This started out as a short musical expression of a Trans-Siberian train journey my wife and I experienced in May 2016.

I had long planned to write this and even recorded the rhythm of the train on my phone during the journey.

It has ended up as a 16 minute musical work. Starting out in the late evening at Moscow’s train station, the train gathers pace through the vast terrain.

The musical journey to Beijing is punctuated by stops at a village near Irkutsk on the shores of Lake Baikal – such a huge body of water that it is visible from the moon. The leads into a hard rock number; “Love in the banya” (banya = is basically a Russian sauna).

Back on the train, hints of the national anthem bids a triumphant farewell to the Russian Federation. Local instruments signal our arrival at the steppes of Mongolia.

We rejoin the train in Ulan Bator where the finale drives us toward Beijing.