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An early start this morning. Up at 4-45 am for a 6am departure from the hotel. We were picked up in a mini bus and driven to Beijing Central Railway Station. We must have been close to the Harmony Hotel which Intrepid used as their hotel of choice for a lot of years but, changed recently because they closed the hotel and new owners took over.
We had met our other travelling companions for the Trans Mongolian Railway last night at our official Intrepid meeting where we all introduced ourselves with a mini intro as to who we were, where we were from and some other general info about ourselves.
After this and the formalities of documentation etc had been attended to, off we went for our welcome dinner to get to know one another a little better before our tour begins. We headed to a local restaurant a short walk away where, among other things, we had Peking Duck. You know, when in Rome ….. or Peking (Beijing) …… you have to try the local delicacies.
We have 12 altogether in our group, mostly Aussies. See, it doesn’t matter where you go in the world, sooner or
later you will fall over them.
We have Matt, Noel, Neil, Steve, Will (who is Irish but an Australian resident so, he’s a pseudo- Aussie and his wife Jen (who is Canadian but also an Aussie resident so, she counts, too) Ted, our daughter Jen, and myself (Jan); Aidan from Britain and Francisca who is German but lives in Switzerland. Our 12
th member is our Intrepid guide, Ksenia (pron. Kzenya) who is Russian and lives in Serbia.
We’d arrived at the railway station by 6-15am and had to go through x-ray screening at the entrance before getting into the station itself.
Like everything in China, the process is orderly and structured, even though there are hundreds and hundreds of people moving through the station at any given time.
Our train is K3/4 – 2
nd class, Beijing to Ulaan Bataar. We have compartments – with doors, unlike our trains in China back in 2008 (these were triple bunks either side of the compartment with no doors). There are 2 double-decker bunks in each compartment.
Our section of the train isn’t air-conditioned but, our compartments do have a fan and a window that you can’t open. Some
of the windows along the corridor do open at the top which lets the breeze in, which is something but, these can only be opened at the attendant’s discretion.
We left Beijing at 8-05am, right on time. Our train trip will take us about 30 hours to get to Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia which, in the winter months, is the coldest capital in the world.
After our formalities were completed on arrival at the station, we had about an hour and half before the train left so, Ksenia (pron. Kzenya) found us a place to wait with our bags where someone in our crowd remained on bag-watch on a rotation basis, whilst the rest of us went and found some breakfast ie Macca’s.
There were also plenty of other eating places of Asian food open and little mini-markets, fruit shops etc as well. There was also a KFC.
An egg and bacon muffin for breakfast with hash browns – I ended up with 2 because Ted doesn’t eat them – and an orange juice each.
All of this came to (Yuan) Y53 or around AUD$10 ($1 = Y5.75)
After breakfast, Ted and
I wandered back down to the forecourt area of the station so that I could take some photos and, I had taken a couple of still photos and had the video out and had just begun to record when an attendant came up to me and said, very politely, “no photos”. I don’t know whether that was because it was video or that she hadn’t seen me take the others and therefore, stopped me earlier. Anyway, I obliged and we walked back upstairs to re-join the others.
A passenger crowd had gathered at the entrance to Platform 6 where our train was to leave from but, we waited for another 10 or15 minutes before we proceeded as, there was not much point getting up to stand in line before they had even opened the gate.
We are all together in Car 7 in berths 21-32.
Navigating the – what had been stairs with a ramp down the side for you to roll your suitcases and bags down when we were here in 2008, were now escalators so, much easier to get down to the platform.
We had a bit of a hike along the platform to
get to Car 7 as, we are about 4 cars from the front of the train and we joined the platform at around Car 12, with the dining car in between.
The doorway to the train was almost level with the platform and we had a little ramp to be able to roll our bags over which made any lifting up into the carriage a non-event. There again, an improvement since 2008.
We settled into our compartment which was a bit squeezy with the four of us all trying to get into the cabin with all our gear and clear the passageway so that others could get past.
There is luggage storage under the seats which double as day seats and your bed at night. Same as the Indian Pacific or the Ghan back in Oz but, not early as salubrious. There is also a large storage area above the doorway inside your compartment.
Ksenia had been around after we had gotten underway being most apologetic that there would be no issue of lunch and dinner vouchers as she had previously advised us were included.
However, sometime later, the cabin attendant came through distributing both
so, everyone was happy.
A little later, he came around once again with linen for our beds – sheets, pillowcases, etc. that he gave to you from a supply that he had draped over his arm. There were blankets already in our compartments.
One look at the stains on several of the pillows indicated that some sort of covering certainly was needed and, we had our suspicions that the sheets weren’t in a pristine state of cleanliness either. Thankfully, when doing a trip such as this, a number of us always travel with our own cotton sleeping bag liners which double as a sheet in such circumstances.
