http://www.waytorussia.net/Transport/Timetables/TransSiberian.html http://www.expresstorussia.com/trans_mongolian_trains.html Train: #003. Beijing - Ulan-Bataar - Moscow Departs: Beijing [on Tuesdays 7.40] Arrives: Moscow [5 d, 11 h, 39 mins later, at 14.19] Route: Beijing [0d 0h 0 mins, at 7.40] - Ulan-Bataar [1 day 5 h 35 mins later, at 13.15, stops for 35 mins] - Ulan-Ude [1 d 23 h 20 mins, at 2.00, stops for 20 mins] - Slyudyanka [2 d 4 h 23 mins, at 7.03, stops for 10 mins] - Irkutsk [2 d 6 h 36 mins, at 9.16, stops for 23 mins] - Taishet - Krasnoyarsk [3d 0 h 52 mins, at 3.32, stops for 20 mins] - Novosibirsk [3 d 13 h 5 mins, at 15.45, stops for 28 mins] - Ekaterinburg [4 d 8 h 49 mins, at 11.29, stops for 23 mins] - Perm - Kirov - Nizhny Novgorod - Vladimir [5 d 7 h 59 mins, at 10.39, stops for 23 mins] - Moscow. (see the route description) Price: 1st class - €900 (de luxe cabin + common shower), 2nd class: €400 http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1925432 Beijing -> Hohhot -> Erlian -> Ulaan Baatar Hi, We travelled via Hohhot and Erlian to Ulaan Baatar in Mongolia. This route is much cheaper than the direct train from Beijing to Ulaan Baatar. Here are some details. * There are several daily buses from Beijing to Hohhot. The price for the ticket is Yuan 149 per person. The bus leaves from the long term bus station near the Beijing West Railway station. Buses 67, 7, and 2 go from Tianmen square to a bus stop close to this bus station. The bus journey to Hohhot takes 7 to 8 hours. * From Hohhot there are several buses per day to Erlian at the Mongolian border. The bus ride takes 5 to 6 hours and costs Yuan 88 per person. Buy the bus ticket as soon as you arrive in Hohhot, because the early buses to Erlian are popular. The first bus goes at 8 in the morning. * There are several buses a day from the Erlian bus station to the Zamyd-Uud train station (Mongolia). The first bus leaves at 1.30 pm (to catch the daily train from Zamyd-Uud to Ulaan Baatar). If you take the 8 am bus in Hohhot to Erlian, there is a good chance that you connect with this first bus. * Another option is to take a Russian jeep from Erlian to the Zamy-Uud train station. These jeeps leave from the market near the Dico’s fast food outlet, approx one kilometre from the bus station. A taxi will cost you around 5 Yuan. * The price of the jeep to Zamyd-uud is between 50-60 Yuan per person. However, they will start the negotiations at 80 Yuan. The journey, including the procedures at the border, takes approx. 1.5 hours. If you take the bus, it will take longer because more people need to go through immigration and customs. * Immigration and customs are hassle free. * There is a local train from Zamyn-Uud to Ulaan Baatar at 5.35 pm (train number 275). However, if you arrive after noon, there is a good chance that all tickets (including hard seat) are sold out. Many merchants, who buy products in China for the Ulaan Baatar market, take this daily train and bought tickets in advance. * We stayed the night in Erlian, crossed the border by jeep in the morning (around 10 am) and were one of the last persons to obtain a ticket for the train of that day (and that was around noon). * One third of the hard sleeper seats they sell, are for the upper berths. However, it is forbidden to use these berths because they are used for luggage only. So if you have one of these berths (like we had), you have to find a seat on one of the lower berths (so make friends with the local people!). And if you want to sleep at night, you need to ‘spoon’ with one of the merchants. * The best option probably is, to take the morning bus from Hohhot to Erlian, cross the border by bus the same day, spend the night in Zamyd-Uud (several hostels available) and buy a ticket for a good berth (preferably the middle one if you want to sleep) for the train of the following day. * The price for the hard sleeper ticket is 9600 Torog. The ride takes 15-16 hours. * There are ATM’s at the Zamyd-Uud railway station that accepts Visa, Mastercard, Meastro and Cirrus cards. Max output is 400.000 Torog per transaction. Going this way, it means that you can reach Ulaan Baatar from Beijing for around Euro 40 (= US$ 50) per person. If you take the direct train from Beijing to Ulaan Baatar (tickets through CITS at Beijing International Hotel in Beijing), it will set you back around EUR 140 (US$ 175) per person.

