I have a hunch and I think it is the right time to reveal it. The centerpiece of going to Siberia should be - a ride on the fabled TransSiberianExpress, of course. In order to do that you have to have a segment that is short enough to make sense. There is a segment from Novosibirsk that will stop in Krasnoyarsk. I cannot obtain the schedule because the very-hard-to-work-with timetable does not accept the word "Krasnoyarsk", which should be valid. However, I know from the map that that is a longish segment. The other segment worth looking at is Irkutsk to Ulan Ude or the reverse. I am shocked by the fact that there are 11 daily trips in the eastward direction. I have to assume that there are approximately the same westbound. The length of that trip varies form 7 hours to 13 hours.
What I see as possible is this:
1. fly into Siberia to Ulan-Ude and have a leg there arriving probably Nov. 10
2. while there there was a heavy snowstorm that cause WRP production to call a 24 hour halt
3. the departure from Ulan-Ude would on Nov. 13
4. teams would then get one of the westbound trains from Ulan-Ude to Irkutsk, arriving same day
5. there would be a leg in the Irkutsk area, the entry point to Lake Baikal
6. after what may have been an extended pit stop, teams are ready to depart before Monday Nov. 17 on the Siberian Airlines flight at 505am, arriving Bangkok at 1105am (which walkingpneumonia discovered when I missed it). However, after a date mistake was pointed out to me, it is clear that this is too late for the Phuket sightings on the 16th
The Trans-Siberian Express train schedule westbound from Ulan-Ude to Irkutsk is:
Depart Arrive Duration
05:00 12:51 07:51
05:31 12:26 06:55
09:27 19:50 10:23
09:50 07:01 07:11
11:10 22:45 11:35
11:53 19:11 07:18
12:58 20:13 07:15
18:00 02:20 08:20
21:02 04:30 07:28
Just so the information is captured here, this is the schedule westbound from Krasnojarsk(I found it by altering its spelling) to Novosibirsk:
00:57 14:09 13:12
04:10 16:01 11:51
04:25 20:38 16:13
05:39 17:44 12:05
05:59 20:06 14:07
06:52 18:51 11:59
07:08 20:23 13:15
07:18 22:52 15:34
08:05 21:24 13:19
So, what do you think of that hypothesis?
EDITOR'S NOTE - the above logic disnitegrates when tehre is an error of one day due to Monday being the only day of the week for the key flight to Bangkok. This means that I need to redo the logic to focus on Krasnojarsk and Novosibirsk instead of Ulan Ude and Irkutsk. The concept of using the TransSiberian Express is intact. I am going to start fresh in a new posting.
