Train to Mongolia (30 hours)

Pictures: Craig's


We've got some high speed now and can finally catch up (I'm not uploading all pics since they charge per megabyte). In our last couple days of Beijing we met a nice couple (German this time); Claire and Maxim. They are doing an around the world trip, much grander than our piddly 3 month journey :)

We hopped on the train early in the morning to travel from Beijing to Ulaan Baator. This was our first experience in a sleeper train. Four bunks were in each room, a narrow hall on one side of the carriage allowed walks to the bathroom and to a hot water tank. Our roommates were a married Mongolian couple (I can't recall their names since I could barely pronounce them correctly when I heard it). The woman was a linguist; she could speak Mongolian, Russian, Spanish, and English. She told us she worked for the UN as a translator. Her husband spoke Chinese and Mongolian. They were a cute couple and he seemed to make her laugh a lot. We had some good conversations learning about each other's country. When the husband had something to say, she would translate for him. When a train attendant told us something in Chinese, he would translate to Mongolian for her, then she would translate to English for us - quite the game of telephone.


The views from the train were spectacular as we passed through innumerable types of terrain. We found blue skies and clean air as we departed Beijing; cities are so dirty.


Customs/Immigration woke us up in the middle of the night to do the whole passport and declaration thing once we hit the border. It was fairly painless except for being woken up. The part that did cause some grief was the changing of bogies (train 'wheels'). Mongolia has wider tracks than China, so it's not a simple transition. We were clanked around in our carriage (we chose not to get off for the hours the change would take). We were pushed into a giant train garage, where once positioned, we were lifted off the Chinese bogies to roll under the Mongolian ones. It was a neat process; unbelievable they do this every time a train goes through.


We arrived in Ulaan Baator (UB) early afternoon. We knew we wanted to go to UB Guesthouse so we started to walk; by shear luck, a woman (later known as Bobby) came up to us with a sign that said "UB Guesthouse". She took us to a taxi which drove us to the hostel (this was incredibly lucky for us, because we would never have found it otherwise). The guesthouse was cozy with folks from all over the world. Laminated sheets outlining strict rules for the hostel were plastered all over the wall. Mr. Kim, owner of the hostel, was a Korean man with a gusto for business and pleasing his customers. He quickly got us settled and explained the city layout; warning us not to go out late at night alone. Through him, we arranged a trip out of UB for the next morning...