Central Asia by rail

Leaning out of the train door as the final whistle blew, I watched my husband, Tristram, grab the newspaper-wrapped package from the village girl on the platform and drop some coins into her outstretched hand. “Rachmet (thank you)!” he exclaimed in such obvious delight that she looked up at me with her dark brown eyes and laughed. The train gathered speed, and soon she was left far behind, a small head-scarved figure standing in the middle of the central Asian steppe.

On board, my husband’s purchase was swiftly appraised by the band of men who had poked at and murmured over everything he had paid for since leaving Moscow, from a bag of ruddy apples to some woolly Kazakh socks. “Nye dorogoy (inexpensive),” they announced approvingly, and so we stumbled back together to the six-bunk berths where we had been sleeping, reading, sitting and watching the Eurasian continent sweep by for the past three days.

Everything – from seats to sandwiches – is considered common property on the train to Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, and I alone of our Kazakh, Moldovan, Kyrgyz, Russian and Uzbek fellow travellers was not in the least bit interested in sharing his lunch. The men crowded round as Tristram unfolded the layers of cheaply-printed Cyrillic script, and the strong odour of farmyards filled the carriage.

Since we boarded the train in London at the start of our 10-day journey – see map at right – to Kashgar in western China, Tristram had been talking non-stop about kaze, the Kazakhs’ pungent national dish of horse tripe stuffed with horsemeat. But I had tasted more than enough train and platform food already on this journey; between Frankfurt and Moscow we had lived on fat-flecked soup served up by a man who smelt of beer marinade; and the last thing I did before leaving Moscow was walk to Red Square and buy myself a picnic of black bread, salami and cheese from the plush GUM department store opposite the Kremlin. To the travel-weary, the food hall of GUM is a cornucopian array of local and international delicacies, from pickled cherries to Parma ham; and I parted gladly with my roubles.

Tristram, however, was thrilled by the rustic railway diet of horse and sheep offal. He loved the clammy, sweet, sour-cream-stuffed buckwheat pancakes hawked by the old ladies who shuffled up and down the train. He smacked his lips with joy as he told me of the broiled sheep’s head that some Kyrgyz labourers had shared with him on a previous journey (though he lamented the cultural taboo on eating the eyes). And here he was now, slicing up convenient medallions of kaze with his penknife, and handing them out encased in hunks of spicy unleavened nan.

By now we were on the second leg of our train journey. The first stage had taken us from London through Belgium, Germany, Poland and Belarus to Moscow. On the Frankfurt-Moscow train, all our fellow passengers had been Russians, happy to be returning home. Taking the train, they said, pointing to their huge suitcases and boxes of European goods, was cheaper and easier than flying. “Granitsa! (the border)” shouted a cheery Russian returnee called Vladimir, as the train drew up at Belarus customs.

Belarus, of course, is now an independent country, but for Vladimir it was part of the Soviet Union of his childhood, and thus represented home. As if to confirm this, the train was shunted into a siding and jacked up 6ft into the air so that oil-blackened mechanics could disconnect every wheel-set and replace them. In the 19th century, when the tsar’s engineers began the long process of connecting his dominion together by railway, they chose a broader gauge than that used in Europe (which hindered the invading Nazi army during the second world war). A similar process happens at the eastern end of this vast former empire, as the railway line passes from Kazakhstan into China.

The Frankfurt train reached Moscow in the morning and we spent a day wandering through a city slushy with snow. The train to Almaty left that night. At first, it passed through the forest that stretches eastwards from Poland in an enormous frozen swath; but this soon gave way to the awesome infinite expanse of the steppe. Everybody onboard was waiting for the moment when we would cross the Volga River, a waterway as large as a sea and as significant to Russians as the Channel is to the English. It wound across the vast landscape, shining in the evening light, its banks dotted with fishing-boats and skiffs.

On the third day we reached the green rolling hills of Kazakhstan, where children on donkeys raced their spindly beasts alongside the train. Snow-capped mountains appeared to the south, shimmering their testimony to the approach of the South-Asian tectonic plate.

