, sleeper fares unknown
• Minsk-Moscow: £71.87 or £39.30 in 3rd class on slow train. Kiev-Moscow: £94.04 2nd class on fast train, £61.83 3rd class on slow train.
• Moscow-Beijing: £534.94 2nd class (possibly cheaper in 3rd class)
• Beijing-Shanghai: #44.2369132 in seat, #57.1393463 in cabin
• Shanghai-Osaka: #164.905382
• Osaka-Tokyo: #63.7884001
• Tokyo-London: £529.29 on sunday, £440.19 on monday

Visas:

• Belarus £81.44 - so actually cheaper to go via Kiev
• Russia: £95 or maybe less
• Mongolia: #35
• China: #45

Minimum maximum total cost: #1746.8257211 (assuming return on Monday)

Kazhakstan

• London-Amsterdam: #34
• Amsterdam-Warsaw: #42.4550258 if booked in advance
• Warsaw-Moscow: £133.10
• Moscow-Astana: £138.86 3rd class, £235.43 2nd class
• Astana-Urumqi: #98.3042517
• Urumqi-Lanzhou: #49.7665274 in seat, #82.9442123 in cabin
• Lanzhou-Shanghai: #55.2961416 in seat, #92.1602359 in cabin
• Shanghai-Osaka: #161.157533
• Osaka-Tokyo: #63.7884001
• Tokyo-London: £529.29 on sunday, £440.19 on monday

Vizas:

• Belarus £81.44
• Russia: £95
• Kazhakstan: #15
• China: #45

Minimum maximum total cost: #1482.4578796 (assuming return on Sunday - could save some by making it Monday)

Discussion

Reasoning, based on departing on a Saturday:

• Fly there, train back means:
  • Can spend most of a week (sunday morning -> friday midday) in japan
    • But notably doesn't fit a weekend, unless we extend it even further
• Get two and a half days (sunday midday -> wednesday 8am) in china - time enough to look around shanghai + beijing a bit
  • Finishes on Monday in Moscow, at which point there's no elegant next thing to do.
    • Can fly to hurry back - cheating, but means only 11 days-off-work consumed
      • Might be able to do some return flight shennanigans, given that aeroflot changing in moscow is actually a perfectly sensible way to fly to Japan
        • Assuming you don't mind bits of your plane falling off, etc.
          • In Soviet Russia, 'plane crashes YOU!
  • Can take the efficient sleeper trains, getting back wednesday, thursday or friday - inelegant
    • Could make it into a 3-week thing, meandering a little through europe - let's say Monday afternoon and Tuesday in Moscow, then overnight to St Petersburg for Wed, then overnight to Minsk for Thur, overnight to Kiev for Fri, overnight to Warsaw for Sat, overnight to Cologne for Sun. Or something like that.
      • That is basically all my (Smith's) leave gone for the year
  • Mickey will doubtless end up in jail in Belarus
    • I (Smith) move that the eventual spreadsheet of our itinerary incorporate, as is now traditional, a column detailing the respective ages of consent in the regions to be visited
• Train there, fly back means:
  • Elegant first section through Europe - we can spend one day each in Cologne/Warsaw/Kiev (or Minsk)/Moscow, or we could get to Moscow quickly and have pretty much two full days there.
    • Why have two full days in Moscow? I (Smith) would assume we just adjust our departure day so that we arrive in time to board the TSR
      • On the basis that weekends are free time off, so we might as well spend them somewhere cool. (The Trans-Siberian only runs once a week, so we have to take it Tuesday evening whatever else we do). Also, Moscow is likely to have enough stuff to interest us, (red square, st ivan's etc.) no?
        • I suppose the things to do in Moscow are the touristy things; I (Smith) for one would like to visit the Lenin Mausoleum, and I suppose one must visit St Basil's and Jake Corteen for the look of the thing
• Not much time in China - we'd get a full day in Beijing, but like 3 hours in Shanghai
  • Naturally arrives in Japan on a Thursday, at which point we either have a long weekend or get a (admittedly cost-effective) midweek flight back after a week or so
  • I (Smith) like this plan. Although I have no strong preference as to which end is train and which 'plane, going on the first version of the itinerary below it is likely that I will disengage from the group in Osaka and do my own thing (game) there, making my own way home.
    • Actually, thinking about it, I do have a preference; somehow using the TSR to come back to civilisation seems a lot lamer than using it as a route outward to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new perversions; to boldly go where no sensible man has gone before
      • Yeah, I think I (Lmm) agree. It's just a shame not to get any time in Shanghai, it's pretty high on my list of cool places to go to.

Rushed kazhak route gives us more time in Japan, but at the cost of spending basically no time exploring anywhere on the way. For my money (lmm), it's not worth it. Possibly a viable alternative: fly to Moscow on Sat, spend a day or two there, get the train to Astana and have a bit more time there, then as that route.

For more detailed planning see /LmmStreamOfConsciousness