Recently dug up some old photos from my 1993 Trans-Siberian trip through post-Soviet Russia and posted them to the Facebook page. The changes over the past 20 years to Moscow and Ulaanbaatar, let alone Beijing, are stunning – check out the line, traffic, and dated cars outside Moscow’s first McDonalds.
Arranged, in the pre-Internet era of letters and faxes, by Hong Kong’s old school specialists in Trans-Siberian travel, Moonsky Star Ltd., the Trans-Siberian took me from Beijing to Moscow with stops in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and the Siberian city of Irkutsk. It was my first-ever ‘real’ train trip and spawned a love of travel by train that still burns brightly enough to make even Amtrak’s DC-NYC Northeast Regional feel compelling.
Enjoy the pics: the emptiness of the Gobi Desert, Ulaanbaatar’s first steps in throwing off a long, cold Soviet winter, and the first signs of the commerce soon to envelope Moscow.