Travel plan idea blog

Where would you stop on the Trans-Siberian & Trans-Mongolian Railway?

I'm certain I'll have to buy a book or get a travel agent's help or take an organized tour (or maybe more than one of those three) but first I'll ask here for advice on the Trans-Siberian Railway, specifically the Trans-Mongolian branch. I would choose the Mongolian branch because I have never been to Mongolia.

Where would you stop, stay, and explore on a Trans-Siberian / Trans-Mongolian trip? According to Wikipedia, these are the stops (I don't think the rivers are actually stops but you could stop as close as possible if the river was something you had to see (and not just looking out the train window).

Moscow
284 Yaroslavl
289 Volga River
957 Kirov
1436 Perm
1816 Yekaterinburg
2144 Tyumen
2706 Irtysh River
2712 Omsk
3332 Ob River
3335 Novosibirsk
4098 Krasnoyarsk
4101 Yenisei River
4516 Taishet
4520 Baikal Amur Mainline junction
5185 Irkutsk
5642 Ulan Ude
Branch off from the Trans-Siberian line (5,655 km from Moscow)
Naushki (5,895 km, MT+5), Russian border town
Russian-Mongolian border (5,900 km, MT+5)
Sükhbaatar (5,921 km, MT+5), Mongolian border town
Ulan Bator (6,304 km, MT+5), the Mongolian capital
Zamyn-Üüd (7,013 km, MT+5), Mongolian border town
Erenhot (842 km from Beijing, MT+5), Chinese border town
Datong (371 km, MT+5)
Beijing (MT+5)

Now the first thing is that I'll be doing this during my summer vacation so I'll have time. 20-30 days seems about right but it could be more or less.

As long as I'm in Russia I know I want to see St. Petersburg and Moscow. Irkutsk and Lake Baikal are also supposed to be must-see spots.

Ulan Ude is a Mongolian border town that some tours visit and Ulaanbaatar is Mongolia's capitol. I don't actually know hwy the tours would choose Ulan Ude and not visit other border towns.

I'm not desperate to visit China but the train does go to Beijing. I've never been there and the flight from there to Seoul would be nice and cheap.

Posted by James Trotta at May 22, 2009 3:19 PM