The languid beauty of a 126-hour train trip

For about $700 you can travel more than 6,000 miles, from Moscow to Beijing, aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway, the single longest railway line in the world.

(Yunya Yin)

Built between 1891 and 1916 to connect Asian and European cities across the great span of Russia, the Trans-Siberia Railway celebrates its centennial this year. Crossing a record seven time zones and offering up vast landscapes, the world's longest railway line has always attracted adventurers during its 100 years in service.

For the modern journey, passengers can travel in either direction and can choose among three slightly different routes, the Trans-Siberian (the longest, spanning Moscow to Vladivostok, Russia), the Trans-Manchurian (Moscow to Beijing, via Harbin, Manchuria, China), and the Trans-Mongolian (the shortest, Moscow to Beijing via Mongolia).

In the summer of 2015, Chinese photographer Yunya Yin wanted to capture the experience of this grand journey and bought one ticket for the Trans-Mongolian passage. Leaving from Beijing, Yin photographed her five-night, six-day, 4,736-mile crossing to Moscow.

(Yunya Yin)

"The interesting thing is that the time zone changed with the train's moving every day," Yin said in an interview. In fact, she said, "everything changed, except the people who [were] on the train."

Weak internet connections forced strangers to interact face-to-face, to share the journey. "I met a couple of friends on the train," she said. "Each of them have left me a unique memory." This congenial backdrop to such a potentially long and lonely pilgrimage informs Yin's images, lining even the darkest of scenes with a gentle warmth or a whisper of cabin-fever whimsy. Moving between the confines of the train cars to the snapshots of the passing towns and wind-swept vistas, Yin's dreamlike scenes convey a sense of peace and calm that could entice even the most ardent urbanite.

Tempted? Unleash your wanderlust and glimpse the languid beauty of a 126-hour train trip.

(Yunya Yin)

**To see more from Yunya Yin, check out her website and Facebook.**