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One Month on the World’s Longest Train Ride for $1,000
- mcphage 10y agoSnowpiercer only costs $1,000? Okay sure, but is that the decadent-drug-your-way-to-oblivion class, or eat-bugs-and-maybe-your-arms class?
- atomical 10y agoIs there internet available on any of the trains? Anyone worked remote from a train like this before?
- dominotw 10y ago>Is there internet available on any of the trains? Anyone worked remote from a train like this before? no these trains don't. But some amtrak's in america do have wifi.
- jessriedel 10y agoI believe most trains use cellular data connections for internet connections. I don't expect there to be any out in the Mongolian desert. You'd probably have to bring your own satellite internet...
- louprado 10y agoThere was also a good previous post on a developer who lived on cruise ships for about $1000 a month. http://tynan.com/cruisework http://tynan.com/cruisework But at the time (3 years ago) WiFi was a problem which meant it is not a good option to many of us who have the freedom to travel but not without internet access.
- atomical 10y agoThe wifi appears to be pretty expensive but maybe it can be worked into a budget. I understand that the limitation at the time appealed to the author, but a lot of teams are very collaborative and a remote worker would need unlimited access.
- larozin 10y agoIn Russia, only few modern high-speed trains (sapsan, lastochka, strizh) have a (paid) wi-fi onboard. However you can use cellular in other places. Check 3G/LTE availability maps: https://beeline.ru/customers/beeline-on-map/ https://beeline.ru/customers/beeline-on-map/ http://www.corp.mts.ru/help/mts/coverage/ http://www.corp.mts.ru/help/mts/coverage/ http://megafon.ru/internet/4g/ http://megafon.ru/internet/4g/
- JorgeGT 10y agoMinor correction: I would say that the new Yiwu-Madrid railway line is the longest in the world with ~10,000 Km vs the Trans-Siberian's 9,000 Km. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Yiwu%E2%80%93Madrid_railway_line https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Yiwu%E2%80%93Madrid_railway_line
- guard-of-terra 10y agoBut it's not passenger rail for good parts of its length, is it? My minor correction to the article: Wikipedia says that China uses Standard Gauge, this means Russia and Mongolia use wider and not narrower Russian Gauge.
- hobbes78 10y agoI came across a blog post that mentioned Oporto, Portugal to Ho Chi Minh, Vietname totalling 17000 km as being the longest train ride in the world... http://basementgeographer.com/the-longest-train-ride-in-the-world/ http://basementgeographer.com/the-longest-train-ride-in-the-...
- xufi 10y agoI definitely was thinking of doing this in the near future. I watched a documentary on a guy that took a train ride like this and the scenery was just amazing
- dominotw 10y agoMe too. But I am too scared to go at it alone, I am worried about my stuff getting stolen ect.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- guard-of-terra 10y agoWhy would anybody need your stuff? There's no shortages of used trousers. Even if you carry an used laptop it's not a grand desirable item. You can use plastic to avoid ever having large sums of cash on you.
- jlg23 10y ago> Why would anybody need your stuff? [...] Even if you carry an used laptop it's not a grand desirable item. That used laptop might be worth a year of disposable income in some parts of the world. And temptations are had to resist when others understand that you can replace it after a single week of working. > You can use plastic to avoid ever having large sums of cash on you. No, in most parts of the world you cannot rely on plastic. Heck, even in Uruguay ("the Switzerland of South America") I had to take a bus for 1 hour to get to the next ATM; nobody in my beach side town would accept credit cards. The trick in such parts of the world is to distribute your money evenly into various pockets and bags and to have one dedicated pocket where you keep what you need for the day in small denominations so you don't have to flash an average, monthly, local salary when trying to pay for a roadside snack.
- guard-of-terra 10y agoI've never heard of stealing and reselling laptops in Russia, perhaps because used laptop market is very saturated. People have more than they can possibly sell. This might change in a few years of harsh economic downturn but there's no signs yet. Ten years ago cellphone stealing was a thing, then market saturated and it became thing of past. I've been to Uruguay and we had no problem using ATMs at Tres Cruces. Of course you need to carry some cash, but $100 equivalent is more than enough. Argentina, totally different story as you might imagine.
- ondeodiff 10y agoThis is cool. I want to take the orient express from eastern europe into China. One of my bucket list items.
- iso-8859-1 10y agoHow are you going to steal something as large as a train? And how will you bring it all the way to China without getting seen? Dispatchers along the route would have to help you.
- yincrash 10y agoThis guy also took the $23,000 Suites Class on Singapore Airlines from Singapore to NYC. http://dereklow.co/what-its-like-to-fly-the-23000-singapore-airlines-suites-class/ http://dereklow.co/what-its-like-to-fly-the-23000-singapore-... edit: i learned that most of this is plagiarized. it's baffling that he would take such a trip and yet still plagiarize a bunch of the content.
- rory096 10y agoNo he didn't. Derek Low is a notorious plagiarist; these stories were discredited back when they first appeared on HN and Reddit last year. http://andystravelblog.boardingarea.com/2014/10/02/singapore-suites-plagiarism-reddit-thank-you/ http://andystravelblog.boardingarea.com/2014/10/02/singapore...
- yincrash 10y agoOh wow, thanks. Is that not him in the photos? Or is he only just plagiarizing the text?
- rory096 10y agoLooking into it further (it's been a while, never expected to see him back on the front page), it seems he did take the trip but plagiarized most of the images (except the ones of him and his boarding pass) and much of the text/captions.
