Trans-Mongolian Railway

I am going to break my Mongolia stories into chunks to make them more manageable, so I will start with the voyage to get there.  Simon and I left early 2 Saturday mornings ago, and it was pouring down rain when we left our apartments to get to the train station (Murphy, thank you very much).  We both managed to stay mostly dry, and had fun investigating our new compartment in the deluxe section of the train.  There were only two ticket options and as I 1) don't speak Chinese and 2) have heard horror stories about long train journeys on hard benches, I had gone for the higher price, only to find that it was deluxe class as opposed to soft sleeper class.  Oh well, I've wasted $100 in worse ways.

Simon in our compartment

 The trip through China was pleasant enough; we started with some spectacular views of mountainous terrain followed by some cornfields, broken up by occasional towns and cities.  I think it was valuable to get an idea of the geography, even if the actual terrain became monotonous after a while.  I did some work and Simon learned some chinese, and we both wondered why it seemed like our toilet was flushing constantly, until we realized the stewardesses were using our bathroom as a changing room/toilet since there was no one in the room next to us.  They cleaned it often as well though so it was ok.  We had dinner in the dining car and Simon and I discussed the possibility that I am allergic to MSG as I always get sick after eating cheap Chinese food -- Simon probably thinks I just stay nauseated all the time, more to come on this later!

 At the Chinese border, we had to stop for several hours while Chinese border police cleared us to leave - the longest time its ever taken a country to let me LEAVE before!  A bunch of people gathered outside the train station, someone had a guitar and people bought beer and nuts in the store and it was a merry enough time.  It began to get colder at the end so I was glad to get back on the train and into my cozy bed...only to be almost immediately aroused 20 minutes later on the Mongolian border to go through the whole thing again.  The Mongolians took less time, soon we were - BANG - not on our way after all, as we had to change the wheels to fit the Mongolian train gauge.  Weird.  We soon fell asleep after resuming our trip.

Mongolian train track

Chinese train track

 In the morning after a surprisingly good night's sleep, I woke up to stare out the window at a changed landscape, and was still foggy headed when we passed a troupe of 2-humped camels!  Throughout the day we watched the arid, yellow plains turn slowly into rolling hills resembling the Badlands, and finally mountains appeared in the distance.  The plains were dotted with 'gers', Mongolian felt houses, and flocks of sheep and shepherds.

First views of Mongolia

 As we pulled into the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, we noticed that there were many gers, each surrounded by their own 5-6 foot wooden fence.  It was a strange mix of nomadic and suburban.  Slowly the gers gave way to small and then bigger and bigger buildings, followed by a strange view of a ferris wheel and aliens at an amusement park, and finally we rolled into the train station to be greeted by enthusiastic people from the Golden Gobi hostel and a pop version of 'The Waters of Bablyon' blasting from the radio.  It was strange to be greeted by something so familiar in such an unfamiliar place, but comforting as well.  Perhaps the world was not so big after all.

Click on any of these photos to see a slideshow of more pics from the Beijing-Ulaanbaatar journey.