Hi everyone. I'm planning to take a cross-eurasian railway travel in June, which seems quite challenging.

I've checked the man in seat 61 and made an initial itinerary. If you have any comments or previous experiences, your reply would be REALLY welcomed.

12 June 21:34 Lisbon → Hendaye, France

13 June 11:33 Hendaye booking seems that it would be opened two months before the date
13:12 Hendaye → Paris
18:08 Paris Gare Montparnasse, spend one night in Paris booking also 2 months

14 June 13:10 Paris Est → Berlin
21:51 Berlin HBF, one night in Berlin booking

15 June 12:37 Berlin HBF → Warsaw
19:00 Warsaw Centralna booking 2 months
20:20 Warsaw Centralna → Bialystok
22:35 Bialystok, one night in Bialystok booking 2 months

16 June 07:29 Bialystok → Kaunas
13:17 Kaunas booking 2 months
14:49 Kaunas → Vilnius
15:48 Vilnius, one night in Vilnius booking 2 months

17 June 05:42 Vilnius → Daugavpils
08:29 Daugavpils booking 2 months
13:00 Daugavpils → Riga
16:35 Riga booking 2 months
18:10 Riga → Valga
20:53 Valga, one night in Valga booking 2 months

18 June 07:20 Valga → Tartu
08:32 Tartu
08:42 Tartu → Tallinn
10:39 Tallinn booking

Then Tallinn → Russia → Trans-Siberian train

Hello!
I will be in Siberia in March. Travelling individually I'd like to visit Lake Baikal for maybe one week.
I will be coming from Krasnoyarsk on a night train and will eventually head for Chabarovsk.
So I'm wondering what's the best option to experience the lake.

• To get the best out of it - does it make sense to stay a couple of days in Irkutsk and then move to Olchon, stay there and finally go to Ulan-Ude?

• How much time would you recommend me to stay in each place? I know, distances are huge, but that's part of the experience...

• Can anyone recommend accommodation there? I don't need fancy hotels, just a nice place with an ensuite room. English speaking staff would help...

Thank you very much for any help!!

I am an American living in Papua New Guinea, and I want to take my family of six on a trip from Beijing to Moscow on the Trans Siberian Railway, up through Finland and Iceland, back to the American West coast. What is the best way to figure out all the visa stuff and tickets from the bush in Papua New Guinea? Has anyone done this before? We will not leave for another year sometime in June.
Any help would be great. As an adventurous family originally from the Alaskan Bush, this is the route we all decided would be best.

There isn't much online literature talking about Nizhny Novgorod specifically as a tourist destination, at least with Rough Guides, Frommers, Fodors, Wikitravel, etc. The only travel company that gives a decent overview of the city is Lonely Planet...and even that isn't so substantial.

To keep this basic, do you think Nizhny Novgorod is a place to go out of your way to see or only a place worth visiting if you are already traveling along the Siberian highway (like a stopover destination rather than a 'must-see' city in its own right)? Another way to pose the question is...is there much to Nizhny Novgorod other than its Kremlin/citadel or is that the only/predominant reason why to visit?

A friend and I are planning a trip through parts of Siberia for this coming August. We will have two weeks, including travel to/from Siberia (based in Dubai and London). The dream itinerary would probably be to work our way from Novosibirsk through Altai, Tuva, and the Sayan Mountains (maybe including Ergaki) to Baikal. I do not think we have time to get between AND properly enjoy these places, but we are struggling to decide what to drop based on the information we currently have.

Some general questions:
1. What is the most efficient way to link these destinations? I am aware of the sort-of route from Kosh-Agach into Tuva; of the usual bus/train routes between Biysk, Abakan, Kyzyl, and Krasnoyarsk; and of the TSR and BAM routes to the Baikal area. Are there other public/shared transit links that I am missing?
2. Alternatively, what route would allow us to see the most 'on the way'? For instance, it seems like the road from Abakan to Kyzyl goes through mountains-- are there places in that vicinity that we could visit instead of Ergaki?
3. Which areas would you keep, which ones would you skip, and why?

More specific questions:
1. If we only had enough time to approach Lake Baikal from Irkutsk, would it be worthwhile? Especially compared to other destinations on the list?
2. As far as I can tell, we could be in Kyzyl for Naadym. Should that sway our plans? (again, especially if it means missing out on another destination?)

Some relevant details:
--> Two females in our twenties
--> Will speak a wee bit of Russian at that point but really not much
--> We don't mind passing through tourist hotspots but would rather not spend much time in them.
--> We are keen on the outdoors, but probably don't want to invest in the equipment necessary for serious trekking. so places amenable to having a 'base' (or series of bases) and striking out on dayhikes would be great.
--> Would like to avoid prepackaged tours
--> We like getting to know people while traveling if this is possible, i.e. through couchsurfing or something equivalent.
--> We are okay with roughing it and leaving some parts of the trip open for whatever strikes our fancy/is on offer. My main concern is just that we wouldn't have enough time to travel this way-- it's really important that we don't miss our return transit.
--> We'd like to maximize geographic and cultural diversity as long as that doesn't mean missing out on the really worthwhile places, if that makes sense.

Hopefully that is enough to work from. Thanks so much!