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Urumqi – 15/07/2009

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Written by Mārtiņš K., translated and details added by Agnese

We are getting up early as we have agreed before – at 7am. The other kupe growls as usual that there should still be time to sleep. They are actually right – we arrive at the destination station 2 hours later than planned.
Improvised policeman set up by army are everywhere in Urumchi/Urumqi city. On the one hand we have a feeling of safety because of the high security, on the other hand, of course, it wouldn’t be nice to get in rougher checks and get fumbled. The most frightening fact to me is that somebody could take away the knife given to me as a present from a friend of mine. Metal detector beeps, but the lady fumbles my pockets and lets go.
—
The seats on the later train which would be the best according to the schedule (evening) are sold out. So are all places on at least 2 other reasonably good trains and all the sleeping places on all trains today. The best places we could get are soft seats for a train that leaves at about 4pm, therefore we won’t have much time in the city. But it’s better to take this train than wait till tomorrow, so we buy the tickets.
—
We arrange two cabs which could take us to museum of minerals. The agreed price is 25yuans for each. Our cab takes us to a wrong place at first – to history or similar museum. After short expounding, we arrive at our proper destination. The first group reports that the museum is closed, however the main object of interest for our astronomers – the huge meteorite – is found exposed next to the museum and we can see it. We take a picture of ourselves and tick off this item from our must-see list.
It’s drizzling small drizzle, but as the temperature of the air is not low there’s no threat of getting soaked. We decide to go to Urumchi Red hill park.
Me, Mārtiņš M and Everita want to go by foot, which we do. Others take a cab. Initially we follow the intuition and hopefully head in the right direction. Of course, it turns out to be wrong. A lady on the street explains that we should go in completely opposite direction.
It is interesting to observe both daily rhythm of local people and local lazybones.
The rain gets more intense and we get a bit wet. On our way to the park we realize that it won’t be possible to get there more or less along azimuth, and to reach the entrance we need to make a detour of several blocks size. In a little while we arrive at the destination.

railway station 4th biggest meteorite in the world City view

When we start walking in the park, the drizzle stops and we get dry very quickly. The park offers very interesting and extensive scenery of the city.
—
After the walk in the park we get some cash from ATM and bank. The first ATM we notice on our way, works with our bank cards, which seems quite surprising for Agnese as she has read that there might not be more than couple ATMs in this whole city. We continue to supermarket to buy some needed products while Agnese and Mārtiņš M. tries (more or less successfully) to get prepaid SIM card from some Chinese operator.
—
A bit of stress and a bit more stress about some irresponsibility or something like that, as we thought at that time. We bought also some cognac, which was probably produced or bottled in China.
And then for 15 yuans per each of the 2 cabs we get back to railway station to go further.

At the entrance of railway station there are metal detector checks again. Me and Mārtiņš M are asked to open bags for detailed check. The manual metal detector beeps because of knife that’s attached to my belt under shirt, however as there is camera battery close by in the pocket, they find that and ask to show. Mārtiņš M. was asked if he has a knife or anything like that in the bag. And he honestly shows his knife. I answer without lying that I don’t have knife in the bag. :) I was let go, however problems arise with the knife of Mārtiņš M. It appears that we would have needed to declare or file or similarly note such things. As the train leaves in couple of minutes, there’s no time to discuss about the conflict, and the knife is given away for confiscation voluntarily.

Border of China

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Aggregated from 5 sentence/5 facts texts of all of us. Put together and translated by me. Prepare for a long reading (sorry)

In the afternoon of 2009.07.14 we arrived at a small village just before Chinese border. Kazakh border guards stepped in to check our passports, but I don’t remember if they checked the baggage. Our carriage was the last one to be checked, so the border guards stepped out and said that we can step out also to walk around the village while the wheels of the train are changed. Everita and MārtiņšK were the only ones to get out – the doors closed just before the rest of us, and the train started to move backwards. We thought it would stop in some seconds, but in fact it moved for some minutes till a place with lots of wheels and rails and trains. We got a message from MārtiņšK – “Bļ.., kur aizbraucāt” (“Fck, where did you go to”) – we didn’t know ourselves :D.

