Lonely Planet Trans-Siberian Railway: A Classic Overland Route (Lonely Planet Trans-Siberian...

Lonely Planet Trans-Siberian Railway: A Classic Overland Route (Lonely Planet Trans-Siberian Railway) | Simon Richmond, Mara Vorhees | Good, but fast outdated!

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Lonely Planet Tran...

	Lonely Planet Trans-Siberian Railway: A Classic Overland Route (Lonely Planet Trans-Siberian Railway) Simon Richmond, Mara Vorhees Lonely Planet Publications, 2002 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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Including maps covering routes as well as major cities, this guide provides all the details for enjoying an epic journey on this class rail route. It also has special sections to while away the long hours of travelling with features on the history and wildlife of the railway, and local literature.

Excellent guide book

This LP was all i needed for the russian leg of my trans-siberian trip, It offers more than enough to keep you busy for the standard one month tourist visa. (The people above must have never gotten off the train between Moscow and Irkutsk!) If you intend to branch out in mongolia or china then you will obiously need to supplement this guide. It is a short compact guide focused specificly on the train routes, and it covers them remarkably well.

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Good, but fast outdated!

We've used the book in july/august 2002 for a trip from Beijing to Helsinki. Much information in the book, but a lot of it is copy-past'ed from the country guides.
Another reviewer remarked on the rapidly changing circumstances in the countries... no guide can outrun those.
We visited Beijing, Irkutsk, Listvanka, Jekaterinaburg, Moscow and Saint-Peterburg. Most of the time we found accomodation from the book. At that time, the Trans-siberian handbook (Thomas Bryn - ISBN 1873756704) was older.

We had both books: LP fresh of the press and Thomas Bryn's book - THE guide to have.
Thomas' had a new edition in february 2004. Best to take the most recent editions of guidebooks. The handbook is more interesting to read, so that's a must. You'll have plenty of time to read!

The trip is recommended to anyone: we found a british couple with 2 kids doing it! Don't be too easily discouraged, try to take the east-west trip (to avoid wagons full of tourists!).

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Lot of information, but not correct

I was impressed about amount of information, but there are so many errors, especially in russian words and transcription, I can count up to 5 errors on page. Seems that publisher was in a hurry and didn't correct original text or author(corrector?) was not competent in this stuff.

A Nearly Impossible Task

Given the pace that Russia, Mongolia, and China are changing and developing, it is an incredibly daunting task to write a travel guie attempting to cover all three countries in any level of detail. Inevitably hostels shut down, restaurants move, store hours change, and even train schedules fluxuate.

This book is a decent rough guide and the only one of its kind. For that reason I rated it a three. It was sufficient for my trip on the railway, but I wouldn't call it a "Survival guide" as such. I'm usually a huge supporter of The Lonely Planet, but in this particular instance they have not done a supurb job.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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