Nate and Kara Buchanan ride third class on the Trans-Siberian for six and a half hours from Irkutsk toward Ulan Udet, passing Lake Baikal. Third class packs roughly 50 beds per car in six-bed compartments with brown blankets and minimal outlets, a stark contrast to their earlier first-class cabin.
Day six
Irkuts (Irkutsk in spoken transcript)
Train 002
About six and a half hours
Ulan Udet (spoken as 'Ulan Udet' / variant spellings in transcript)
Today is day six on our Trans Siberian Railway journey. This morning we are in the town of Irkuts and we just grabbed a taxi from our hostel.
And we've just arrived at the train station.
It's about 7am we're way too early. We got up just in time to chug our coffee and get here. We're saving breakfast for the train. We're only riding six and a half.
Hours today to the town of Ulan Udet, I think is how you say it. I'm excited to experience a new class of train travel today. So we rode first from Moscow to Irkutsk, and today we are riding third class. But since it's only six and a half hours, it's still hot water. But we are on one of the nicer trains. So we're riding train 002 today. I don't know. I'm just excited to check out a new train. Yeah, not sure how much we'll be able to vlog because we are going to be stuck in a car with, like, a lot of other people.
We'll do our.
Okay, we're looking for 25 and 26.
I'm glad I didn't book third class for 74 hours.
Okay. So I've attempted to count how many beds are in this car and I think there's 54. I could be off by a couple, but there are around 50 beds in one car. And you can tell as soon as you walk in it smells like 50 people have been living in one confined space altogether for a long period of time. I mean, it's not like a big deal. We're only on this train for 6 and 12 hours. But I definitely wouldn't want to ride the entire Trans Siberian in third class. It would just go from like something I had to do to something that was really enjoyable. Like our first class ride was a few days ago. Just first impressions, though. I mean, I'm not like trying to be a spoil complainer. Just to put it in a little perspective, this dirty tow, this was out me, not mine. The blankets that are on my bed up there, somebody slept in them before I did.
Again, only six and a half hours.
Also, this is not oatmeal. I don't know what it is. It's like brown hot bran flakes.
It'll be an adventurous day.
On a more positive note, this is supposed to be one of the prettiest parts of the Trans Siberian because we're near Lake Baikal and we might see it and all the trees are changing colors. So we're going to be looking out the window a lot.
Sam.
So that was Lake Baikal, which is the lake that we were hiking by yesterday. And the whole time we were on the trail, we could like hear the Trans Siberian going up on the hill. And that was the exact part that we were hiking about. We could see the same two cranes, like right beside where we ended the hike. Oh, and we entered the tunnel. The train ride so far has been absolutely beautiful. Like this has by far been the best scenery that we've had. It's sunny outside, the sky is blue. It's fall. All the leaves are changing colors. Really enjoying our third class train ride. Got off to a little rocky start, but I'm used to the smell now. It's really not that bad. Like once you get in your own cabin, it's really just like walking down the corridor and like seeing all the kind of gross things that people do and sharing plugs.
Thankfully we charged all of our stuff last night.
Just ordered some coffee from our super nice attendant. Our last ladies were kind of scary. They weren't meant to, but just not very inviting. But this lady, like smiles and laughs at me when I try to speak Russian and she's just been the best. Across from our real seats are these seats by the window. And it was still laid out like a bed. And she saw Nate coming over here to film a lot and she came and made it into a table for us and said we could sit over here. We shouldn't say that, but I think that's what she meant.
So it's nice to have a friendly person on the train.
Time for lunch. Back to the instant meals. Today we're having big pot of mashed potatoes.
Actually looks pretty good.
This one comes in a bag.
The toppings, cool stuff.
Gotta get a little nap earlier, so I missed a little bit of it. But. But we are still on the lake. We've driven beside the lake this entire time and the views have been incredible. Honestly, like our first three days, I was a little underwhelmed with what we were seeing out of the train. It was just like really little villages, lots of trees and green hills and the sky was gray. But today has been really, really nice.
Okay, so a few days ago when we were in first class, we gave you like a full tour of our little cabin that we had. So we thought we would try to do something similar here in third class. But I won't call this a tour. I'll call this more of an explanation because I'm going to stay here because we're in a very crowded third glass cabin.
Okay. So when you get on the train, you get a few things. You get this brown blanket that definitely has not been washed from the person before. You.
Get a pillow which does not come with a pillowcase, but.
You get this little bag of stuff and you get a full size sheet, another full size sheet for your mattress pad, and a pillowcase to cover your pillow. So like, at least you know that stuff.
In the compartment that was the size of our first class compartment where we had two beds. In third class, they fit six beds. So yeah, one here, one here, over there, over there. And then where Kara is sitting.
Two more bed above. And then this is the bed. This like flips over, makes this one little bed.
And then.
You can't.
In order to make your bed more comfortable, you get one of these massive mattress pads which like the brown blanket definitely has not been cleaned after the last person used them. And then as far as storage space goes underneath my bench here, there's room for probably two carry on size suitcases. And then up here above the second bed, you also have room for two carry on size suitcases if you can get them up.
I think that's pretty much it. The plug situation is not near as good as it was in the last one. There is a plug right behind Cara, but I think we got lucky with that. I saw one other plug back by the bathroom and that might be it. Okay, I think that about wraps it up. I thought it might be helpful to anybody who was trying to decide which class to book on the train again for 6 and 12 hours. This is perfectly fine and way, way cheaper than first class. But if you're like me just riding the Trans Siberian for six days for fun, might want to think about upgrading to at least second class.
Six and a half hours flew by and now we're in Uranude.
Right here.
Great. Our hotel is only two minutes away.
So we are walking because it is so pretty outside.
I can't open it. I just want to eat. Please help me, help me.