We had nothing to do, so we started to watch a movie on the laptop. Time after time the train moved – it seemed that the wheels were changed for one carriage at a time. Although they moved the whole carriage up at least 1m, the wheel changing procedure was very unnoticeable – only Emīls saw some moment that we were higher above the ground than we used to be, but sadly didn’t bother to tell the others – we would like to see it too. Unfortunately, they didn’t have electricity in the train at this time, and the battery of the laptop ran out in half an hour, so we couldn’t watch the movie till the end.
While we stayed in the train, MārtiņšK and Everita were wandering around the village. The air there was dryer than cookies of sweetcrust pastry and temperature above 30C. The village was located in the middle of nowhere, cows were walking down the streets and abandoned houses were intensively torn down .

wheels and rails and trains Waiting for the train coming back Train with new wheels on double-rails

Some time after leaving the village behind, we reached the Chinese border.
We were checked very seriously here.
The first team that visited us were medicals. They came in the kupe and aimed with a weapon-like object to our foreheads without saying a word. The object luckily appeared to be an infrared thermometer. It seems that China is only country which takes pig, bird and other flues for real. When they checked Anders’s temperature, it was apparently a bit higher than normal and they had to check it again with a regular thermometer. Who knows, what would have happened if he really have had a fever.

The second team was the food control. First they visited girls’ kupe, from which girls shouted the boys to eat the carrots. They were thinking “wtf?”. Only later they understood that every vegetable and fruit will be taken from them. This way we lost our carrots and cucumber, but we managed to save the tomatoes in our stomachs :). There was also a funny discussion:
Chinese official: – мясо есть? (Do you have meat?)
MārtiņšM: – нет. (No.)
The official carefully checks all the bags and sacks. Prepared to leave, but notices that there is another sack on the upper berth. He takes out a loaf of bread from it, all covered with flown-out melted cheese, and gives to MārtiņšK to hold it while taking out the second loaf, which is also broken apart. After that he takes out a sausage.
Chinese official:- а ето что такое? (And what is this?)
MārtiņšM: – hm.. , колбаса. (sausage.)
Chinese official (angrily):- колбаса ета же есть мясо! (Sausage is meat after all!)
… turns around and leaves taking the sausage with him.
Now we know that we should have hide the sausages in the trash bin, because they didn’t check it. And even if they had checked – we had thrown them away ourselves. However they didn’t take away our canned meat – maybe because we told them that those are “konservi” (preserves), not some meat. Anyway it seems that you cannot take anything fresh or any meat into China.
Long time after leaving border I found our Kazakh melon somewhere under blankets and sheets in the upper (over-corridor) section of kupe. Great success! :D

After we had put back all the things taken out with 2nd officials’ team, new team – border guards – appeared and asked to take everything out one more time. We took out the sacks of our bags and tried to tell in English what’s in there, but it doesn’t seem that the border guard understood a word, although he nid-nod. We think that he was just pleased with fulfillment of his duties. He also skimmed through Kristīne’s book in English and nodded wisely. Her tri-pod seemed very interesting. She had to put the camera on, and only then he understood, what is it meant for. They went away with Kristīne’s DVD movie – maybe to watch it?? Fortunately, they returned it later.
MārtiņšM had to show them Agnese’s star maps from his e-book and gadget party in boys’ kupe began. They played with MārtiņšK’s magnetic toy Neo cube, one border guard (quite pretty ;) ) checked the photos in the cameras and cellphones. MārtiņšK said that there’s nothing interesting in his, but she answered “it’s my job”. Most of MārtiņšK’s pictures had “drunk and asleep friends, laden with things” on them. For one of them she asked, what is this. MārtiņšK replied – “I don’t remember…”. In the last pictures she checked, there was a kitty which she liked :) . It was great that she stopped there as the further pictures depicted MārtiņšK’s fraternity friends with rapiers – not good to show pictures of any weapons to border guards, is it?
They also checked Anders’s book in English and didn’t like something in it so Anders had to tell them, what’s written in it. Fortunately they didn’t find MārtiņšM’s laptop.