For good value telescopes with decent performance at a reasonable price Skywatcher and Orion are what to look at. A bit pricier are Meade and Celestron and a dozen others but not all of them are good. For binoculars there is a huge choice. I use Helios 10x50 and others but for general stargazing any sharp and contrasty 10x50 is good and there are large binoculars specially made for astronomical viewing. Orion is worth looking at for binos as with telescopes. It's rare to get a poor one from Orion.....it's a well respected company and their products are very popular and deservedly so. Some binocular answers here with info for astronomy http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgZyq23YNxZ1SnC0HgSaJgAhBgx.;_ylv=3?qid=20101129091435AAyPkeM . . . . http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100319171332AARFrFW . . . . http://malaysia.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101021213356AAG4CDu . . . . EDIT...if you're asking this from UK notice that the Orion company mentioned is the American one, not Orion Optics of Crewe in the UK who make very high quality, very expensive telescopes. http://www.orionoptics.co.uk/ . . . Here is the American Orion company http://www.telescope.com/ . . . . . In the UK Skywatcher is the brand to see for good quality at a decent price. Optical Vision is the UK importer, who also import the excellent Tal telescopes from Novosibirsk in Siberia.....built like tanks and optically very good for the money which is normal for Russian equipment....mine is many years old and has been excellent,never a problem. See the link on the left http://www.opticalvision.co.uk/astronomical_telescopes/sky-watcher . . . .. http://www.warehouseexpress.com/refractor-telescopes-tal/b3014-m243 . . .

Tens of thousands of Muscovites go to St Petersberg for the White Nights parties. Lots of them have homes there. http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/travel/russias-white-nights-in-st-petersburg.html?pagewanted=all Siberia is an awful long way from Moscow. It isn't unfriendly, quite the reverse. It isn't all frozen wasteland either. It's a rich area. It has massive agriculture and a lot of mining and it supplies a lot of Russia's food and industrial requirements. It has a very interesting capital city called Novosibirsk which has the biggest rail station in Russia and the biggest opera house in Russia and is home to huge high technology industries and research institutes, including high level physics and chemistry laboratories and military equipment manufacture, and some of finest optical manufacturing facilities in the world. Half way down http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120118142137AASfSra Two of my telescopes a reflector and a refractor, were made there by the Tal company which is part of the Novosibirsk Optical Institute and are sold at budget price in the west, the best bargains for price versus performance for amateur astronomers now as they were 20 years ago with excellent optics, a range of accessories included in the price, and built like tanks, not the flimsy stuff some other manufacturers offer at the price. The Tal 1 and Tal 2 are very popular scopes. Even the packing far outclasses the prettied up cardboard boxes of their rivals. It's a proper wooden crate, plain but well made. At a higher level that institute and others also make research grade optical microscopes, electron microscopes, large astronomical observatory telescopes, interferometers, spectroscopic equipment and satellite optics. http://npzoptics.ru/images/catalog/teleskopy/tal2_900x800.gif http://www.telescopes.ru/product.html?cat=1&prod=8 http://www.opticalvision.co.uk/documents/62.PDF There is a regular rail service from Moscow and daily flights, but the rail journey takes at least two days and some journeys take three days. You likely won't want the timetable for the bus journey..... http://www.waytorussia.net/Transport/Timetables/TransSiberian.html http://novosibirskguide.com/ .http://wikitravel.org/en/Novosibirsk