But it’s not really about being anti-flying, it’s more about being pro the alternatives. Slow travel is not necessarily for those whose idea of a vacation is to slump on a beach. It can be hard, stressful and you need to be prepared for the unexpected. That said, the challenges, vibrancy and full technicolour experience of slow travel are what is so often lost in the blur of travelling fast.
We’ve lived through every inch of our journey across Eurasia, gaining a real sense of place and our progress throughout, not merely gazing down through the clouds at the landscape below from 50,000ft. We’re proud to be labelled “slow” and perhaps, the trend for travelling ever further and faster is not entirely against us. With the recent retirement of Concorde, for the first time in history, commercial air travel just got slower.
Russia: Jet lag on a train
The grandaddy of slow travel is undoubtedly the Trans-Siberian Express. The full mission takes more than a week, passes through seven time zones and traverses 9,000km of spectacular Russian landscape. It’s probably the only train journey in the world on which you can actually get jet lag. We didn’t quite manage the whole trip, only doing four nights on the train between Moscow and Irkutsk in Siberia, but there is definitely something rather wonderful about a prolonged train journey of this duration.
For starters, you have time to build up a rapport with your fellow passengers. The Trans-Siberian is all about sharing food, experiences and, of course, alcohol. We befriended the neighbours from the next compartment, two retired Finnish gentlemen—Seppi and Peppi—who spent most of the time in a benign cognac haze. We ventured out onto the platforms at station stops across Russia to buy tasty goodies and (very) cold beer from local babushkas (old ladies). Pirozhki (a sort of fried dumpling), smoked fish and a huge variety of potato-based products complemented the vodka we’d brought with us. The long winter evenings just flew by.
As the train rolls through birch forest, the pines of Siberian taiga, across vast rivers and between mountains, you get to delight in the exchange of travel stories, spirits and snacks with your comrades. After four days of travel you also need a shower. You can either pay extra for this privilege—or do as we did and fashion a reasonably effective device from an empty plastic bottle and douse yourself in the toilet.
You can also while away the time on a journey of this length by practising your Russian—a sure-fire way to entertain the locals—exploring the train, reviewing the different classes of carriage and sampling the delights of the buffet car. Of course, there are faster ways to cover the distance, but I can guarantee none is so visually appealing, socially and culturally revealing or downright pickled (by vodka).