After a while, suddenly everyone left. In a moment one of them returned and searched for something, but didn’t find. We hoped that we would get some souvenir, e.g. a torch, but we didn’t find anything ourselves also.

Overall, it seemed that our group had created a little stress to both train attendants and Chinese border-guards, but everything was alright in the end. Only some 2 persons of them spoke English or Russian. Mostly we used sign language and were translating over a chain – Anders spoke in English, MārtiņšM translated to Russian and Chinese border-guard lady translated from Russian to Chinese to her colleagues. The same chain to the opposite direction. Together with wheel changing we spent several hours at the border posts, something like 6 hours or even more. It was dark outside when we started to move further.

Got over the border, we chatted and joked till 5am although had to get up at 7am.

Hangzhou (2009.07.25)

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We planned to wake up early so that we would have more time later in Hangzhou before our airplane. But it didn’t work out so well. We arrived in Shanghai South railway station only 7 minutes before the train and missed it. Later we were told that the train also left earlier.  It takes lot of time to get to a train – the station is huge. Luckily we were able to change the tickets for another train that leaves about an hour later. They even gave back 14Yuans as the new tickets were cheaper because of not so good/fast train. In the waiting hall by a complete accident we met a person from Latvia (again). She was working in Shanghai as teacher and also was going by the same train to Hangzhou. The train was pretty comfortable (more or less similar to the train Xian-Beijing) and the ride was very smooth and fast. After an hour (or two) we arrived in Hangzhou.

Our plan was first to leave all our heavy bags in the hostel Anders had reserved for him as he was staying in Hangzhou for the next night.  There was a big line of people waiting for the taxi next to the train station. Taxi cars were coming and going quickly, so it didn’t take much to get two cars for ourselves. We had only address of the hostel written in English, and in Hangzhou only few people understood English, so we pronounced carefully the street name and luckily driver understood where to take us.

Some of us wanted to go for more shopping, but me with Agnese and Anders went to West Lake – Hangzhou most famous scenic sight. The lake was very large. Also there were lots of other tourists walking around, some boats were floating on lake. We decided to walk along the coast for some two hours in the direction of less attractions, south, as the less attractions, the less tourists.  Right at the beginning Agnese scared the hell out of me, by faking pushing me into lake when I was watching water at the edge of lake. Anders commented this as “it never gets old” :).

The path was not only on the ground, but in some places build like bridge over the water, going parallel to the coast of lake. In some places there was a statue of a famous man or an important ruler of Hangzhou.  At one point a Chinese guy approached me and asked something (in Chinese). As I didn’t understood, he showed with gestures that I am tall, and he is short, therefore he wanted to take a photo with me. We stopped a bit near a small pound with lot of colorful fishes (same as in Shanghai) and Agnese fed them with cookies she had with her.

From the lake we went back along a street full of souvenir shops. In one alley we went into what seemed a traditional medicine shop. They were selling lots of weird stuff – all kind of roots, grains, and also some dead snakes. In other alley there were lot of food stands. You could buy lot of different types of food, including crayfish that Agnese wanted to eat. There were also some boiled snails which we didn’t try.

When we got back to hostel, Mārtiņš K. and Emīls were asleep and the little room without windows seemed overcrowded of people and bags. Then we said goodbyes to Anders and went to Hangzhou railway station for airport shuttle. We were told that bus leaves from the front of railway station. But it took some time to find out that bus stop was on other side of building that was in front of the railway station.

Our Air-Asia flight was scheduled at 23.20. In the airport people were getting in a line. When the line was for about 40 meters long we decided it is time for us to get in the line also. At check-in they informed us that our printed-out boarding passes were not valid in this airport (because it is small?). So we got almost last places which were left in airplane close to each other – at the very tail of the plane. The seats had a small display at back of them where the information about the flight was shown. You could also rent movies to watch, or order food with them. Though the sitting was not very comfortable for me – there was not much space for legs and it was very hard to get some sleep. Although this was my first flying ever, and I was before told by others that plane will shake very much and everything will be bad, it was not true. Flying was very smooth. During the flight we were given customs cards to fill, where we found out that bringing drugs is punishable with death penalty by Malaysian law. Fortunately none of us uses them.

