Welcome on board the Trans-Siberian railway….no you read that correctly, I'm not on a Trans-Mongolian train for this part of the journey. As always with the epic three day train ride I will focus on the high/low lights in no particular order to illustrate the wave of crossing five different time zones on a train.

I am in a carriage by myself…when I say by myself I mean with a load of stinky Russians. I spend the first night attempting to sleep in one of the cabins with my group only to be tossed out early in the morning by a rather obnoxious Russian man who refuses to switch into the cabin I was assigned. Twat. The three people in the group sharing the cabin with him move themselves to the dining car while he watches TV at full volume, in Russian.

The girls in the end cabin have a rather good looking Russian lad in their cabin who is traveling the entire way to Vladivostok to see his girlfriend. Even though he is not single I am jealous as he is very easy on the eye and seems like a nice guy…they also have some stability which I do not.

I reluctantly move my stuff into the right cabin, after mister stickler for the rules has moved in on my passengers and am welcomed by two Russian guys traveling to Novosibirisk. They speak pretty good English, one is in his late thirties the other in his early twenties and they are both professional fighters… I know where you think this is going…but no such luck. They did Karate and I told them I had a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and the younger, blonde amazing looking one of the two looks down from his top bunk, smiles at me and says, I think you, are dangerous. I melt just a little bit.

Night two is drinking night, everyone bar me had a bit too much vodka. I watch in amusement having gone off vodka last year….after having it forced on me by another professional fighter and his mate.

Upon arrival at the station I realise that I am actually on a Trans-Siberian as opposed to a Trans-Mongolian. I re-check the tickets and we are definitely on train no. 2 instead of train no. 3. The Trans-Mongolian is sitting next to the Trans-Siberian and departs ten minutes later. Not sure how that happened, but pretty cool for me as I have not been on this train before. The carriages are White, Blue and Red like the Russian flag and are slightly more comfortable that the other train so all in all happy with that.

On day two I make a major mistake of trying to read the timetable first thing in the morning and tell the group that we are getting off a full day earlier than we need to. I realise my mistake an hour later and go around and correct myself, damage is already done and everyone is giving me crap.

My cabin mates change frequently and I am constantly worried about leaving in case they steal my stuff. I notice that even though they keep changing the BO smell never goes away. The last woman who gets on a night before I get off is especially rank. I mean I've been on this train for three and a half days, I'm allowed to stink. She's just got on and has no excuse. I get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night only to come back in to be hit in the face by the heat of other people and BO, I get no more sleep that night.

The people in my cabin who have the bottom bunk never seem to get out of bed all day and I am thus confined to the top bunk. I wished Colin from my last trip was here with me, we had the same problem with a Mongolian pair last year who would not give up the table for the entire forty hour trip and we began to devise subtle and not so subtle ways of trying to get them to move. I wonder what we would have come up with for this lot?