I’m now back in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, having spent Monday and Tuesday up at the OPF near Nogliki.<\/p>\n
The train journey to Nogliki was probably the best I’ve had on a Russian train, almost certainly because I was in the business class carriage.\u00a0 The differences between business class and ordinary class are as follows:<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 Two beds per carriage instead of four.<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0 Small TV, albeit not showing anything most of the time.\u00a0 Just as everyone was going to bed, they put on an Antonio Banderas 4-in-1 special DVD, and they showed us the first 20 minutes of The 13th Warrior<\/em> before stopping the disc and starting again from the beginning, at which point I switched it off.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 Bedding comes as standard, as opposed to being an optional extra.\u00a0 They also provide a small towel in addition to the standard tea towel.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 Food is provided in the form of a packed lunch.\u00a0 I didn’t realise this, and hence boarded the train in time-honoured tradition with provisions which would have served to feed the city of Troy during its 10-year siege.\u00a0 Anyway, I got the packed lunch on top, which contained\u00a0bread, cheese, salami, yoghurt, soup, an apple, chocolate, tea, coffee, sugar, salt, pepper, plastic cutlery, and a bottle of cognac.\u00a0 The latter would have served well to help passengers get to sleep (or start a fight), but oilfield workers are now usually subject to alcohol tests when they disembark, the oil companies having found most of their workforce turning up completely ratarsed in the days when the Sakhalin projects were in their infancy.\u00a0 It is forbidden to take alcohol onto the accommodation camps or the offshore platforms, so we all had to leave the bottles unopened on the train.\u00a0 The return journey was a different matter though…<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 The interior decor is a bit nicer.\u00a0 You get a few extra lights and mirrors.<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0 The toilets are cleaner, and they provide you with soap and toilet paper.<\/p>\n 7.\u00a0 You get a little overnight bag containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, shoe horn, comb, etc.<\/p>\n 8.\u00a0 Your carriage companion is an oilfield worker, as opposed to a toothless babushka, drunken soldier, or smelly old man.\u00a0 On the way up I shared a carriage with a member of a Scottish dredging crew, on the\u00a0way back with a 25 year old Russian apprentice driller.<\/p>\n Other than that it was all pretty much the same as any other Russian train journey.\u00a0 The awful music, the lurching and rattling of the train, the inexplicable 20 minute stops in the middle of nowhere, the silly little net curtains which stop you seeing out the window, the strip of linen running the length of the corridor to protect the carpet.\u00a0 Ah, the memories<\/a>!<\/p>\n So, after 14 hours and a reasonable night’s sleep, I got to Nogliki.\u00a0 From there three of us clambered aboard a Toyota Landcruiser and spent the next two and a half hours driving along a dirt road through endless forests and mountains, never once encountering a town or so much as a village.\u00a0 Eventually we arrived in a mosquito-infested swamp in which somebody had decided to build an Onshore Processing Facility.\u00a0 I think the nearest sizeable town was Nogliki which we’d left umpteen miles behind.\u00a0 If this place isn’t a replica of hell, it’s a damned good effort at one.\u00a0 The people I met there looked at me with hatred in their eyes when I told them I was only there for a two-day visit.\u00a0 They looked at me as if I’d just run off with their wife.<\/p>\n So I’m back in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk now, and boy am I glad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m now back in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, having spent Monday and Tuesday up at the OPF near Nogliki. The train journey to Nogliki was probably the best I’ve had on a Russian train, almost certainly because I was in the business class … Continue reading