Day 13, 14 - 10th - 11th September - Trans Mongolian Express to Ulaanbaatar

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Trans Mongolian Express to Ulaanbaatar

Boarded the train for Ulaanbaatar, which had Mongolian staff working on board. The train was the oldest yet, but the windows opened fully in each cabin, which made a nice change. The forth person in our cabin was Jean - a very chatty French man who was doing the Trans Mongolian trip from St Petersburg to Beijing in 3 weeks with very few stops. Also on board was Liam and Angela, who recognised us from Listvyanka. Liam was on a 5 month trip similar to ours and Angela, a friend of Liams was travelling with him for the first 3 weeks, to Beijing. After a few vodka's, Jean mentioned that he had a funny French movie on a USB key, so we watched it on my netbook in our cabin.

After the first night on the Trans Mongolian, we woke up to absolutely amazing scenery. Mountains, rivers and large grass deserts (steppes) everywhere. We weren't yet in Mongolia but it felt like we were!! It became apparent that the pretty much all of the people in the carriage were tourists, unlike on the previous trains, and everyone was in the corridor starring our the windows and taking pictures!

After a few hours we reached the Russian Mongolian border, where our passports were collected. We were able to get out of the train and walk around as we had a six hour wait! It was scorching hot out! Luckily there was a shop nearby, but unfortunately we were out of Russian Roubles so we had to stick to tea to quench our thirst!

Finally, after a long wait, we were given back our passports, then the train started moving and we crossed the border into Mongolia. We stopped on the other side for a few hours, but this time we were able to buy things from a shop in the local village, as they accepted US dollars, which we had plenty of. Everyone on board stocked up on warm cans of beer and crisps, and the train started moving. As the warm beer started taking effect, the carriage turned into a massive moving party. People exchanged travel stories and six of us later squeezed into our cabin for card games, loud music and laughter! Everyone decided to go to sleep at about 3am, leaving 3 hours for sleep before arriving in Ulaanbaatar.

Woke up at 5:45, with 15 minutes to clear up last nights mess, pack bags and get off the train. Everyone on board looked worse for wear. Jean looked green and was holding tightly to a plastic bag.

We dragged our bags off the train at the station, said our goodbyes and greeted a very smiley man from our hostel “The Mongolian Steppe Guest House” who was waving a board reading Paul Vymeris. We jumped in his car and he drove us to the guest house. The streets of Ulaanbaatar were empty. The sun was rising, so the skies were purple and it seemed a bit foggy. It felt like a million miles from Russia, which was quite a refreshing feeling. The city looked like it had taken a beating from the weather over the years and needed more than just a lick of paint here and there! We reached our guest house which was a converted flat near the large State Department Store, on the main high street “Peace Avenue”. We were greeted by Eiggy, a very friendly lady who runs the guest house, who showed us to our room, for a 3 hour snooze.

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