To buy in Russia or pre-book?

Hi guys,

A friend and I are planning to travel around Russia next October ('08). We want to travel independently and buy our tickets, including those for the Trans-Mongolian railway, at the stations. I think this will give us more flexibility. Is this wise? Or do you think it's safer to pre-book like a lot of Western tourists seem to?

I'd appreciate hearing from any body whose done this before and whether you think many of the routes will be booked out in October. We probably will buy individual legs of the trip, rather than a single Trans-Mongolian ticket, e.g. St P->Moscow, Moscow->Yekaterinburg, Yek->Irkutsk, rather than Moscow->Beijing.

Also, we speak no Russian and can't read Cyrillic (yet!).

Thanks.

Generally speaking I tell people that the only reason to pre arrange tickets in advance is if you have very limited time and MUST take certain trains to make your connections.

Except for the section from UB to Beijing, there are multiple daily options. For the section from UB to Beijing there are only a few trains per week and if your schedule is tight, it is worth considering prebooking this segment.

If you insist on traveling on certain trains and specific classes of service, then I would recommend prebooking. If you only have a limited amount of time to make this trip which takes 6.5 days if done without stops, then prebooking makes sense.

Please read the information in the links below.

Ruth

Thanks Ruth. I think that, seeing as my schedule is flexible, I'll probably wing it.

Better bone up on the Cyrillic, though.

Yes, I would advise you learn the alphabet at least. East of Moscow I met few people with more than rudimentary english. All the signs, train times etc are in Cyrillic. Remember also that train times are in Moscow time.