Almost the longest train journey in the world...

10 June - after many months of research and mixed reports from travel agents, helpful and not so helpful acquaintances, fellow travellers and random internet-based bloggers, we finally make our way to Beijing Railway Station and find our train - the Chinese Trans-Mongolian K3, destination Moscow! We meet our friendly carriage attendants who point us in the direction of our cabin.

After some backpack maneuvering through the narrow corridor, we get a chance to take in our home for the next five nights. It’s decked out in dark wooden veneer with two bunk beds, a good sized table in the middle as well as a chair on the other side of the bottom bunk so we can enjoy each other’s company horizontally at ground level. (Sounds a bit kinky, doesn’t it?) We even have a bathroom between our cabin and the first which is great for innovative showers using pierced water bottles and hot water from the thermos in the corridor. Victor is quick to notice there is no air-conditioning though and only a very noisy clattering old fan. Lucky we’re going North West so it’s not so hot anymore.

The cabin we choose is for two people although had we decided on a four-bunk cabin, we would very likely have had it to ourselves regardless (and more dollars to our name). Our carriage has us in it and another Australian to Mongolia and then just us to Moscow. Not exactly what you’d call packed liked sardines. The other carriages seemingly have more people but the train is far from full.

The train starts moving and we say goodbye to beautiful Beijing as we weave our way through the suburbs and into open pastures. Soon we’re invited to have free lunch and see many backpackers heading to Ulaanbaatar. Out the window, the tumbling ruins of the Great Wall make an appearance every now and again and it’s fun to see people and animals alike walking alongside it as if it were a dilapidated farming fence of no great importance.

After a nap, I wake feeling incredibly unwell with an excruciating pain in my chest and my left arm feeling rather numb. I work up paranoia and decide I’m having a heart attack. When we arrive at Erlian, the Chinese-Mongolian border town, doctors there show keen interest but decide I haven’t got swine flu so everything is ok. But what do I have? After some interesting translation, we are directed towards the hospital at Erlian so that I can get an ECG. Hopefully we’ll make it back to the train that leaves in a couple of hours. I bet no-one I know has ever been to the hospital at Erlian!!! After many dozen Chinese nurses and doctors show interest, take blood tests, test my blood pressure, ECG me and comment and gesticulate towards the note written by my doctor at the station, the head doctor says, “No problem.” I had wondered how my diagnosis was going to be revealed when I didn’t speak Chinese and they didn’t speak English. Maybe someone I know or at least an English speaker has been to Erlian Hospital after all. We pay very little and they hand me some seaweed-tasting dropping pills that will do the trick - apparently. They worked because I’m here to tell the story.

We head towards the Mongolian border town of Zamyn-Uud and Victor takes care of the border formalities while I snore. Apparently they are pretty relaxed and don’t much bother looking around our cabin - they are more interested in Mongolian and Chinese traders. Oh, it’s also an immutable law that all border crossings happen around 2am to ensure that you don’t actually get any sleep as most take no less than three hours.

11 June - at 7:50 am, I awake and look out our window to be greeted by a desolate and impressively sparse background. Welcome to the Gobi Desert. This landscape continues until we reach Choir, 649km from the Russian-Mongolian border. We spot the occasional ger tent, the odd truck, a few horses grazing and very little else. The train gets incredibly dusty too as we travel through an area that literally gets up your nose. Past Choir, the landscape changes and green grass starts overtaking the sandy desert flats. Ulaanbaatar is renowned for being pretty uninteresting and we can agree. The stop at the station reveals very little except that most of our fellow passengers are leaving us. Next time, Mongolia! Next time...

We start running low on supplies so we head to the restaurant car now run by jovial Mongolians who serve us some yummy tasting broth. They also force us to drink vodka shots after lunch. Then it’s back to the cabin to read and rest and watch beautiful Mongolia slowly but silently drift on by. We arrive at the border around 9pm (we think - time zones are a bit confusing when travelling such long distances at once) and don’t leave the Russian town of Naushki until we are both fast asleep. Almost from one minute to the next, Asia withers away and we are ‘greeted’ by blue-eyed, blond-haired, unsmiling pale white faces. They are so unsmiling it’s funny and we both can’t help laughing as they check our backpacks for secret weapons and illicit drugs. Probably not a great way to behave when interacting with border agents but they let us into Russia.

12 June - Victor estimates we left the border around 2:15am as we pull into Ulan Ude at 7:30am. This is where most people get off to explore Lake Baikal which we will spend many hours pondering as the train skirts the western side. Our food supplies are dwindling and we avoid the restaurant car as much as possible to save money. We are told train stations have food you can buy but were disappointed in Mongolia and saw very few mare-milk selling ladies. We make one last trip to the now Russian-manned and ‘womanned’ restaurant car and our waiter bears a striking resemblance to Boris, from ‘Snatch’. Or, wait - was he from Belarus? The food is ordinary but a welcome addition to our predominantly instant noodle-based diet. We don’t have any Russian currency but Zima prevails (Russian for ‘winter’) and we get cash as well as Russian sausage, bread, tomatoes and cucumbers! YES!!!! Back to the train and we say goodbye to Lake Baikal and watch the sun never really set as the sky goes a dirty grey colour but never quite darkens.

13 June - we laze and watch Russia stretch before us with pine tree forests, rolling hills and the occasional snowcapped mountain in the background. We are in Siberia after all! We eat many salami sandwiches and take advantage of any station we stop at to buy extra supplies like wafer biscuits or extra water. I drink many gallons of green tea throughout the trip out of an empty noodle soup container because I forgot a teacup. Silly me.

14 June - We wake around 8ish (I think) to be greeted by a cloudy sky that slowly turns into drizzle. We have covered over 1,000km during the night which means there are ONLY 2,000km to Moscow. Tomorrow - we arrive! We grab more station food at Yekaterinburg and Perm and admire the pretty cookie-like cottages and winding freshwater streams from our window. In the afternoon, we start thinking about packing up as we arrive middle day tomorrow in Moscow. We have enjoyed tracking our journey by using our trusty Lonely Planet as well as racing to either side of the carriage to glimpse the pointers that mark every 100 metres. I even manage to get the BBC World Service on my shortwave radio today which is very exciting. (Thanks for your pointers, Dad.)

15 June - I awake early, as in 5:30am early and although I would never rise at this time when at home, travelling this way definitely beats sudden jetlag that comes with air travel. We have a final pack-up and enjoy some salami-inspired breakfast. Ok, we’re really over Russian salami too. We are less than 500km from Moscow. We are scheduled to arrive mid-afternoon and are jumping with excitement about finally eating some cooked food. Our carriage attendants have eaten steamed dumplings, stir-fry and many other lovely smelling things so we figure it’s our turn. Moscow, here we come!

And by the way - do you know what the longest train journey in the world actually is??

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