from $8,995* per person	15 Days	February, March, May, July-September
Boutique accommodations		Exertion level: 4
Operator: Geographic Expeditions		18 people max

Train buffs (and there are many of us out there) think of the Trans-Siberian as a kind of Mount Everest of rail journeys. (The guy who is writing this, for instance, once honeymooned on the Trans-Siberian. In February. And loved it.)

Back in the day, both in Soviet times and until relatively recently, accommodations along the Trans-Siberian ranged from barely sustainable to passably comfortable, though rather basic. But our train, the Golden Eagle, is in another, grander, more salubrious class entirely. Gold, Silver and Heritage Class cabins --we’ll happily fill you in on the differences and details--are among the most spacious and luxurious rail cabins available anywhere in the world, equipped with en suite bathrooms (with power showers), DVD/CD players, LCD screen televisions, individual air conditioning, and much else. In short, Old Russia’s nobles--whose private railcars were the private jets of the era--would feel right at home.

A rolling epic, the Trans-Siberian crosses eight time zones and traverses 6,600 miles as it traverses Russia from Moscow to the country’s major Pacific port, Vladivostok, a city fiercely shielded from the outside world during the Cold War. On our way to the Russian Far East, we pass through the mesmerizing, seemingly infinite Siberian forest, the taiga, paying leisurely visits to Kazan, whose Kremlin is a UNESCO World Heritage site, to Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk during Soviet times), founded in 1723 by Peter the Great as a gateway for his expansion into the wilds of Siberia (we’ll visit the church which marks the poignant spot where Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918). We continue to the Soviets’ Siberian capital Novosibirsk and visit its opera house, the country’s largest, and on to architecturally and historically fascinating Irkutsk, Siberia’s major city in czarist times, and to Lake Baikal, the world’s oldest, deepest, most voluminous (it holds an astounding 17 per cent of the world’s fresh water), and most interesting (it’s home to more than 100,000 freshwater seals, called nerpa. In the middle of a continent!). Many of us, and just about every Russian, also consider Lake Baikal the planet’s most intriguing and massively beautiful lake. Turning the lake to the south, we reach Ulan Ude, capital of the largely Mongolian Buddhist Buryat Republic.

Now we head south into Mongolia for a visit to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia to witness the magnificent Naadam Festival (July departure only), a stupendously colorful, multi-day archery, horse-racing and wrestling competition. Naadam is unquestionably one of the world’s great festivals, one which rivets the attention of the entire nation.

After one day in Ulaanbaatar, the Trans-Mongolian trip continues to the Chinese border where we change to the Shangri-La Express and continue to Beijing. Our traditional itinerary returns back to Russia, to Khabarovsk and finally to Vladivostok and the completion of one of the planet’s longest, most eventful, most historic and most compelling rail journeys.