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Trans-Siberian Railway (Lonely Planet Travel Guides) | 
 enlarge | Author: Simon Richmond
Publisher: Lonely Planet
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $12.22
You Save: $7.77 (39%)
New (33) Used (5) from $12.22
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 41969
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.7
ISBN: 174059536X
Dewey Decimal Number: 914
EAN: 9781740595360
ASIN: 174059536X
Publication Date: April 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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Product Description
The only guidebook you'll need on this epic train journey. Ride the rails through Russia in a week, or take a month to explore Siberian outback towns, learn throat singing in the wild Tuva Republic or meet Mongolian nomads. This inspirational guide will help you to make the most of every moment during this trip of a lifetime.
Talk Like A Local - Russian, Mandarin and Mongolian language guides including helpful phrases and extended food glossaries.
Never Get Lost - with 65 maps of major cities and regions, train routes and coverage of the BAM for the truly adventurous.
Travel Smart - new trip-planning and itineraries chapters to help you devise your route.
Keep Good Company - our expert authors have been everywhere and done it all to help make your journey more rewarding and hassle-free.
Be In The Know - in-depth history, culture, environment and cuisine chapters will keep you informed (and entertained) en route.
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| Customer Reviews:
 When was this LP updated? September 15, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I was overall disappointed.
The guide was useful to plan the trip, but much less once on the spot. Quite a bit of information is erronous or outdated (e.g. restaurants/hotels do not exist or are priced over double of what stated, museums have been closed or moved), which especially in Moscow and Yekaterinenburg led to cross-city walks and travels at the end of which we found nothing. This is especially for what concerns the Moscow to Yekaterinenburg part; pages on St. Petersburg, China, Mongolia and the Irkutsk area were much more useful.
Train and bus info: there is quite a lot of information if you are heading in the St. Petersburg to Beijing direction, but no special indications for if you are taking the opposite direction.
Last point: guide suggestions are generally targeted to a welthier-than-backpacker budget (though Galina in Moscow was great!).
 very useful guide September 11, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
As the title says, I found the book a very useful guide. Since I currently live in China, I was mostly just using the portions for Mongolia, and Russia.
My only complaint is the switching around of currency used. Sometime in the Russian portion prices would be listed in US dollars, other times Rubles, and sometimes in Euros. It would have been much better to pick one currency and stick with it. A minor complaint.
Where is the train information we paid for? August 1, 2007
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
The guidebook is just fine for sightseeing, hotels, restaurants, but for train information, there is almost nothing. Really, almost nothing at all. To take the Trans Siberian, it is very difficult to make stopovers, and get reservations for future trains. And you can't simply board the train in a city or town other than Moscow or Vladavostok, or Beijing. None of this is addressed in the book. So, it's great to have tons of pages of sightseeing information, but for places almost no one will get to, due to the difficulty of reserving future trains.
There is almost virtually no information on how to book the train, or recommendations on how to book it, or where to book it, or the wide range in prices. Hardly anything about the different classes. Hardly anything about the cabins, onboard food, how to buy food at the stations, is there an electrical outlet, train etiquette, etc.
I was very disappoined in the lack of practical information needed. The Trans Siberian is NOT as easy to book as a train from say London to Paris, and the book doesn't address that.
 Good, but also get the Handbook June 7, 2007
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
What you'd expect from Lonely Planet--useful but not comprehensive. I would recommend getting both this and the Trans-Siberian Handbook. It can be a little difficult to find (especially if you don't want to wait 6 weeks).
A generally good guide with what to see and historical context, but why is LP now targetting only the wealthy? May 22, 2007
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
I used the first edition of Lonely Planet's TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY guide on a Trans-Manchurian journey three years ago, and picked up the second edition (April 2006) for a Trans-Mongolian journey I'm embarking on tomorrow. The book is a very useful resource for this great train journey, especially for those planning to disembark in the many cities and towns en route.
The guide covers all three traditional Trans-Siberian lines and the cities along them: Moscow-Vladivostok, Moscow-Ulan Bator-Beijing, and Moscow-Harbin-Beijing. It also covers the Baikal-Amur Mainline, a northern Siberian route that is still little-used by Western travelers (or even by Russians, for that matter). The reference material is substantial, with plenty of information on the food and drink of the countries one can visit, and a good history of the railway from its construction through all of the political turmoils since. The listings of large cities such as Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Ulan Bator, and Beijing are abridged extracts from the RUSSIA, MONGOLIA, and CHINA guides, respectively, with only a couple of days worth of sightseeing, and one main walking tour selected.
What don't I like about the book? Well, as with every Lonely Planet title since they changed their philosophy a few years ago, I'm unhappy with the lack of budget advice and the inclusion of hotels and restaurants priced for a crowd with enough money that they'd probably look to other publishers anyway. For pete's sake, the "Author's Choice" for Moscow lodging, the Golden Apple Hotel, is nearly three hundred euro a night! Despite what you may have heard, Russia is indeed a budget destination, especially if you choose to stay for free with hosts from hospitality associations and self-cater or eat at student canteens. It's a pity that Lonely Planet no longer gives meaningful advice on lodging and food to any but the wealthiest of travelers.
A further problem is that the book was kept a little too slim for a Lonely Planet guide. Obviously minor cities on the route like Yoshkar-Ola have been left out, that's understandable. But it's odd that the authors are so passionate about the variant Moscow to Yekaterinaburg through Kazan, and yet give Kazan awfully meagre coverage. Twice interesting hikes are mentioned (one in Ulan Bator and another along the Great Wall), but without enough details to comfortably set off, or even for a local to know what it's about and give you pointers. And some things present in the first edition are no longer here, such as the little box explaining how there are no passenger crossings from Siberia to Alaska.
The other big Trans-Siberian guide is Bryn Thomas' Trans-Siberian Handbook (Trailblazer Publications, 7th ed. 2006), which has been around for a long time and sees a new edition fairly frequently. Ideal for those in love in train travel, not just those looking to get from point A to point B, Thomas' guide contains things to look out for according to the kilometer markings along the railway. If your backpack isn't already too heavy, I say get that book as well.
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