So, I haven’t done much travelling in my life because been poor, but am now in a position to maybe plan a trip for myself and my partner. To China is where we would love to go.
I love train travel and dislike flying, did not enjoy the one trip over the Atlantic I have been on, so I was thinking about taking the trans-Siberia train to Peking, but it looks like I can’t actually get to it now from Finland. I also don’t really want to fly for climate reasons. There used to be a train straight to Moscow from Helsinki, but the warmongering started and now there is nothing. Also I keep getting 404s when searching for flights to Russia, the flight to Moscow to get to the train wouldn’t be so bad.
Is it really not possible to go do this train trip from Europe atm? Anybody know? Been searching the internet and there is very little info on this or other train access to China from Europe. I found freight trains.
I am one of those who is both adventurous and seeks planned things at the same time, so would have to have a good premade plan and bookings for the trip. I was thinking we could do the highspeed rail in China to sort of travel across the country from Peking to Shanghai. Would be a month long thing at least, after I finish my masters and current work contract.
But looks like it isn’t easily doable.
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For the getting in to Russia thing I did a quick Google (so don’t take this as a full answer) and it seems like there’s no way from Europe to get in without flights which includes a detour to Dubai or similar. Seems fucking stupid
For the China leg - The high speed rail from Peking/Beijing to Shanghai is 4-6 hours, so that part is much easier to sort out. The high speed rail goes all the way inland to Chengdu at the moment, and all the way down the coast to Guangzhou, so you can really take on most of the country just by train if you have time. I am hoping to do a high speed rail trip around China myself in the coming years. The biggest issue with visiting China, outside of language barrier, is making sure you get Visa approved early, they’re quite strict with it
Another option is going in to DPRK from Beijing
The high speed rail goes all the way inland to Chengdu at the moment, and all the way down the coast to Guangzhou
Further than that. Pretty much every city is connected unless by HSR you only mean the 300kph ones. You can take the 200kph to almost everywhere, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi. Beyond that you can also take the old fashioned 绿皮 to every tiny city, it’s romantic but slow and often annoying (and hot in the summer).
travel across the country from Peking to Shanghai.
If you start in Beijing you can go to so many interesting places though. Go BJ-> Xi’an-> Chengdu -> Chongqing maybe. All of those are huge cities but much more interesting, cultural and lets you see some real china than going to Shanghai. Don’t go to Shanghai, it’s more like an international city, and anything you can see there you can also see in more interesting cities.
True. I was also thinking about this after I found some backpacking tips on the different routes. Definitely would want to see as much as we can. Ending up in Shanghai was the plan, but the route to get there is open.
Was looking at this: https://onthewayaround.com/china-itinerary/#A_4-Week_China_Itinerary. No idea if this is good advice, because it sure has brainworms in it. Also not interested in Hong Kong.
Oh the DPRK would be goals.
I’ve done the Helsinki to St. Petersburg trip several times since the war started so I could PM you with all those details if you want. The short answer is you have basically two options to get to Russia:
First option: Flight through a third country.
This basically means Helsinki-Istanbul and then Istanbul-Moscow or St. Petersburg. The best tickets are pretty expensive (over 1k eur/person), but you can find a bit cheaper if you can deal with a longer layover. A less common route is through Serbia (Belgrade), but I think the flights are less frequent and have longer layovers.
About the 404 pages, a lot of flight aggregator websites aren’t showing tickets to Russia anymore. You can search the Turkish Airlines website directly for Helsinki-St. Petersburg or Moscow. Or through Serbia it’s probably AirBaltic and then transfer to Aeroflot.
If you can read Russian or can handle page translation, aviasales.ru shows flight options. Here’s Helsinki-Moscow and here’s Helsinki-St. Petersburg.
Moscow likely has high speed rail connections to like Kazan, but probably standard rail the whole way across Siberia. I haven’t researched the cross-country train options, so I don’t know how fast it is.
Second option: Ferry to Tallinn + bus to St. Petersburg through the Narva-Ivangorod border point.
This is the cheapest and sometimes the fastest way to get to St. Petersburg. Unfortunately this border point is under reconstruction, so it’s pedestrian only (no vehicles). This means the bus stops at Narva, everyone gets out and takes their luggage, and crosses the border by foot. Lately the lines have been very long, but it varies (expect at least 2 hours, probably longer). Bring water, snacks, and a hat.
We can cross our fingers and hope the Finnish-Russian border is reopened before your trip, then you could easily take a bus from Helsinki. (Same kind of companies operate, for example LuxExpress or SovAvto.)
Getting a visa
Of course, to enter Russia you also need a Russian visa. There used to be a third party visa center operating in Helsinki (Jätkäsaari), but they have been temporarily closed since January 2024. Now you need to submit your visa application through the consulate. However, the visa center’s website has some useful information to help you apply. If you decide to go down this path, I can give you tips from when I was doing my application.
Anyway it’s a bit complicated, but if you have time to plan and this is going to be a month or longer vacation, this is how you could cross the border.
Thank you. Great advice. I am thinking I will try to wait for when/if the West allows the war to end (might not happen) and then go from Helsinki to St. Petersburg to Moscow and then the trans-Siberian via Ulan Bator. This would definitely be the trip of a lifetime.
I hope this happens, but something tells me that even if the war in Ukraine ends, the Finnish government might continue their anti Russia policies for a while. I agree it sounds like an awesome trip if you can make it!
Yeah I agree, this might just become more difficult.
I am also looking into possible exhange studies or work possibilities after I finish my degree. I know there are Chinese universities doing research together with folks from my field from my uni, would not hesitate to pack up and go.
You should be able to get into Russia by bus across the Estonian border. Not sure about how you’d get around inside Russia but at least you don’t have to fly.
