Ride the Trans-Siberian Express, From Your Couch

MOSCOW, March 9, 2010 -- It's not the longest train ride in the world but arguably the most famous. For generations, the Trans-Siberian Express from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan has evoked feelings of adventure, setting out to discover the biggest country in the world across its seven time zones.

For just as long, various factors have prevented the explorers among them from undertaking the 5,753-mile, week-long trek across Russia.

No longer.

In collaboration with the Russian Railway, Google has launched a new Web site that allows visitors to simulate every inch of the historical journey. With 150 hours of high-definition video, anyone with an Internet connection can pretend they're gazing out at the Volga River, Barabinskaya steppe and Barguzin mountains.

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"We wanted to do something about promoting travel within Russia," Google Russia's head of marketing, Konstantin Kuzmin, said. "There are so many places that are very, very beautiful in Russia but the fact is that not many people know about them."

Indeed, the Hingansky Nature Reserve and the Zeisko-Bureinskaya Plain are hardly household names for U.S. travelers. Even the world's biggest reserve of fresh water, Siberia's Lake Baikal, may be unfamiliar to many people but the site does a good job of selling its vast beauty as the train hugs the shoreline on a blue summer day.

To keep users engaged, the creators added various audio options besides the rumble of the train's wheels: classics such as Tolstoy's "War and Peace" in the original Russian, a stream of "Russkoye Radio" or a number of songs played on the balalaika, a Russian wooden string instrument.

Google also hired a spunky, blond radio announcer named Yelena Abitayeva to give guided tours of 14 cities along the route. In Ulan-Ude, Russia's Buddhism capital, she ponders how much a bronze version of Lenin's trademark cap would weigh for the statue of the Bolshevik's 24-foot high, 46-ton head. Later in the three-minute video, she takes viewers on a tour of the town's temples and interviews a monk.