We landed in Kuala Lumpur around 4:30 am.

Silk road train

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As our group had become lazy writers, I asked everyone to write some 5 sentences about our journey from Almaty to Urumqi. I got many sentences, not so many facts, and most of them all were about our time on Kazakhstan/China border, so there will a separate post dedicated to the funny border crossing. But for now – about the Silk road train “Zhibek zholy”.

It was quite late when we entered the train, but who would have known that the caption “Alamutu – Wulumuqi” on the side of the train standing on 1st tracks, means that this is the train to Urumqi. Again, we had booked places in 2 adjacent kupes, but this time they were a little bit different from each other. Each of them had violet clothes-hangers, but in the boy’s kupe each of them had a “pretty” ribbon. There was a little fight to get a hanger with a ribbon, and finally the boys were so kind to change their hangers to ours :D. We put down our bags and stepped out to take a photo, with the hangers, of course.

Pretty hangers Silk road train kupe

The train and the compartments were clean, white and somewhat “sterile”. Every kupe had two thermoses with drinking water (the previous train had drinking water tap in the corridor, however, we drank mostly boiled water after cooling it down in a glass bottle, placed in Everita’s sneaker to not fall apart). Electricity sockets were under the table in each kupe, there were more than 1 and not all the same, but I don’t remember neither how many exactly nor what types. There was a Chinese style (squat) toilet in one end of the wagon, a normal toilet in the other. Also in this train there was a big place for our things over the corridor. We kept there many things including bed linen in day time and among them the melon which had been carried around in Almaty and turned out to be the only piece of fruit to survive till China. Beds were much harder than in the train before, but we slept very well after the long day in Almaty.

Next day I woke up to see a nice scenery outside the window. There was a nice, blue lake behind a meadow and it was still there some hours later. Apparently a very big lake. Here and there were some village or  Muslim cemetery. The landscape of eastern Kazakhstan was very beautiful and none of the pictures taken through the dirty train windows made it justice.

Big lake Mountains Green green grass Rain

It was very quiet in the train. While in the train before everyone was keeping the doors of their kupes open and visiting other people in the train, even unknown people, here most doors were closed and there were no people chatting in corridor. We kept our doors open mostly and sometimes tried to shut the curtains of the windows in the corridor so that there was less Sun shining into eyes. Though the carriage attendant walked through the carriage time after time and always opened them if it was light outside and always shut them if it was dark. He seemed to be a very patient person as he never tried to say anything to us, when we opened the curtains uncountable times in the evening.

Train to Almaty: 3rd day

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Continued – based on Emīls notes.

July 12

The morning starts with the words “приготовите паспорт” again, though this time it is MārtiņšK who says them. Nevertheless some of us including me are disturbed, awake at once and reaching for the passports. It could be nice to watch us from the side at this time :D.

At the stops various things are sold in many trolleys. We buy melons, a watermelon, a bottle of Kazakh wine “Кардинал” (“Cardinal”) and a (too) small bottle of very delicious cognac “Казахстан” (“Kazakhstan”), the most delicious >20% alcoholic drink I have ever tasted. The melons cost around 20-30RUR each, the wine is 400KZT (there was another, “Kagor” for 300KZT in the kiosk). We still don’t have Kazakhstan tenges as they could be get nor in Latvia neither Sweden banks, that’s why we pay for everything in Russian roubles. Maybe the rate isn’t the best (from 1 RUR to 5KZT till 1 RUR to 4KZT), but things we want are still cheap enough in roubles and we don’t mind.

Very tasty melon Dividing Delicious!

The melons are ripe, aromatic and also very tasty. We also open our daily cans of meat which means that the backpacks will be lighter. Yesterday we ate canned meat of some forest animals like deer and roe, but we didn’t know the English name for roe, so Mārtiņš told to Anders that it was “deer girls” meat. It turned soon to “pretty deer girl” and we will remember this expression for quite a long time since then. That’s why the canned moose meat of today gets a title “pretty men moose” meat.