- discardorama 10y agoI .... don't know what to say. It's not as if the text he plagiarized was top-class writing! It's just observations and feelings; it would have been far easier to just write down what he was thinking! What is wrong with these people.
- oneloop 10y agoHe's a plagiarist. Please don't link to him.
- soneca 10y agoAny account for travelling the transsiberian on first class? How much it cost? I'd love to live this, but only the good parts (meet other people, from other places, diverse landscapes) and skip the bad ones (bad sleep, scarce food, etc)
- guard-of-terra 10y agoJun 22, Vladivostok - Moscow costs 60k roubles or around $900 first class (СВ), just looked. Second class (Купе) on less-posh train costs 17k roubles or around $300. I expected it to cost more frankly, given how second class Moscow-SpB sets you back $50 for just one night. But obviously you would want to change trains / get off at some places in between, which needs more complex calculations.
- grecy 10y agoA friend recently took this - Here's an email he sent me with the details (sorry for the formatting) All in, it was just under £10k Trains London to St Petersburg London to Brussels - £100 Eurostar Brussels to Cologne - 58 Euro - Bahn.de (about £45) Koln to Prague - 138 Euro - Bahn.de (about £109) Prague to Krakow (three trains) - 488PLN - Polrail.com (about £92) Krakow to Warsaw - 140PLN - Polrail.com (about £26) Warsaw to Minsk - 698PLN - Polrail.com (about £132) Minsk to St Petersburg - £284.72 - realrussia.com Accommodation Krakow - £68.22 lastminute.com Accommodation Warsaw - £38.76 lastminute.com Other nights from London to St Petersburg were on trains Tour - £5995 -all trains from St Petersburg to Hong Kong -all accommodation from St Petersburg to Xi'an -more than half the meals (apart from when on the train) -transfers to and from all stations -all guides and tours -all visas Accommodation Hong Kong - £304.96 - Not sure where booked Spending money - £1640 Flight HK to Melbourne - $HK9076 (about £746) Travel Insurance - $AUD324 (about £172) Total: £9753 Polrail.com and realrussia.com are agencies and so added about 25-30% on top of the ticket prices, but the Polish and Russian rail websites aren't in English so didn't have much choice there. The Polish accommodation was pretty swanky and right next to the stations, there were much cheaper options, but splashed out a bit. Travel insurance was required for our visas; we had trouble finding anyone to insure us because we weren't finishing where we departed from. Spending money was under what we budgeted. The tour was obviously the big expense, doing it ourselves would have been a lot harder, but would have saved a lot of money, but then we'd have to have gone and lined up to get visas whereas they did that for us. Also having someone standing on the platform with a sign with our name on and then being driven to our hotel was pretty cool :)
- jonah 10y agoI'll add a link to this epic story over many of the same rails: The forbidden railway: Vienna - Pyongyang 윈 - 모스크바 - 두만강 - 평양 http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/?m=1 http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/?m=1
- prezjordan 10y agoUnfortunately Derek Low has a colorful history of plagiarism. He often steals other people's photo without credit. I had a lengthy back-n-forth with numerous authors and photographers about this very post. You'll see that a few of the photos in the beginning of the post now have "Source: _______" beneath them, this was a last ditch effort so that he could keep the post up. See the HN discussion last time a Derek Low post was submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10258972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10258972
- visakanv 10y ago"Unfortunate" is an interesting adjective to use. I think Derek Low is a despicable lowlife who deserves punitive retribution of some kind. What's "unfortunate" is that he continues to get away with this bullshit.
- oneloop 10y agoAwesome, good content, I won't feel bad when I plagiarize him.
- goodJobWalrus 10y agoWow, I just assumed all the pictures were his (w/o reading credits) since it's basically a photo essay. Off with his head!
- raddad 10y agoalso see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10258336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10258336
- osense 10y agoI wonder if it's possible to get some special ticket that lets you make the trip in separate legs at your leisure? Alternatively — I'm assuming it's possible to buy tickets at any of the stations where the train makes a stop — how large would be the financial overhead, compared to buying a ticket for the whole thing up front? It would be awesome to take stops in interesting places for as long as you want during the journey.
- jlg23 10y agoYes/no - it's complicated, I just did some research into that trip[1]. TL;DR: No, there are no hop-on-and-off tickets, yes, you can buy tickets at any of the stations but you might be out of luck because it's fully booked, leaving you stranded for a few days. [1] https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway#Tickets https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway#Ticket...
- osense 10y agoWhoa, didn't expect that much travelling information on Wikipedia, it almost reads like a travel guide. Thanks a lot for the link.
- jlg23 10y agoIt actually is a travel guide (called itinerary on wikivoyage) ;)
- osense 10y agoAh, I didn't notice at all :) Didn't even know there was such a thing as wikivoyage, definitely very cool though.
- guard-of-terra 10y agoUnfortunately, much of information looks out of date or imprecise. I'm contemplating doing edits. "Tickets to international destinations (international means Mongolia and China, but not ex-USSR countries) are a completely different story. You can buy them only at dedicated cash desks (международные кассы) at major train stations. You can't buy such tickets online, even if you see the number of free seats and other details on the website. Prices do not depend on the season. They are calculated in Swiss Francs." WUT? Maybe it was indeed so at some point of time but now it's news from Mars.
- Grue3 10y agoFunny to see this guy complain about platzkart train car. I've been doing 24h+ trips like this regularly before travelling by air became more convenient and affordable. Also the last photo of the bridge is by Prokudin-Gorskii from early 20th century. It doesn't even look like this anymore.