By the time we arrived in Almaty, on the fourth morning, we had travelled further east than south. Having remained at a similar latitude, it was continuities rather than differences in landscape and livelihoods that seemed most striking. Millennia-old herds of cattle, sheep and horses roam the Eurasian landmass from the western tip of the British Isles to the eastern seaboard of China. Wheat, rice and barley extend over an essentially continuous belt of cultivated land. Willow trees pollarded for fuel line Kazakh homesteads, just as they do in rural England. There is nothing like the train to Almaty for driving this biogeographical lesson home.

After we journeyed on to Urumqi in north-west China, however, everything changed. The plains gave way to desert, and from Urumqi we dipped south into the heart of Xinjiang, a nomadic land of yurts and camels. This was far more foreign – whatever Vladimir said – than the transition from Poland to Belarus.

More dramatic still, on a personal level at least, was the change in the quality of the transport. Stepping from rusting Soviet rolling stock into a luxury 21st-century Chinese two-storey mega-train was bliss: clean, comfortable, the restaurant car boasting a menu of 30 freshly-made local dishes. We arrived in the Silk Road city of Kashgar, the cultural centre for Xinjiang’s Uighur Muslims, happy and refreshed. Tristram, of course, fell upon the fried chicken-feet and “creamy” yellow sheep’s lung.

On the train you see the world go by before your eyes, and understand how cultures connect and polities intersect. You glimpse something of the immense historical era that was Soviet Communism. You spend days in the company of people unlike yourself, from villages and towns you will never see.

In Kashgar, we met some cyclists who had just completed the same journey as us – by bicycle.

“And I thought our journey was epic,” I told them, humbled by their feat.

“We saw a Frenchman in Kazakhstan,” they replied. “He was walking.”

TOP TIPS FOR A TREK BY TRAIN

All aboard for the long haul

The train journey from London to Kashgar can be done in nine nights: two from London to Moscow, four from Moscow to Almaty in Kazakhstan, two from Almaty to Urumqi in north- west China, and one from Urumqi to Kashgar. It is better to take a day or two’s rest in Almaty; you could also linger for a night in Moscow, but train timings mean that in any case you arrive in the morning and leave at night, giving you 12 hours to explore the city, buy a picnic for the onward journey, and visit the banya (public baths).

Russian winters – which last until late March – are cold. But from April onwards it can be warm onboard, and, unless you are in first class, the conductor might not let you open windows. There are no showers anywhere on the train, and wet-wipes are a convenient substitute for washing in the basin. There is, however, a samovar in every carriage providing endless free hot water, so pack tea, coffee and some cups.

For the more adventurous, the journey to Kashgar is a day or two quicker if you take the Bishkek train from Moscow to Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz people are nearly universally friendly, the landscape stunning, and this route bypasses Urumqi altogether. But it is less straightforward: from Bishkek to the Chinese border you will have to take a series of unreliable buses, taxis (or even hitch-hike) on frightful roads with potholes as big as houses.

Agencies such as Real Russia and Way to Russia can book the entire journey from London to Urumqi, though it is cheaper to book yourself on the Eurostar to Brussels, and buy a ticket on the Deutsch Bahn to Frankfurt or Cologne (via the website) and from there to Moscow.

Frankfurt to Moscow by first class is £255, Moscow to Almaty is £280.

Agencies can also arrange all your visas for you, which will save a lot of time and queuing. Apply for visas well in advance as fast-track applications can be expensive. An invaluable guide to routes, timetables and visas is www.seat61.com.

Bookings for the Urumqi- Kashgar train journey can be made by the helpful Uighur travel agent Abdul Wahab, abdultour@yahoo.com. If you are planning to travel from Kashgar on to Pakistan and India, remember that the China-Pakistan border at the Kunjerab Pass is closed from October till May. Alternatively, it is only two days by train to Beijing from Urumqi.

Wherever you go on this route, people will be friendlier if you wear smart clothes. Men should shave before trying to book hotel rooms in Almaty and Kashgar – especially after 10 days on the train.

Alice Albinia is author of ‘Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River’