
One Month on the World’s Longest Train Ride for $1,000 - wglb
https://medium.com/gone/one-month-on-the-worlds-longest-train-ride-for-1-000-a681fdaf0b6b#.1f3b2qpet
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prezjordan
Unfortunately 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)

~~~
goodJobWalrus
Wow, I just assumed all the pictures were his (w/o reading credits) since it's
basically a photo essay. Off with his head!

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yincrash
This 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-...](http://dereklow.co/what-its-like-to-fly-
the-23000-singapore-airlines-suites-class/)

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
No 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...](http://andystravelblog.boardingarea.com/2014/10/02/singapore-
suites-plagiarism-reddit-thank-you/)

~~~
yincrash
Oh wow, thanks. Is that not him in the photos? Or is he only just plagiarizing
the text?

~~~
rory096
Looking 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
I .... 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.

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grecy
A 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 :)

~~~
larozin
Russian railways website is available in english: [http://pass.rzd.ru/main-
pass/public/en](http://pass.rzd.ru/main-pass/public/en)

You can check prices and book tickets online without fees.

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JorgeGT
Minor 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
But 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.

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atomical
Is there internet available on any of the trains? Anyone worked remote from a
train like this before?

~~~
dominotw
>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.

~~~
marklyon
Correction: Some claim to have Wifi. It rarely works.

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xufi
I 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
Me too. But I am too scared to go at it alone, I am worried about my stuff
getting stolen ect.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Why 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
> 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
I'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.

~~~
genofon
Can you elaborate in the Argentinian part? I traveled a bit in some rough part
and although I was quite worried I never had problem

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Grue3
Funny 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.

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soneca
Any 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
Jun 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.

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osense
I 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
Yes/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#Ticket...](https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Trans-
Siberian_Railway#Tickets)

~~~
osense
Whoa, didn't expect that much travelling information on Wikipedia, it almost
reads like a travel guide. Thanks a lot for the link.

~~~
jlg23
It actually _is_ a travel guide (called itinerary on wikivoyage) ;)

~~~
guard-of-terra
Unfortunately, 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.

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jonah
I'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)

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ondeodiff
This is cool. I want to take the orient express from eastern europe into
China. One of my bucket list items.

~~~
iso-8859-1
How 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.

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mcphage
Snowpiercer 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?

~~~
esthermun
Haha, right on. We need a shot of Chris Evans in one of the coaches to sell
me.