Watermelon Lunch time again Pretty men moose

Emīls has got a bit sore throat. Riču-raču and card games again. At one stop some policemen step in the train. They will come with us till Almaty and check the baggage of newcoming passengers, because in the coming region many people are growing and trying to transport cannabis. Later in night we also see a big fire of a great area at the horizon. Our neighbors told that it’s a normal sight – the police is burning cannabis fields there. It is not allowed to take photographs of policemen in uniforms. Also it is not allowed to take photograph of our provodnitsa in her uniform.

Two melons for one day are enough for us, though we have another two of them left. They are not light and we don’t want to carry them around the whole day in Almaty, that’s why we eat the biggest of them. It is very tasty again and we eat it fast after cutting in pieces. Tomorrow we will have to get up early, that’s why we put most things back in the backpacks already. In the night we try to dance salsa in the corridor of the train, but it’s too narrow for turns. The radiators along the corridor side take up more space than it seems. Although the early waking up next morning, we go to sleep pretty late. Our provodnitsa Zhannar wake us up at 5:30am. We pack the last things, the bags seem lighter.

At half past 7 we arrive in Almaty.

Train to Almaty: 2nd day

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Continued – based on Emīls notes.

July 11

The morning starts with words “приготовите паспорт” which means “get the passport ready”. The fact that we crossed border to Kazakhstan yesterday doesn’t mean that we can put our passports away till Almaty. The train has an interesting route – it crosses the Russia/Kazakhstan border 3 times as you can see from the map in the 1st page of our site. It could be because of former Soviet Union and common railroads to Russia and Kazakhstan at that time. Though double entry visa is NOT needed for either country. People in both embassies informed us that they think we will need double entry visa when we wanted to check whether the information on internet about not needing double one is right. But it appeared that our visas were already processed at that time, so we couldn’t change entry times and got single entry visas. There were no questions on the 2nd or 3rd border crossing.

After the 2nd border it is still morning so most of us go back to sleep. When we finally get up, the train has a stop and there is no possibility to go to toilet, so someone of us has to contain himself till we are moving again. Toilets are closed before stops, because everything from there goes directly to ground under train and it’s not clever to allow it in stops. The train is still late. Outside the window we see “dry” cows (very thin, in a pale brown color) from time to time, first camels, steppe. We play card games, checkers, dices and riču-raču (Latvian version of the board game Ludo)

Dry camel Cemetary Scenery Riču-raču

We stop at some station, I want to go to buy milk in a nearby shop, but our train hasn’t stopped at the 1st platform and between it and the terminal a very long train arrives. Since it won’t be possible to get back on time by going around, I return to our train before my time has come in the queue in the shop. Though Everita and MārtiņšK who have left at the other side get back by walking through the other train. The scenery outside the window stays the same. A beautiful sunset. I finally get to buy milk at some station. MārtiņšM buys yogurt for Kristīne and a bottle of mineral water. First stars, the night has come and the first educational astronomy lessons start. Our train neighbors are also interested. Unfortunately there’s some haze and not a better sight upwards than in Latvia. Or maybe the light ruins everything. The light in corridor, which windows can be opened, is always on in the night. Last year in steppe the visibility of the sky was much better.

Beautiful sunset Star watching class Moon

Me, Emīls and MārtiņšM watch and take photographs of Moon and Jupiter from the corridor of the train. Others are already asleep. We go past Aral sea but as it is about 100km away, we can see nothing except some salt fields which in night are a bit lighter than the rest of the ground. The morning comes, it gets lighter. Venus and Mars can be seen in the Twins constellation from the window of our kupe. Also MārtiņšM and Emīls sleep when I finally go to bed to wait for Tjuratam station (closest to the Baikonur cosmodrome) there (with the alarm clock on). Last year I was sleeping in the car when we went by it. This year I want at least to look at that direction. There’s not much that can be seen – just rails that suddenly split away to north and some satellite receivers in form of big dishes. Still I feel happy. The sun is rising, I wake up Emīls for that sight and after the sunrise finally go to sleep.

Train to Almaty: 1st day

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Continued – based on Emīls notes.

