It was -10 degrees out in Moscow on Christmas Eve 2019. Three Singaporeans carried a bunch of backpacks, instant food and wrapped up in layers of clothes trudged across the Yaroslavski Railway Station, where we were about to embark on a 3 days train ride on the highly anticipated Trans-Siberian Railway to Irkutsk. As the train took off, we sat in awkward silence with our cabin mate. “What is your name?” we asked. silence - “English?” we asked again and this time, he shook his head. His name was Peter and he was traveling home to Chita, which was 4 days away. That was all the conversation we could muster on our first night with him. The next morning , we excitedly took out all the instant food that we had prepared beforehand — mashed potatoes, bread, nutella, instant 3-in-1 coffee from SIngapore etcetc and made a spread on the 1m wide table in our cabin. “hey Peter, do you want to join us for breakfast?” "Da!" he said, and took out his stash of food, which was a package covered in aluminium foil and a packet of tightly wrapped cucumbers. He opened up the aluminium foil and there sat a warm, roasted chicken. The three of us were dumbfounded. While planning for this trip, we were mentally preparing ourselves for 3 days of instant food and even strategised our purchases in the supermarket. We felt like amateurs when we saw the roasted chicken. He clearly knew how to travel this ride in style and this was nothing new for him. During pockets of spare time on the train, we would occupy ourselves with some card games. One time, we saw that he was playing card games with the other Russians on board and had them teach us instead. None of us spoke a language that the other could understand, but the two other Russian guys on board came over to our cabin and sat with us. We had a one-on-one mentorship and intense training on how to play the “Russian fools card game”. They would get agitated whenever we decided to make a move that’s out of the norm and struggled to communicate the rules to us through mock up game play. Peter was my mentor. His excitement whenever I did well was contagious. You could tell clearly how each of them had different playing styles, one of them liked to find alternative ways (he taught Leah how to hide her cards), the other was an obvious risk-taker. He would make Devin attack relentlessly. Peter was a safe guy. He played by the rules but was strategic and that usually gives us a headstart, not necessarily the winning streak though. Our carriage, amongst all the others, were always full of laughter as we tried to compete against each other, despite the language barrier. The funny thing was, the characteristics of all three of them were exact reflection of how the three of us are as a person. Kismet i would say. At one of the pit-stop, we got up the train from the other end of the train instead. It was a good 5 minutes walk across the carriages to get back to ours. And when we got back, we saw that everyone was outside of their cabin, which was a first. There seemed to be a commotion that somehow only eased up upon their sight of us. As it turns out, they were worried that we didn’t make it back on the train. At that moment, I felt that there was some true camaraderie within our carriage that none others had. We had a nice little Christmas meal made up of instant noodles, sausages dipped in boiling water, mashed potato and wine drank out of paper coffee cups. It was also through this meal that we found out more about Peter. He had been a soldier, serving in Chita for the past 25 years. He was finally reaching the end of his contract and has plans to move out of Chita to Novosibirsk to start a monster truck business. He was taking a 4 days journey on the train ride home as he just had an operation in Moscow and was unable to take a flight. You could see some sadness in his eyes as he said that. Being on board for 3 days kind of had us a little disorientated with time because time zones kept changing. We were scheduled to arrive at 7AM at Irkutsk but one of our alarm rang at 4AM instead as the phone was still in the wrong timezone. It threw us into panic mode because we thought we missed our stop, while Peter was trying to explain that we still have 2 more hours. By the time we were supposed to alight, Peter was up and ensuring that we had everything. A parting hug with everyone had my heart ached for a while, because this might be the last time we see each other and we were only starting to feel a little like family. Days later on 30th December, Peter sent me a birthday message, in English. It came with a photo of his home in Chita. A few days late from the festive day but he’s finally where he wants to be. The Trans-Siberian Railway, what many romanticises it as a “the ride of a lifetime”, for others, it’s merely “the longest ride home”.