SINGAPORE: In June, Nicholas Chua found himself standing in a snaking queue at the land border between Estonia and Russia. He had waited about 10 hours, unable to step away even for a quick toilet break or a meal.
He had taken a three-hour train ride from Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, to Narva, a border town on the country’s eastern edge, hoping to cross into the Russian border town of Ivangorod the same day.
Experienced travellers on the online forum Reddit had warned of long queues, as well as strangers approaching those waiting in line to offer a place closer to the front in exchange for payment.
Chua, 25, a third-year electrical engineering student at the National University of Singapore (NUS), experienced such an offer first-hand but declined it.
“I didn’t want to encourage them and be the guy who causes queue issues. It put those who were following the rules at a disadvantage. Some of them might have had to stay in line overnight,” he says.
The border crossing was just one leg of Chua’s 46-day rail journey home from Scotland, where he had completed a five-month exchange programme at The University of Edinburgh.
He started the trip on May 28. Rather than fly directly back to Singapore, he decided to take the long way home by train, which he believes will be difficult to replicate once he settles into the rhythm of adulting.
“Five months is the longest I’ve ever been away from home. By the end of the exchange programme, I really missed Singapore but decided to do this train trip because it felt meaningful to head home like this and explore the world along the way,” he says.
By June 6, he had travelled across the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, and finally had to make what he considered the most challenging land crossing of the entire route – between Estonia and Russia.
The two countries share a complex geopolitical relationship shaped by historical events and ongoing security considerations that influence border protocols.
Chua spent around 10 hours waiting in line to cross the border between the town of Narva in Estonia and Ivangorod in Russia.
To make matters worse, a heavy downpour started midway through his wait, soaking his duffel bag and backpack under what little shelter his travel-size umbrella provided.
He finally cleared Customs at about 9.30 pm, after queueing from 12.50 pm that afternoon. But at the Russian border, he was detained for around 30 minutes, during which his photographs were taken, and he was required to hand over his phone for inspection.
“They checked everything, from my albums to my chats. My privacy was gone,” he says. Despite the experience, he says he never felt he was truly in danger.
“I’m not Russian, and I’m not from the European Union. I’m just this Singaporean guy who decided to cross this border. It made sense that they would question me. Most people would fly into Moscow instead of crossing the land border.”
With the same curiosity and open-mindedness, he continued the 21,445km journey home by train, travelling through 14 countries.
The inspiration for his trip came from Spanish YouTuber Ramilla de Aventura, who posted a video on his experience taking the world’s longest train ride from Portugal to Singapore in June 2023 – roughly 18,755km long – which has chalked up more than 2.5 million views to date.
“I tried to follow the video as much as possible since it’s been trialled and tested. But I also had to use Google to check if some of the routes were still operational or if there were new routes available,” says Chua, who posted a map showing his route on TikTok after the trip.
Beyond Google, he also turned to AI chatbots Gemini and ChatGPT to narrow down the most suitable or alternative routes.
In total, he spent around $6,000 of savings from internships and national service on the entire journey, with most of his expenditure going to food and accommodation. He spent two to three days exploring each city before moving on to the next.
Chua remembers being particularly fond of locomotives as a child, drawn in by the sheer scale of the trains and the rhythmic sounds and movements.
Although he tried to map out his itinerary in detail before setting off, he had to book much of the trip on the fly. For instance, he would buy his train tickets about three days before leaving a city and arrange his accommodation only afterwards.
“Sometimes, I’d plan far in advance and things wouldn’t work out, then money was wasted on booking the accommodation,” he says.
He learnt this lesson after unexpected train cancellations from London to Brussels in May – he forfeited the accommodation booked in Brussels and scrambled to stay at a friend’s place at the last minute.
Still, trains have always held a special place in Chua’s heart.
He remembers being fond of locomotives as a child, captivated by their sheer scale and the rhythmic sounds and movements. In 2024, he spent six months as an assistant engineer at public transport operator SMRT Corp as part of an internship.
Today, the reflective experience of travelling by train continues to draw him.
“When you live in a city, there are so many people around that it can sometimes feel crowded and bothersome,” he says.
“On trains, you can just watch things go by and look at others living their lives. I sometimes have neither an internet connection nor any distractions, and have to be alone with my thoughts. There’s a lot of time for reflection.”