July 10

We wake up late. It’s ok – we will spend all the day in the train. On some stops we get out of the train for some minutes to take photos or just to breath fresh(or just different) air. It’s very hot outside and we don’t feel very clean, although the train has a sink in the toilet. The toilet is quite the same as in previous train and we have got used to it. The train has a nice and very communicable provodnica (train attendant). She stops and tells something interesting whenever she walks by our kupe. She and everyone else on the train is speaking only Russian, so not everybody of us understood everything. Sometimes we translate to Anders, but sometimes we don’t as it is toooo much that needs to be translated.

This is the first day we eat the potato porridge and canned meat we have taken with us. This porridge is also very easy to prepare – just add hot water and stir. Each of us gets 3.5 spoons of hot porridge and a can of meat. It become less and less trees outside the window and the scenery changes. Still most of the stops are quite green. We are crossing river Volga not long after Saratov city terminal. A really huge river. It’s possible to see the railway bridge before crossing, as the train route makes a curve.

Porridge Saratov Railway bridge over Volga

Something is keeping the train, apparently they are checking it especially carefully. We stand on the border 1 hour more than we were supposed to. But the provodnica says that we will catch up afterwards. After Russian side border there still is Kazakhstan side border. The border guards are looking at us for a long time while checking passports. Outside the window music is playing and two drunk local boys are fighting. It’s Friday – party, nothing special :)

We are going to sleep late. The trees outside the window have got small and short – first signs of steppe. Our carriage has around 4 of 110 Volt electricity sockets in the corridor and 1 220V socket in one WC, and a 120V socket in the other WC. Last evening we charged our mobile phones, this evening the electricity is gone. The provodnica suspects us for charging (malfunctioning) camera which we didn’t do actually.

Train to Almaty: 1st night

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Emīls made some notes while on this train, some of which I got to read recently. As it is a lot easier to remember this way, the following story will be based on his notes with my additions.

July 9:

We got on the Kazakhstan train in the evening. Also here it is not possible to open the window and it is bad as there’s some kind of not nice smell in the kupe. Though in some minutes we have got used to it and don’t notice it anymore. The good thing – the train has conditioner. The bad thing – the conditioner works only when the train is moving fast enough. But as it is moving the best part of all the time, we feel ok.

Our kupe is not very big, but – the more, the merrier – so usually we are more than just 4 in here. And for supper (and most of the following meals) we have proved that all 7 of us can sit on the lower bunks (quite squeezed, but still ok). There’s a carpet on the floor and some soft backrest on the wall. The berths are very soft. Later we will know that these berths were the softest of all the trains we took. The window has curtains which can cover the lower half of the window and also a shutter that can cover all. Unlike the previous upper berths, where a bump on your forehead would be a normal thing after waking up (very small space between the berth and the ceiling), here it is possible to sit normally. Each berth has a small not very bright light – bad for reading but good enough for searching something. Each berth has a little shelf and a hook. 2 bags can fit under the lower berth (1 of them inside the box and the other – outside) and if that is not enough, there is big space for something above the corridor with a width of kupe itself, usable from the kupe side of course.

Shelf Lights Bags under bed Space over corridor

We have Latvian porridges for supper – either oatmeal or buckwheat, which are ready just some minutes after you add hot water and stir. To my mind – a good and easy way to eat. We are quite tired during the day in Moscow and go to sleep soon after the supper.

Hot water machine

Train Jurmala – our journey has started

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9.07.2009
So our adventures have begun. We left Riga train terminal at 18:10 with bunch of people that came to say goodbye. First minutes flied so fast that I didn’t even notice that my town which is 35km from Riga, is already behind. In some 3 hours we started to think that the journey will be very long and we have no idea what we will do all the time. Though I didn’t feel bored at any moment. We chatted, drank tea and Brengulju beer. In a while we stopped by the border. Time went very slowly, but we had very nice neighbors who gave much of good advice during those times.
Latvian border guards looked in our passports and soon went away. In some half an hour train went further to Russian border. The guards there checked the used bed linens which were kept in a hole under the floor and wanted some of us to open their bags. After that a dog came into train. Luckily he had been fed enough and didn’t want to check the taste of our sausages. :) Then we washed and went to sleep.

