May 21 – 22, 2008
After a visit to the grocery store the previous evening, we were up bright and early on Wednesday morning to put on our packs and head over the pedestrian bridge to the train station to catch the first train of our epic journey – the train to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. Our train departed at 7:45am for an overnight journey that would put us in Ulaanbaatar around 2pm on Thursday.
Carol (from London) and I are ready to go! Our train was No. 3 and it ultimately goes to Moscow – which is something like 6 days journey straight through from Beijing (but we de-trained in UB).
Our fearless Intrepid leader, Petr Ishkin. Petr is a Buryat, which is is a minor Siberian (and Russian) ethnic group that is closely related to Mongols. Petr was great; a very smart man; an English professor in Russia that has lived in the U.S. (Austin) as well as the Philippines! His job was not really to be a tour guide – he was just there for us in case we got into any hairy situations – for the most part, we were on our own, which was great!
View from the top bunk! The train from Beijing was the most basic of all our trains, but it was not bad. We were travelling kupe class, which is essentially 2nd class – where there are 4 berths per compartment and 9 compartments per carriage, plus one compartment for our attendant. Sheets, pillows and blankets were provided. At either end of the carriage was a toilet/sink; but for our entire trip – no matter what train we were on – the toilet at one end was either locked for the attendants’ use only OR it was broken. We were the one-loo tour. Speaking of loos, this is the train where I got locked in the loo (where the door knob came off in my hand) and the tighty-whitey wearing China-man rescued me. Too bad I left my camera in the compartment! Also – the loos are the flush-on-the-track kind – so every time we would get close to a station stop, the attendants would lock the loos for about 15 min before and 15 min after. This is a valuable lesson – if you are ever in the middle of nowhere and you need to cross some railroad tracks, it is best to just jump directly over the rails – whatever you do, do not step on the track!!!
Sarah (London by way of Johannesburg) prepping for surgery. Seriously though – the window is open, the dust was kind of bad, and she was having a bit of trouble breathing at times.
The train stopped every 4 or 5 hours, for as few as 4 minutes or as much as 30 minutes, depending on how major the station was. Just enough time to jump off the train, walk around the platform, maybe buy some sundries, snap a photo, and hop back on. You would definitely NOT want to get stranded by your train – so it was best to keep your eye on your attendant and not stray too far.
The food on the train was not bad – this particular dining car was a Chinese dining car – which was replaced with a Mongolian one at the border. Wings, celery & ham, eggs & tomato, cabbage & soy sauce…
A view from the back of the train – still in China – you can tell because of the double tracks. We’ve left Beijing and the Great Wall far behind!
This guy chased us down the last carriage and got a little irritated at us – I think he thought we were going to open the door. He actually managed to ask “where you from” and was pretty happy to see an American – he took my picture with his cell phone so I made him return the favor.
This is where I managed to accidentally change the ISO setting on my camera and I didn’t realize it til later. Oh well. These next few pics were taken at
Datong railway station (around 4pm on Wednesday) in China – this train was on the platform next to us, and the people were nice enough to smile for a photo!
Gradually, the landscape is getting more barren.
Last railway stop before the border – a conductress for another train using flags to signal to the front of the train that everything is clear.
For the most part, there were snack carts at each railway station – it was just a matter of whether you had the time or the money. They sold anything from jerky, bread, chips, gum, soda, beer, juice…
Sunset over the Chinese countryside, from the restaurant car – still chugging along to the border!
Finally, the last stop in the area of China known as Inner-Mongolia – Erlyan – complete with neon lights, just like Vegas. At this point, we are in the Gobi desert. We reached it around 11:15pm Wednesday, 15 1/2 hours after we departed Beijing. Three important things happen here – 1) immigration/passport control, 2) customs, 3) bogie changing. They collected our passports, looked us over, let us off the train to shop at the duty-free shop and hit the loo. You could either hang out in the station or get back on the train for the bogie changing, which was not to be missed…
You might be wondering – what is “bogie changing”? Well, first, a bogie is the chassis of the wheel body that supports the train. For some stupid reason, the gauge of the tracks in Mongolia and Russia are slightly wider than in China and most of Europe. So, the best solution is to haul the train off to a very long warehouse, unhook all the carriages, undo the lug nuts on the bogies, slowly lift the carriages up with hydraulic lifts, slide all the wheels out from under the whole line of carriages and slide the new wheels in from the other end. The whole process takes probably 1.5 – 2 hours – and you can hang out on the train while it is happening!
Here’s one of the workers with his magical panel of buttons.
Looking out from the front of our carriage – which has been separated from the neighboring carriages. The lifts are slowly lifting each carriage up – it happens so slowly that you cannot even tell you are moving – even with a reference point. Look at the tracks – on the right side you can see the difference between the two gauges.
Our train was pretty long so they split it in half and pulled the other half up next to us, so we got to see how everything worked – here is a video of them moving the original set of bogies out from under the train and replacing them with the wider versions.
This is THE most important appliance on a train. The coal-fired samovar which provided us with boiling water – so we could eat wonderful things like pot noodles and soup-powder-packets and make tea and coffee. There is a thermometer so you can tell when the water is safe to drink – 100 degrees Celsius. Did I mention that I never want to see another pot noodle again?
After the bogie changing – we got our passports back and headed a few minutes over the border to the Mongolian side – where we repeat steps 1 and 2 (immigration and customs), for another 2 hours. By this time, it’s well past 1am.
The next morning – we are finally able to see the countryside again – these next few photos are from the Mongolian town of Choyr.
Hey look, the station from the billboard.
This is a statue of the first Mongolian cosmonaut, VVT Ertvuntz. Silver-painted and tacky, he’s still cool looking.
At the Chinese border they detached our dining car and at the Mongolian border they attached a new one – Pectopah is the Cyrillic spelling for restaurant – and it is pronounced ristoran, not peck-tow-pah.
Here’s an airbase with camouflaged bunkers. Probably Soviet and probably abandoned. We saw so many, I can’t remember which one was which.
All through the Mongolian countryside (and the Gobi), there are ger camps. More on gers later. On this train, there was an American in the compartment next to mine. His name was Tristan, he was from Idaho, and he was probably 21 years old. He was studying Chinese in Beijing and was making a visa run – on certain visas you have to leave the country every 90 days, so he was going to UB for the weekend. We passed a few villages and Tristan and I were marveling at what life must be like – to be so isolated – and he said “if I lived in that village, I would just hope that there would be at least one hot girl”.
Another rustic train station in the middle of nowhere, Mongolia.
Looking towards the front of the train. For the most part, in Mongolia there is a single track (unlike China which is dual-track). Seems like a bottleneck to me, especially for wood and fuel that is heading from Russia to China. Also notice – new engines were attached to our train – changed at the border – and now there are two engines – a backup in case we get stuck in the Gobi.
Looking towards the back…right before UB, the tracks began to snake left and right – perfect for taking pictures of the train…
Finally, we are starting to hit the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, around 2pm on Thursday, 30+ hours after our departure from Beijing! It had started to sprinkle rain a little – which helped keep some of the dust down – but it stopped just in time for our arrival into UB.
…to be continued…
