A Rattle of Iron

There were no terrible ticket mix-ups, and soon this avid traveller had made his home in the east-bound convoy of iron chariots, heading through the very heart of that vast land known as Siberia. In few ways lacking of forethought, I had stacked my packs with dry rations as well as the more wet kind; beer, the sourest of boxed merlots and of course that very life-water Russians love, vodka, accompanied the noodles and dry soups, ready for the ever-present hot water of the nearby samovar.
Stubbornly the locomotive dragged its dozen wheeled subjects leaving the muskovite metropol, aiming towards rural Russia.

It became clear that this part of the journey would be a pleasant, yet uneventful one; of the two other occupants of the four-berth, but one knew any English, and little at that. As a further obstacle to communications, the almost-anglian arrived at his destination a mere twelve hours after departure, thus leaving the four-berther with nothing but two inhabitants for the better part of the journey: a woman carrying the banner and colours of the town of Ulan-Ude, and yours truly.

With my compartment companion, sweet as she were, the lack of a common tongue made conversations somewhat stifled, and where, in more fortunate circumstances, merriment and joyful drinking, laughing and games would be had, tranquility and escape to the written word took its stead.

The relaxing ride was interspersed with conversations by means of facial expressions, body language and a, at the end, rather well-thumbed phrasebook. To say that I could master the Russian tongue after that would be far from pravda; barely knowing a handful of loosely connected word does not a conversationalist make.
At some point, presumably borrowed from the Mongolian minstrels some compartments back, there appeared an instrument, its body black with a pick-protector of cream mother-of-pearl, its six nylon strings plucked upon by the homeward-bound Ulan-Udite. Songs where sung, in Russian, in Mongolian, in Swedish and in English, and the friendly musical competition ended in a draw; as vocals go, mine scored the highest praise, but the taming of the guitar strings were an easy match for the skillful Siberian.

The green-scaled metal serpent meandered through the lush landscape, ever east-bound. Fields of gold, forests of green, wooden villages of eras long forlorn and concrete cities of eras recent passed by the window. In the dead of night, so I was told, the southern tip of Lake Baikal was rounded, and when morning came, the train, with screeches and wheezings and puffs of smoke, came to a halt at Ulan-Ude station, and with that my trans-siberian railway journey had all but ended. Or, you know, not, if the buses to Mongolia were somehow fully booked.