The Beginning Neighbours and gadgets Everything's OK

The first impression of the train “Jurmala” was not very good but in a while it became better. We had platzcard tickets because it was too expensive to pay 100LVL just for 1 night ride. Our seats/sleeping places were quite soft and we also put mattresses on them when we went to sleep. I was a bit surprised that there are actually 6 places in one “compartment” – 2 (lower and upper) at one side of the window, 2 at the other side of the window and 2 next to the opposite window. In day there is a table, in night you can fold that to the bed. In day the 2nd “floor” is folded near ceiling. That is why when I looked train pictures on Internet before, it seemed like there are only seats, not sleeping places. However, those seats were really hard in our train, not like the 4 “normal” places which are opposite side. The bed linen were included in the price as well as small not-very-soft towels. The hot water was free of charge and it was hot all the time. 2 cups of tea were free, 0.5 liter bottle of water was free, coffee cost 1LVL. Although it was written that we can get board games and get pack of free cookies, the carriage attendant told that last time they gave free cookies was 3 years ago. And we did not get any board games – they did not have them.

Sleep Morning Other sleeping places

Looking over options in details. 1st.

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The dates when we have to buy our train tickets come closer and closer (it’s 25th or 26th of May), so it’s the last time to decide which train we will take.

There were 3 main options:
Riga-Moscow-Almaty-Urumqi-Shanghai
Riga-Moscow-Ulaanbaatar-Beijing-Shanghai
Riga-Moscow-Chita-Beijing-Shanghai

1st option.
We have to be in Shanghai on 21st of July at latest. Train from Urumqi to Shanghai goes daily and takes 3 days (departs evening, arrives midday). -> We have to be in Urumqi on 19th at latest, which is Sunday. Train from Almaty to Urumqi goes 2 days a week and arrives either on Monday or on Wednesday. Monday, 20th is too late for us, so 15th, Wednesday would be fine. In this case we have to depart from Almaty on 13th of July (evening).
Train from Moscow to Almaty goes every 2nd day. In order for us to be in Almaty on 13th, we have to take train which departs from Moscow on 9th July evening. So, departing from Riga on 8th evening, which means 2 not 1 extra days of vacation (not sure whether possible for all of us).
Looking from start – if we are in Urumqi on 15th, we can go to Xian with train 1086 (Urumqi – Jinan) and be there on 17th, visit Terracotta Army (takes 3h + getting to/from = 5h) and see city. Then leave in the evening to either Shanghai or Beijing.

Shanghai first
This means, we are in Shanghai on 18th round 2pm and can spend there 4,5 days till evening of 22nd. Then go to Beijing, arrive there 23rd before noon and spend there 3 days before departing home on 26th.

Beijing first
This means, we are in Beijing on 18th round 10am and can spend there 3days, 2 nights till evening of 20th. Then go to Shanghai, arrive there 21st before noon and spend there 4,5days before departing home on 25th night.

In short:
Riga-Moscow(Rizskaja)(004р) – daily, 18:10-12:16, 17:06h (departs 1st day, arrives 2nd)
Moscow(Pavlieckaja)-Almaty(007ц) – every 2nd, 22:50-07:14, 78:24h (departs 1st day, arrives 5th)
Almaty-Urumqi(014ц) – Mon,Sat, 23:58-08:58, 31:00h (departs 1st day, arrives 3rd)
Urumqi-Shanghai(T54) – daily, 17:20-14:31, 45:11h (departs 1st day, arrives 3rd)
Urumqi-Xian(to Jinan,1086), 21:48-07:29, 33:41h (departs 1st day, arrives 3rd)

Sites:
http://www.seat61.com/SilkRoute.htm
http://www.rzd.ru/
http://www.chinatravelguide.com/ctgwiki/Special:CNTrainSearch?method=1
http://www.tielu.org (+ google translate automatic language detection)
http://wikitravel.org/en/Xi’an
http://gochina.about.com/od/whattosee/p/TC_Army.htm