Travels by YouTube: the end of the line for real travel?

Siberia's incredible scenery

Siberia's incredible scenery - a lone fisherman ice-fishing, Lake Baikal

A collection of new videos on YouTube is creating a bit of a stir. You can now travel the length of the Trans-Siberian railway from the comfort of your desktop. The journey has been captured on video and uploaded for all to enjoy. Can experiencing a journey virtually ever replace actually travelling? This is the question asked by Benji Lanyado in the Guardian travel blog today as he explores the incursion of the virtual world into our real travel plans.

I must admit to being fascinated by these videos. Having stared through the window of our compartment on the same line almost 15 years ago, it evokes a sense of nostalgia to see the vast forests and mighty rivers of Siberia and the endless shores of Lake Baikal. My memory is still vivid of a landscape that changed daily, moving from a sunny spring in Moscow to the bitter chill of the east in only a couple of days. We pondered how secret Soviet experiments might have created the hundreds of miles of dead trees that we passed, and wondered whether we would see any clues of the legendary military cities of Siberia that existed on no maps and were said to be built entirely underground.

Trans-Siberian Railway

Dour faces in the Russian restaurant car

As I watch these videos I think back to the friends we made on the train. I remember the young person who walked the carriages selling vodka and chocolate, who became the topic of our discussion “is he a boy or a girl?”. He knew more English than he had suggested, as on the final day he opened our door and said defiantly “I am a man!”

I remember the stale bread in the restaurant car, never refreshed throughout the length of the Russian traverse. By the time we reached Irkutsk the waiter was discreetly cutting pieces from the crust. We laughed it off and continued to eat it until a Chinese man, hitherto hidden behind a large newspaper, suddenly hissed to attract our attention, lowered his paper and spoke to us as if we were spies exchanging sensitive information: “Pssst… don’t eat the bread”. He said it twice to make sure we understood.

Trans-Siberian Railway

Shopping for chocolate at a station stop

How I see these Youtube videos will be a world apart from how others see them. I have my own real experiences to fit around these images, and they make the videos come to life for me with a richness that others won’t have. Likewise if this was a journey across the Canadian Rockies, it would be nothing more than eye-candy to me as I have not taken that journey. It might inspire me to go, but it will never serve as a viable substitute.

Virtual trips can give us the images and sounds of a location. In time technology will probably even give us the tastes and the smells. But what they will never provide is the unexpected encounters, the jokes we share along the way, the frustrations we endure and the highly personal memories we build up through our travels.

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4 Responses to “Travels by YouTube: the end of the line for real travel?”

  1. Wow, those videos are kind of amazing. Haven’t done the trip myself, though I know the videos are certainly no substitute for the real thing! Would love to do it actually. These videos create a kind of ‘realness’ to the Trans-Siberian Railway, though. I like it. Makes it seem like an *actual* place that exists, you know?

    February 17, 2010 at 2:36 pm Reply
  2. I think the videos are great for when you are unable to travel and need a dose of a far away land. But in no way do they make up for really being there.

    February 17, 2010 at 2:43 pm Reply
  3. It will never replace the travel as far as I am concerned though, things like this only triggers my travel interest, travel fascination. And what I want is what you can never get on film; The interaction with people, the smells, the taste of travel. But yes, it certainly works as a trigger!

    February 17, 2010 at 3:06 pm Reply
  4. Thanks for the comments. Yes, the videos are a great marketing tool for those who are selling Siberian trips. Watching it actually makes me want to go again! Well worth the journey if anyone is interested, and it can be done at a very reasonable cost if you go on the normal train, or at a very high price but with infinitely more luxury on the tourist train; both trains see the same scenery though.

    February 18, 2010 at 8:49 am Reply

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