The New Year’s Day release of 《囧妈》 sparked renewed interest in a legendary train that has been running for 60 years. I still miss that trip from last summer when I traveled on this green giant.

Although the film’s plot and dialogue are stiff, it is still praiseworthy that the train trip from Beijing to Moscow and the stations along the route were recreated very realistically.

If you’re also interested in riding this legendary train and following this pilgrimage route, here is a complete guide.

Route: 7,691 km, Beijing to Moscow

On the long 7,691-kilometer rail line from Beijing to Moscow, the K3/4 international train has run nonstop since it began on 24 May 1960*. The unchanged train number for over six decades shows the status of this train as the “中华第一车” (at the time, trains 1/2 were the service between Beijing and Shaoshan in Hunan).

Photo from Qunar traveler Sarah  一直在路上

During its 60 years of operation, K3/4 has carried many different kinds of passengers and witnessed major changes in China’s history.

In the early years, it was very difficult for ordinary people to take this train to Mongolia and the Soviet Union, except officials and diplomats. Riding it was no easier than booking the “Pride of Africa” today. Back then, even the ruble stipend earned by a K3 attendant was enough to let a whole family live better than an average household by buying some Soviet milk tins.

After reform and opening, especially after the Soviet collapse, Russia’s huge demand for Chinese lightweight industrial goods created many international “traders.” They loaded large amounts of domestic goods onto K3, sold them station by station along the way, then returned fully loaded with rubles on K4. This is also why the well-known China-Russia train heist became front-page news in both countries. The same-era stories are depicted in the 1995 film of the same name and in 2018’s 《莫斯科行动》.

The film 《中俄列车大劫案》 depicts onboard reselling along the route

These days, train enthusiasts, route pilgrims, and regular tourists are gradually becoming the main passengers. From a pure transportation perspective, direct flights from Beijing to cities in Russia are faster and cheaper.

So taking six days and five nights by this leisurely train has become a kind of “luxury” experience.

The K3 train departs from Beijing station every Wednesday morning, running along the Jingbao and Jiner lines through Zhangjiakou, Datong, Jining (Ulanqab), and Zhurihe, and arrives the same day at the last city inside China, Erenhot. It then follows the Mongolian trunk line to Ulaanbaatar, and continues north across the northern grasslands.

Starting on day three, the train enters Russian territory and passes cities familiar to many older people: Ulan-Ude, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Qiuming, Omsk, Yekaterinburg, and more, finally reaching Moscow on Monday afternoon.

After a day of rest, K3 will add 1 to become K4 and run back along the same route for six days to return home to China.

Ticketing: 6,228 yuan—more expensive than airfares

K3 has two types of berths: hard sleeper cabins and premium cabins*. The hard sleeper cabin is a four-berth compartment, with upper and lower berths on both sides. In the film, Xue Zong and his mom are in a hard sleeper.

The premium cabin is a two-berth compartment, also with upper and lower berths, plus a small sofa and a small table on one side. Two premium cabins share one bathroom with shower facilities.

Xue Zong and his mom are both in hard-sleeper cabins.

In my opinion, premium cabins are especially good for couples. If you’re traveling solo without a roommate, they’re also a huge comfort.

According to the latest CITS price list*, buying a ticket from Beijing to Moscow directly costs 3,891 yuan for hard-sleeper berths and 6,228 yuan for premium berths. Group bookings (6+ people) are about 20% off, at 3,025 yuan and 4,928 yuan respectively.

I checked quickly, and even in the peak summer season, a direct round-trip flight from Beijing to Moscow is only around 4,000 yuan. So from a cost standpoint, taking K3 to Moscow today is pretty much paying for nostalgia.

If you don’t want to spend that much but are willing to deal with some complexity, there is indeed a way to get a discount by buying separate segments. Because of different pricing systems and exchange rates in each country, tickets bought separately in China, Mongolia, and Russia are much cheaper than purchasing the full journey from Beijing all at once.

A possible route:

  • Buy the domestic segment (Beijing to Erenhot) of the international train via 12306 for 140 yuan.
  • In Beijing or Erenhot, have someone purchase the Erenhot-to-Ulaanbaatar ticket. Hard sleeper: about 700+ yuan; premium: under 1,100 yuan.
  • At Ulaanbaatar station, buy a ticket to Irkutsk. Hard sleeper: 120,000 Mongolian tögrög (less than 400 yuan); premium: 180,000 tögrög (about 600 yuan).
  • Pre-book the Irkutsk-to-Moscow ticket on the Russian Rail website for 1,300 yuan*.

On paper, this could be roughly 35% cheaper than buying one direct ticket.

