30 hours, one train and a long border crossing! (Beijing to Ulan Bator)

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At 07.45 we boarded a 30 hour train to Ulan Bator! This was going to be the longest journey I had ever done...so far!

The three of us had a comfortable four berth cabin to ourselves, with the bottom two beds acting a a sofa during the day. It was quite cold in the early hours, until the sun began to warm up the cabin. It was fairly roomy and would suffice for the next day and a half, aside from the industrial style toilet which allowed everything to fall straight onto the tracks, still it's better than a hole in the ground on Chinese trains.

Once again, standard train entertainment involved many card games, a nap and some book reading. We were given two meal tickets, one for lunch at 11am and one for dinner at 5pm. Being off season, the dining cart was only open for one hour and was not very busy. The food was ok, just a bowl of rice with vegetables and meat. When we asked a fellow passenger what it was/whether it was good, he simply replied - it's China, best not ask! It was nice to escape the cabin and have a mini adventure down the train for a while and it broke the day up nicely. Towards the end of the day i realised that the dining cart breaks were the only real thing I had done all day, but was very glad of them!

The border crossing took 5 HOURS! It was a very long process and our first experience of the cold weather we would soon be used to. First we stopped at Erlian, the Chinese border town where we were chucked off the train, not knowing how long the process would take. They have to change something on the train to make it suitable for Mongolian tracks. Two hous later in a waiting room, with no apparent signal, other people began to move and return to the train. It was now 11pm at night and we were still passport-less, having had them taken off us when we stopped. Back on board, and after another wait we were reunited with our passports and we rolled on into no mans land, and then Mongolia. The next stop was Zamiin Uud where officials boarded the train once more and the Mongolian inspection began! The lady was very official looking with knee high boots, epillettes and a salute at the cabin door! Once we'd had our passports taken and returned we could finally get on the move, and get some sleep at 2 am!

Once in Ulan Bator, we braced the cold weather & were lucky that someone had pre booked a hostel room and there was a representative from the UB guesthouse at the station. A warm shower and we were ready for Mongolia!

J x

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