A Train Took Me 5,000 Miles From Moscow to China—and to a Whole New Life

When I was 25, I boarded a train, rode it to the last stop, and disembarked with a new sense of what to do with my life. This kind of thing can happen when you’re 25. It also helps if the journey lasts six days and 5,000 miles.

The year was 1994, and I was traveling along the Trans-Siberian Railway. I had bought a one-way ticket from Moscow to Beijing. After passing through the western part of Siberia, the train would head south across Mongolia. Back then, the world seemed bigger: no cellphones, no online reservations. Things were heavier, too. In my backpack—Lowe Alpine, internal frame—I carried a tent, a sleeping bag, a camera, 20 rolls of film, a Sony Walkman, and a few precious cassettes (Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, the Beastie Boys). I lugged real books: brick-size guides to Russia and China, along with a copy of War and Peace that I’d selected in Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford, England, for its small type and minimal pages. But the lighting on the Trans-Siberian wasn’t as good as Blackwell’s. At night, I wondered if the combination of Tolstoy and the train would ruin my eyes.