Trans Mongolian

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Having been rejected by the Chinese, we tried our luck with the mongols. Fortunately the weekly train to Ulaan Baatar was on the last day of our visa, which saved us having to pay the 100 pounds a day we'd have to shell out if we overstayed the visa.

We managed somehow to get a cabin to ourselves, and so traveled in luxury, making ourselves cups of tea as we rolled out of Beijing and into Inner Mongolia, after darkness fell we went to sleep, only to be woken up a couple of hours laterby the Chinese border officials. During the formalities the train went into a huge shed and the wheels were changed. This involved the carriages being shunted from one end of the shed to the other, resulting in a number of mini crashes. No slepp there then!

The Mongolian border formalities were much more efficient than the Chinese, and so at 1.40am we headed into Mongolia, and we finally got to sleep.

We woke up to the vastness of the Gobi desert with the sun rising over it. There's very little out there, occassionally you see a puff of dust as a van crosses the wilderness, but generally there's not a person to be seen.

We arrived in Ulaan Baatar late lunchtime and immediately noticed how quiet it is compared to China, and certainly to South East Asia. There's also plenty of Russian hanging around looking moody and sun deprived.

It's getting colder too, the temperature rarely getting above zero here, but so far, we're liking Mongolia.

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