On the Trans-Mongolian

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Early morning start for Benedict and I. He is kind enough to drop me at the station. My train leaves at 08:10 precisely (as advertised on the ticket, with "precisely" underlined and in bold). Benedict is going to try to change his ticket to leave Ulan-Bataar earlier then he planned, so that he may join me in Beijing for Tibet.

As I get on the train, my cabin is yet again filled with bags. Thankfully, this time it is not cigarettes but the bags of three English guys, named Ben, Jack and Jamie. Ben and Jamie are going round the world on bikes. They cycled from London to Moscow and will cycle from Beijing to Singapore and then around Australia, then from Southern Chili to Canada etc... Great guys, having taken 3 years of their lives to do this together. 3 years !!! What a commitment!! How can they live within meters of each other non-stop for three years? They are terribly nice and cheerful, having already managed quite a bit of the journey and are terribly enthusiastic about the rest of their travels. I recommend you go on their website: http://www.freewheelseast.co.uk/. I have met so many of those characters, I can’t help but wonder if they even know what it is they are trying to leave behind or even if they know what it is they try to conquer ? I suspect I am much the same, why do I travel so much? Why do I enjoy it so madly? What am I trying to conquer?

The journey on the Trans-Mongolian was, for the first day, fairly uneventful - crossing the large Gobi Desert, with only the odd camel to break the monotony of the landscape. We stopped at a Gobi station on the way. Ben, Benny and I got off, walked along the platform and got back in the restaurant car. We enjoyed a beer and made our way back to the carriage. When we got there, Jack (Ben’s brother) was panicking madly because he assumed we all got left behind without passports and money. A stern telling off later, dinner was eaten in the restaurant car, decorated in hunting fashion style, full of carved wood and stuffed animals hanging from the walls. A few beers and long discussions later we approached the border. The Mongols came through and did a proficient passport check, no searches and no questions asked. The Chinese took 3 hours to go through 5 carriages but we soon got moving. This is it, my 9th country of the journey. With this thought in mind I quickly fell into a peaceful sleep being rocked along on my way to Beijing.

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