TransMongolian Train journey

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Tuesday September 12 - Monday September 18, 2006

I'm cheating a little here by labeling this as Mongolia, since it is actually Russia, Mongolia, and China, but figure that you'll allow this as creative. I've decided to just lump all the days together as they were fairly similar, being on a train for almost 7 days, as you can imagine.

The good news is that, overall, it was a great journey. I got along with Caryl and Darragh, my cabin mates, very well. They were both great to talk to. They traveled for a year and then were home for three months before starting out again on this shorter three month journey.

The Chinese woman, Dong was her last name, was nice as well but slept almost the whole time, except for meals. Towards the end of the journey she was awake a bit more, and spent some time reading.

Most of my days were the same - breakfast, lunch, dinner. Breakfast was either dry cereal, oatmeal, or noodles to change it up. Lunch and dinner were noodles, possibly oatmeal to give it a real shake up. I added sugar, banana, and chocolate to the oatmeal. Snickers or cadbury fruit and nut - that has to be healthy, right?

Between meals I would mostly talk to Caryl and Darragh, look at the scenery out the window, take some pictures. Occassionally I would stroll down from carriage to carriage to look at where other people lived and peek in at the first class. Near the end I started reading a lot - went through about three books in the last three days. Read a little about China in the guide book Caryl and Darragh had with them.

I met a lot of other people as well. Steve is from England and is going to be living in China, teaching English. Robbe and Vikki have recently gotten married and will be traveling and living abroad for about two years. Mark and Sharon were on their honeymoon. Tom was going to be looking for work in China. Got a chance to spent time with a lot of people, as well as play Trivial Pursuit (big Friday night event). Saturday night Caryl and Darragh went to the food cart for a beer after immigration and ended up coming home at 9am or so after a full night of singing. I missed that one - shame.

Russia was beautiful. We went past lots and lots of forests and lakes. It was always pretty and the leaves were just starting to turn. It was a shame that I didn't stop along the way to see some of the towns and sights, but I would like to come back to Russia at some point and do it slower. We were in Russia from Tuesday night when the train left Moscow until Saturday night when we crossed into Mongolia. In that time we pased through five time zones, but I didn't change my watch along the way since the train goes on Moscow time. I did change my watch finally one day before we arrived in Mongolia and this was a huge mistake. I essentially tried to go to sleep five hours early. It didn't work. By 3am I had turned the lights back on and was reading. Everyone else did the same as well! The border wasn't nearly as hard to get through as I had been led to believe. I was particularly worried about the customs officials taking all my money since I didn't have my entry customs formed stamped. But it was all very easy. A man came on the train after they collected all our passports, told us we would have 90 minutes to walk around outside, and then we could get back on and get our passports back. And it really was that easy. Then we went into Mongolia and then collected passports and this time we waited on the train while they stamped them in and handed them back. Then we were on our way again. Of course by now it was really late - sometime after midnight.

Mongolia was nearly all Gobi desert. It was a rather boring desert with not much to look at, truthfully. It was noticeably hotter on the train as well - it has been really cool in Russia. We spent only Sunday in Mongolia and then had the late border crossing. This one took forever. The Mongolians stamped us out with no problems and then we just waited for an hour, doing nothing apparently. Then the Chinese came and stamped us in. The more waiting. Then we had to go through the long process of changing the wheels on the carriages. The gauge of the tracks for Mongolia and Russia is different than in China, so they literally have to pick up each car and replace the wheels underneath. We were inside the car the whole time and the process - wheel changing and immigration - took over 5 hours. During this time there is no bathroom use, as the toilet just empties onto the tracks. So when it was finally over they gave us ten minutes to walk around. I ran to the bathroom inside the train station and felt much better.

China was very different than either country as well. It was also warmed and all green rolling hills. Very pretty. We even had a stop at the Great Wall to take photos quickly. The train was due to arrive at 2:30pm and I spent the day reading and making sure everything was packed up and ready to go when I got there.

In the end, I'm really glad I did this. I wasn't sure what it would be like to be stuck on a train for 7 days, but it was good. It went by quickly and was rarely dull. The cabin felt like home and it was a good experience. We got out at all the stops to stretch our legs, maybe buy some chips or a coke. It was worth the hassle it took to get the tickets!

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