Lunch in the dining car (which holds 40 people) was quite a pleasant experience food-wise but, it was like a sauna. No air conditioning and they didn’t have any of the windows open either. Because of the limited seating, they allocate dining times. Ours was between 11 am and 12 noon.
The food was rice, with a small plate of sautéed celery and another small dish of what looked like chicken but in little balls that appeared to have been deep-fried, and stir-fried capsicum and onion. Chopsticks were supplied.
Jenni and Francisca dined first at our suggestion and then Ted and I went. We never leave our compartment unattended at any time, just in case of the theft of valuables.
About an hour out of Beijing, we were soon travelling through quite mountainous countryside, passing through many tunnels (60, to be precise) as we made our way through the mountains.
The scenery was very pretty and very green. As picturesque as it was, it made it very difficult for the taking of photographs for, by the time you saw the landscape that you wanted to take, got your camera into position at the open part of the window to eliminate glare and reflection, you’d be entering another tunnel. Another missed opportunity.
Once through the mountains, the countryside flattened out considerably and we were soon passing through rural farming communities with lots of market gardens growing all kinds of vegetables including cabbages, corn, etc. There were also lots of fruit trees and many vineyards – a lot of them under netting to keep the birds away from the ripening fruit.
By 3pm, we were about 7 hours into our trip of 30 hours, making our
first stop at Datong.
Datong is a large coal-mining area and, our Lonely Planet guide equates it to Newcastle in Britain because of its industrial background. It was also the power-base for the Tang Dynasty in the years 618-907 AD.
By now, our group has melded well and we have all clicked, right from the start. There is always something going on in one of our compartments – a game of cards, a social tipple or two, or some other types of games – either “real” or ones we make up ourselves, to pass the time of long-distance travel.
It had now become quite warm and stuffy on the train so, the thought of a cooling ale was very appealing to Ted, Jenni and myself so, Jenni opted to go down to the dining car to purchase a beer for each of us.
After her return, I had taken about 3 mouthfulls out of mine and had put it down beside me on the flat surface between the seat and the wall when the train lurched and tipped the can over, spilling most of its contents.
I quickly up-righted the can and moved it onto
the table out of the way and grabbed some paper tissues to mop up the spill which, by now, had run down into the storage bin underneath the seat and onto my big bag that was stored in there. This had now turned into an even bigger clean-up.
Trying to lift up the hinged lid of the bin to get to the mess inside, I turned around to grab something else to mop up the beer for, the two Kleenex tissues weren’t quite doing the job, when I knocked over the can I had put on the table for safe keeping which then spilt the rest of the contents all over our Lonely Planet guide that Jen had been reading before the mishap occurred. Far out!
In our confined space, the sequence of events was like a scene out of Comedy Capers and, we now had another mess to clean up as well.
Her quick action to retrieve the book saved too much damage to it but, it was still quite soggy and, we had to do something before the sticky liquid stuck all the pages together.
She moved quickly to try and sort out the
book issue whilst I continued on with my job at hand.
After I had finished cleaning up the mess in the bin which now had the lovely aroma of brewed hops, as did my bag - when I got my head out of the bin and stood up, there she was, standing at the open window in the corridor, holding the book out the window, drying the pages.
Hurtling along the railway track at 120 kph, it didn’t take very long to dry the pages of the book which now has a lovely, decorative frilly-edged look to it.
By now, mid-afternoon had become very hot with quite a warm breeze blowing. The breeze blowing in from outside is warm and the countryside looks very dry and dusty. Consequently, we get a little of the dust inside the train. It is very hazy and dusty outside. The countryside has green-covered (short grass) undulating hills with some flat areas for farming.
We are now well into the Gobi Desert.
Looking out through the train window, the Gobi isn’t anything like I imagined it to be other than in its vastness.
Learning about it when a child
in school, all these years I have always had this mental picture of it as being dry, barren, dust and sand – totally inhospitable and not much good for anything – like most deserts everywhere.
As the hours went by and we travelled along, I continued to look out the window to see that the landscape had changed and was now totally as flat as could be as far as the eye could see.
Even so, there was a vibrancy about it. It was a green desert. Deserts to me, are always dry, brown and totally inhospitable.
The Gobi is none of these things.
For a start, it was green; there were herds of cattle, sheep, horses and camels grazing; it is more populated than I imagined it would be, with villages we passed through and people just going about their daily business.
There are coal mines; vehicles going to and fro; communication towers and wind farms everywhere as well as a small lake here and there.
The other thing I found totally amazing was that we had mobile phone reception all the way across the Gobi to the Mongolian capital of Ulaan Bataar.
We continued on throughout late afternoon and into the night until our arrival at Erlian Station at 9-20pm.
It is here that we will have the bogies (wheels) changed on our train to enable us to continue our journey into Mongolia …..
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Michael Rowley
non-member comment
Jan, Ted and Jenns Marvelous Adventure
Thanks for the blog. Hope you are having a great time. Wishing I was there. Pics are great.