But segmented ticketing has one risk, one inconvenience, and one regret:

  • One risk: In recent summers, K3 has been extremely hard to book. Tickets on the Erenhot-to-Irkutsk segment can be hard to obtain, and after this year’s release of 《囧妈》, K3 seats are expected to become even scarcer.
  • One inconvenience: If you buy in segments, you have to get off at each station and rush to ticket counters with your luggage to buy the next leg, so you lose the chance to spend time wandering and soaking in station life across countries.
  • One regret: At Erenhot, the international train goes into a wheel-exchange depot. If you buy by segment, you must exit the station and will miss this rare sight.

You cannot buy tickets for K3 and other international trains directly on 12306. You need to go in person (or ask a friend) to the Gulaie ticketing center on the first floor of Beijing International Hotel to purchase them (the Beijing ticket office phone number is 010-65120507). A CITS office in Shanghai’s Chang’an Tower, 15th floor, is said to be able to sell Beijing-originating international train tickets, but when I asked last summer, I was told it could not.

If you’re planning a trip, especially during the summer travel season, it’s best to plan the dates and book at least 90 days in advance, otherwise tickets can be hard to get. For booking, you only need to provide your passport number and contact information.

A thick railway ticket booklet—very memorable.

Life on board: six days and five nights of gentle swaying

Most people see six days and five nights on a train and assume it must be painfully dull. That’s true—if you can’t appreciate the charm of train travel and only focus on reaching your destination quickly, it’s easy to feel time taking control, much like the pace of life these days.
But once you reach that point, you quickly fall in love with this constantly swaying lifestyle. At that point, the train cabin becomes a comfortable hotel room, that little window gets more exciting than any TV screen, and every time you get off the train it’s an opportunity to experience a different atmosphere. There are several key ingredients to getting into that flow.

Travel companions. The first and most important thing is who you’re traveling with. On a long train trip, having fun people to travel with—someone to chat with, eat with, take photos with, and enjoy the scenery with—is ideal. Four people is best, which is perfect for taking over a carriage to yourself with no strangers inside. That also makes the cabin feel more private and cozy, while helping with safety.

If you travel solo, you’re very dependent on luck; spending several days with someone you dislike can seriously cut into the experience. Of course, if you meet a Russian beauty like Natasha like Xu Zheng did in the movie, that’s a whole other story.

Food. People come first with food. Where the stomach is calm, the heart is calm—where the mind is calm, the body is calm. So, keeping your stomach happy is essential for train travel. K3 pulls different dining cars depending on the country it’s running through, so you can sample different kinds of food. I once had a meal in the Chinese dining car; it was simple and not particularly delicious, but having a bowl of hot chicken slices was still very comforting.

The Mongolian and Russian dining cars that were attached before had more ethnic decor, but they’ve all been replaced with a unified Nordic minimalist style now, which is admittedly a bit of a letdown.

In the film, even Xu Zheng’s mother brought a rice cooker and rice on the train. If you have a travel companion like that, the happiness of this trip would definitely skyrocket.

Very plentiful

But most people can’t quite pull this off, so before departure it’s especially recommended to bring plenty of snacks and fruit you’d normally leave for another time. Just like on spring outings, the person with the most snacks is always the party queen. If you also bring a few simple tools like a small electric hot cup, making easy hot meals can be a good idea too.

Entertainment. Besides sitting by the window watching the scenery from sunrise to sunset, the train is also a great place to do a lot of reading—Pushkin, Chekhov, Dostoevsky—to prepare for the upcoming trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Bring a Switch and play a few rounds of Overcooked as a nice change of pace (not every hard-sleeper berth has an outlet, so bringing an extension cable is important). You can also get off at each station, buy postcards, and mail them from places with symbolic meaning.

The exercise on the train may be limited to walking from the locomotive to the end of the train and back, or from head to tail during long station stops XD.

Grooming. Showering is probably what most people worry about, but on K3 this is not a big issue. As long as you bring a basic wash basin, you can still wipe down comfortably and even wash your hair using the train’s hot water and the restroom’s cold water. At larger stations along the route, such as Yekaterinburg, paid shower facilities are available for passengers.

Along the way: 35 cities, a rolling banquet

From Beijing, heading north, you pass through 35 cities before reaching Moscow. You leave the bustling metropolis, cross the endless Gobi and vast Mongolian steppe, go around Lake Baikal, traverse the central Siberian plateau, cross the Ural Mountains, and run across the wide East European plain to reach another great city. That is the biggest surprise K3 brings to travelers.

Ulaanbaatar: the capital of Mongolia, it is the political, economic, cultural, transport, industrial, and tech center. Nearly half of Mongolia’s population lives here. It has very modern districts as well as extremely underdeveloped ger-house neighborhoods. Congestion and a sense of tension are a microcosm of this city. Five hours by train from Ulaanbaatar are the remains of the former Mongol Empire capital, Karakorum.

Ulan-Ude: Ulan-Ude is the capital of the Republic of Buryatia in the Russian Federation and has a culture that is completely different from typical Russian cities, full of strong Buryat character. A huge Lenin portrait on the city square is one of Ulan-Ude’s landmarks.