After crossing into Russia, he travelled from Ivangorod to St Petersburg and Moscow, visiting iconic landmarks such as the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood and the Red Square, where the Kremlin – a historic citadel that now serves as the official workplace and seat of the Russian government – stands.
The final stretch of the Russian leg, however, was the most gruelling.
Chua had planned to travel from Moscow to Ulan-Ude – the capital of Buryatia, a mountainous Russian republic in eastern Siberia – on a 95-hour train journey. It would be the longest train ride of his journey home.
Ulan-Ude was a stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway, the longest railway line in the world, which spans over 9,200km from Moscow in western Russia to Vladivostok in the east. Trains on the Trans-Siberian Railway typically have three cabin classes: first (spalny vagon), second (kupe) and third (platzkart).
The most expensive first class offers the most privacy, with two beds in a compartment with a lockable door. Second class has four beds – two upper and two lower bunks – in a compartment that also has a lockable door, at around half the cost of first class.
Third class, meanwhile, has an open-plan layout with no compartments or doors. Instead, rows of bunk beds accommodate more than 50 passengers.
Hoping for a more comfortable journey, Chua had intended to book second class. But a miscommunication when he bought his ticket in Moscow saw him walk straight into a third-class cabin.
“I only realised it when I boarded the train. It could get quite noisy and uncomfortable, which led to poor sleep,” he says.
Despite the blunder, the experience proved unexpectedly eye-opening.
“I ended up talking to people on the train, sometimes with translation apps like Google Translate. I found out that some of them were going home from work or visiting family and friends, while others were getting deployed for military exercises,” he says.
“I kept meeting different people because most passengers were just travelling between cities. They don’t usually take 95-hour train rides.”
The nearly four-day journey passed in a blur of changing faces and friendly conversations, quick meals in the dining car, a few downloaded movies and plenty of time spent staring out of the window at the vast expanse of Siberia.
“I think a trip shouldn’t be all smooth sailing. There should be certain challenging parts to it. Without a challenge, it doesn’t make things interesting,” Chua says.
On June 15, he reached Ulan-Ude and spent two days exploring the city, whose attractions include the Buddhist temple Rinpoche Bagsha Datsan on Bald Mountain and a 42,000kg statue of Russian politician Vladimir Lenin’s head.
From Ulan-Ude, he travelled to Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar and then on to China, Hong Kong, Laos, Thailand and Malaysia before finally reaching Singapore on July 12. Among his favourite experiences during the trip was meeting friends along the way in places like Berlin, Beijing and Penang.
“Going on a solo trip for 46 days can get quite lonely. So, when I had the opportunity to be with my friends in a foreign country, it was really fun and memorable,” he says.
This was not Chua’s first solo trip and it is unlikely to be his last.
In September 2023, he trekked through Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, United States.
That November, he hiked Mount Ollivier in New Zealand. And in 2025, he flew to Iceland and backpacked through the geothermal valley of Landmannalaugar and Hornstrandir, a remote nature reserve in the Westfjords.
Solo travelling, he says, brings out a different side of his personality – one he enjoys cultivating.
“When I’m alone in a foreign country where nobody knows me and I’m having a lot of fun, it makes me more talkative and more willing to approach strangers,” he says.
Some might describe this as wanderlust, but Chua is acutely aware that his current freedom is finite and that certain realities await him after he graduates in 2028, including an increasingly competitive job market.
He says: “I know eventually I’ll have to find a job. I know trips like these won’t last forever. So, I’m really trying to make the best of my life while I’m in university, when I have so much freedom and so much free time.”
For now, he has another adventure on the horizon. In December, he plans to travel with 14 others from the NUS Mountaineering Club to Nepal, where they will attempt to scale one of three peaks – Naya Khang, Tsorku Peak or Scout Peak.
The group will travel from Kathmandu to Thulo Syabru village in Nepal's Langtang Valley, avoiding areas affected by the recent deadly floods. They plan to make the journey during the dry season, after the monsoon months from mid-June to early September, when conditions are safer for trekking.
Just a few years ago, Chua never imagined he would explore remote destinations on his own, let alone take 28 trains home from Scotland. Now, he no longer wants to leave his travels to another day and hopes to be able to do at least one adventurous trip a year.
“I’m happy with how far I’ve come. I’m no longer dreaming about things that I could do, but I’m actually doing things,” he says.
