With over 90,000 copies now sold, this is the most popular Trans-Siberian guidebook. A trip across Siberia on the longest continuous railway track in the world is undoubtedly the journey of a lifetime. It's also a convenient way to reach China, Mongolia, or Japan. Tickets are not expensive or difficult to arrange. Readers can now travel almost anywhere they want in Siberia: we tell them how to organize a trip, where to get tickets, and where to go.
>Kilometer-by-kilometer route guide -- covering the entire routes of the Trans-Siberian, Trans-Manchurian, and Trans-Mongolian railways with thirty-eight strip maps in English, Russian, and Chinese: readers can see where they are as they travel
>Siberia and the railway -- the detailed history of Siberia, the construction of the railway and the running of the Trans-Siberian today are of great interest not only to visitors but also to armchair travelers
>City guides with maps -- the best sights, places to stay, and restaurants for all budgets: Moscow, St Petersburg, Ulan Bator, Beijing, and twenty-three towns in Siberia
>Nutshell information on Minsk, Berlin, Baltic Republics, Helsinki, Hong Kong, and Tokyo
>Rail fares and timetables
>Seventh edition includes seventy maps
>Plus Russian and Chinese phrases
Bryn Thomas was born in Zimbabwe where he grew up on a farm. Since graduating from Durham University with a degree in anthropology, travel on five continents has included a Saharan journey in a home-built kit-car, a solo 1600-mile cycle ride through the Andes, ten Himalayan treks and 30,000 miles of rail travel. Publications include Lonely Planet's guides to India (three editions), Goa (two editions) and Britain (three editions: 1993-2000), and Trailblazer's Trans-Siberian Handbook (all six editions) and Trekking in the Annapurna Region (all four editions). In 1992 he set up Trailblazer, to produce the series of route guides for adventurous travelers that has now grown to 35 titles.
This seventh edition was researched and updated by James Pitkin. Educated at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio where he graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in English, he spent four years working as an editor and features writer for The Prague Post in the Czech Republic. He updated the Insight Guide to Prague and has had travel stories and political features published in New York Press, Prague's Think magazine, Berlin's City magazine and the journal NGO News Eastern Europe. He lives in Washington State where he is a news reporter for The Wenatchee World.