Irkutsk: a gem on the shore of Lake Baikal and the second-largest city in East Siberia. The city is full of historical buildings and relics, and Irkutsk’s Kazan Cathedral is considered one of the best, except for Moscow and St. Petersburg. Still, nothing compares to Siberia’s blue-eyed jewel just an hour away: Lake Baikal.

Novosibirsk: the largest city in all of Siberia, it is an extremely important industrial center and is home to some of Russia’s best universities, museums, and theaters.

Yekaterinburg: founded in 1723 and named after Empress Catherine I, this is the central city of the Ural Federal District in Russia. Yekaterinburg has long been an important transportation hub, industrial base, and science-and-education center. From Yekaterinburg, you can also take a train to another top Russian historical and cultural city—Kazan.

Image from the internet

Vladimir: Vladimir is the final stop before reaching Moscow, one of the Golden Ring towns. With a much longer history than Moscow, it has a completely different urban style and local atmosphere.

Moscow: the grand synthesis of Russian culture. The golden towers and treasures of the Kremlin wall, the crossroads of Red Square, the colorful onion-domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral, the elegance of the Moscow Conservatory, the bustle of Tverskaya Street, the distinctive tombstones of Novodevichy Cemetery, Russian treasures at the Tretyakov Gallery, the Soviet-era charm of Moscow’s Seven Sisters, and the style of people you see walking the streets—Moscow is a city worth staying in for a long time.

Siberian Railway: Sister Trains

If you couldn’t get a K3 ticket for any reason but still want to experience the Siberian Railway, don’t worry—there are several not-so-popular trains that can offer a similar experience.

K23/24 is an international train between Beijing and Ulaanbaatar run by the railways of China and Mongolia. Aside from departing only on Mondays or Tuesdays, it is almost identical to K3 on the Beijing-Ulaanbaatar segment—practically its twin. After Ulaanbaatar, you can transfer to Mongolian Railways train No. 5 to continue to Moscow. Train No. 5 on the Ulaanbaatar–Moscow segment runs exactly the same as K3 and is also a twin sibling (if you only want to go to Irkutsk, you can also take Russian Railways train No. 305).

K19/20 东方号 is another international train to Moscow. Unlike K3, K19 does not pass through Mongolia; it heads northeast via Shenyang and Harbin, exits through Manzhouli, and then connects to the Trans-Siberian Railway at Chita once in Russia. K19 is fully operated by Russian Railways, so the language situation is slightly more troublesome than with K3. Mao Zedong’s first trip to Moscow at the end of 1949 was on this train.

001/002 次俄罗斯号 is operated by Russian Railways and is a full-route Trans-Siberian train from Vladivostok (海参崴) to Moscow. Since it opened in the Tsarist era, it has never stopped operating, making it a flagship train—the workhorse of trains. It runs 9,288 km in 7 days and 7 nights, and is undoubtedly a more challenging journey than K3. The Russian train is also the only one painted in the red-white-blue colors of the Russian flag.

099/100 次海鸥号 is also a full Trans-Siberian service from Vladivostok to Moscow, operated by the Russian Far Eastern Railway Administration. Compared with the Russian train, the Gull’s facilities are more basic and it is cheaper, too.

金鹰号 is a privately run train that began operations in 2007. It runs between Moscow and Vladivostok as well as Moscow and Ulaanbaatar. The Gold Eagle is a super-luxury train comparable to the Orient Express and the Pride of Africa. If you can ride such a train across Siberia, it is an absolutely top-tier experience. But such a top-tier experience is usually limited by budget—the lowest fare on the Gold Eagle is still around USD 15,000.

Images from the web.

Other things to note

Visa: For K3 travel to Mongolia and Russia, you need the relevant visas. Russia has expanded e-visa eligibility to Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, but the Naushiki (纳乌什基) border crossing is still not among the approved e-visa entry points, so a traditional paper visa is required. Applying for a Russian visa requires an invitation letter, so it is more convenient to arrange through online agencies such as Fliggy, with a cost of about 900 yuan. After obtaining the Russian visa, you can apply for a Mongolian transit visa* (10 days) through Fliggy and similar channels as well, for about 300 yuan.

If you take K19, you do not pass through Mongolia, so no Mongolian transit visa is needed.

Communication: You can arrange SIM cards for Mongolia and Russia on Taobao in advance, or buy MobiCom and MTC/Beeline SIM cards at Ulaanbaatar and Irkutsk stations, with the latter costing about half of the former. It is best not to buy a Mongolian SIM card in the shops at the 二连口岸, as they are expensive and offer little data.

Currency: The Mongolian tugrik is basically not exchangeable in mainland China; you can only exchange it at the 二连口岸 through local shops, or in Ulaanbaatar with RMB. The Russian ruble can be withdrawn directly with a UnionPay card at Irkutsk station.