Product Description

Part of the Lonely Planet Country Guide Series. Best-selling and inspirationalguide to the Trans-Siberian Railway, covering Russia, Mongolia and China.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #171911 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Customer Reviews

Useless
I bought this book in the hope that it would be useful for a trip on the Trans-Siberian from Beijing to Moscow, but unfortunately it turned out to be a waste of money and a dead weight in my bag. For a book dedicated to the train journey, it lacks even a timetable for the main journeys (there aren't that many), or simple information on where to buy tickets on the go. There is NO information specifically put together to help someone arriving in a town plan the next leg of their journey, aside from the usual "Getting there and away" sections. There is also very little information to help anyone going from East to West. The main entries for stops on the route are nothing more than cut and paste sections from the China, Mongolia and Russia Lonely Planets, and obviously have't been checked for accuracy or changes for some time. In fact, prices for various sights and facilities in Beijing were more accurate in a 2005 Beijing Lonely Planet, than in this 2006 guide, indicating the Beijing section was just copied from an even older book. Entertainingly, the name of the Mongolian currency wasn't even correct!
The maps for China and Mongolia were awful and innacurate; restaurants and hotels were often marked in the wrong places, and the Mongolian map did not seem to be to scale. Several hostels in the Moscow section have long since closed down, and of all of the budget section accomodation listings, only one even makes it onto the maps! For an edition that was only printed last year, the wildly innacurate details and listings were a big disappointment.
If you intend to prebook everything with a travel agency before you leave, then this book will do for getting you around the sights in each town you stop off at on the way, but if you want to make this trip on your own, then this book will be useless. A book that lists websites "for more details" about the things you would really expect to find in a travel book, and often need to know, is no good on a four day train ride without internet.

Lack-lustre offering from Lonely Planet
I bought this book before embarking on a recent trip on the Trans-Siberian railway.

The town guides are pretty flimsy, and seem to stick to the upper end of the budget in most cases.

Although useful as a guide for somebody with EXTREMELY conservative tastes, this guide did not really venture into recommending places that gave a real flavour of the places you were visiting. For example - why not recommend a Mongolian restaurant in the Eating section for Ulaan Baataar, instead of sticking to European eateries and bars.

The Bryn Thomas Guide has a much better mile by mile description of the journey, for using when looking out of the train windows.

There is a better alternative
This lonely planet guide is really not worth taking with you on the Trans-Siberian. The Trans-Siberian Handbook by Bryn Thomas, published by Trailblazer, is far superior, more up to date and detailed than the lonely planet guide. In places, the Lonely Planet guide was simply wholly misleading.

Most of my fellow travellers had the LP guide and all agreed the Bryn Thomas guide was far more useful (and less expensive).