Chugging towards home on the Trans-Mongolian Express

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For many the idea of spending six days cooped up on a train seems ludicrous. For us, it seemed like a cool way to end our trip. What better a way to come to terms with ending our travels, than spending 130 hours inching ever closer to home. The Trans-Siberian train has featured in our travel plan ever since the beginning, so it is nice that we get to see it through.

The day before we left Beijing we got word of the forthcoming British Airways strike. They have delightfully chosen to begin their strike on the very day that we are due to fly with them from Moscow to London Heathrow. This triggered a panic attack, and desperate working out of potential plan B, C and D. As it happens we had already been working on Plan B since we learned that the Icelandic Volcano may also put paid to our plans to be in Holland for our friend's wedding. So this was just another factor working against us. In the end we decided that it wasn't worth trying to change flights because there are so many variables that might go wrong, that we may as well leave it in the hands of the Gods, and hope for good luck.

We left Will's apartment laden with bags of food in a taxi at 6am, to have us in the train station in good time for our 7.47am departure. It was sad to say goodbye to Will, but thankfully the early morning and the semi-fuzzy heads all round, meant that it was over quickly. He has been so kind to us during this trip that I can only hope that we get the opportunity to repay his generosity in the future. It was also a bit strange to leave his apartment. We know the streets around his place quite well by now, so if feels like we've left a home-away from home.

But alas, we couldn't stay. At the train station we found our platform and then went to find some greasy food in McDonald's. There truly are some occasions when there is nothing quite like a McDonald's! With forty minutes to go, we loaded up our bags and had our tickets stamped getting onto the platform. When we found our carriage, the uniformed attendant took our tickets and showed us to our new home for the next 130 hours.

It is a comfortable cabin. A bunk-bed (I never want to see bunk-beds again after this trip!), a comfortable seat, a table between the bed and the seat and access to a shower room that we share with the cabin next door. Our carriage was suspiciously quiet, and we were starting to get a bit nervous that the guy we had given our tickets to was nowhere to be seen.

He turned up soon enough, and assured us that he would return our tickets to us once we got to Moscow. I was a bit nervous at not having anything on our person that proved we were entitled to be on the train, but on the other hand, we were on the train, and weren't destined to get off it until Moscow. We settled ourselves and then went to sleep off our hangovers. The first hour of the Trans-Mongolian route takes you by the Great Wall of China, only it takes you by the same section that we had seen two days previous, so we weren't upset about missing it. When we awoke, the attendant gave us ticket stubs for a complimentary first lunch and dinner in the restaurant car.

We waited for our allocated lunch time to arrive and then took ourselves off down the carriages to the Chinese restaurant car. We had read that the restaurant carriage changes in each country, and that the Chinese one was the best. Shortly after taking our seats amidst several other westerners, we were presented with a plate of chopped celery and carrot, a bowl of rice and some processed meat in gravy sauce. It mightn't have looked the most appetising meal (in fact it looked suspiciously like tinned dog-food, indeed the meat may even have been dog - we will never know!), but it sure was tasty. Sadly it the exact same meal that we were served at 5pm that day but, given that it wasn't noodles, we lapped it up!

Out the window Chinese countryside gave way to the Gobi Desert and lots of it. Mile after mile of expansive sandy nothingness. It felt great to be literally in the middle of nowhere. As night fell, we stayed awake to participate in Chinese and Mongolian immigration. At both stops we had to wait about 2-3hours while the officials boarded our carriage and took our passports away to verify them. While the Chinese official had our passport in Erlian, the train started moving again. We didn't panic. Our trusty Lonely Planet had warned us that they needed to change the bogies under the train to fit the thinner Mongolian rail tracks. By staying in the train we got an up close view of how they do this. It mostly involved huge hydraulic lifts, that lifted half the train while some Formula One style mechanics bashed at stuff with hammers. Then they dropped us and started on the other half. Thankfully when we returned to Erlian station there was an official there with our passport that had been stamped out of China on the 12th May. Further along the track we went through the same process with the Mongolian officials. Handing over our most prized souvenir to someone we've never seen before was difficult. Again though, it all worked out and we were stamped into Mongolia at 2am on the 13th May.

When we pulled up the blind the next morning, miles of Mongolian Steppe lay in front of us. We filled our day eating and playing scrabble. We had brought hours of films from Will's collection, so the time passed easily. The Mongolian steppe occasionally gave way to some mountains, a village or some green fields housing wild horses or white circular ger tents. We were in no doubt that we were in the middle of Outer Mongolia - and it was beautiful.

We hopped off the train for twenty minutes to stretch our legs in Ulaanbaatar, and experienced our first non-Chinese city in a long time. The locals looked not strictly Asian, but not strictly European either. The only word I can put on it is weathered, but happy. The language was just plain weird to our ears after two months of Chinese. That night we went through the same immigration process with the Mongolian officials at Ulan-Ude. It all went fine however when we reached Russian immigration at Nauski the whole train seemed to be pulled apart. A curt blonde female immigration official asked for our passports and asked us to step out of the carriage. Another lady did a general check of our cabin and then we were allowed back in. It was pretty painless for us, however the Chinese staff seemed to be given a good going over, all of the panels in the other cabins seemed to be removed. I can only be grateful that we looked honest. And perhaps the truth of it is that we looked white. Two hours later Blondie returned our passports and that was that. We were in, and could finally go off to sleep.

With 130 hours in a room there isn't much else to do but sleep. We slept late the next morning, but awoke just in time to catch Lake Baikal pass us by on the right. It is the deepest lake in the world and holds one fifth of the worlds fresh water. The water is apparently so pure that you can drink it. It was the first time that I would truly have loved to disembark for a few hours to get closer, but I had a re-think of this when we stepped off for some fresh air at the next platform. It was bloody freezing! We were after all in the middle of Siberia.

The Siberian landscape was similar everywhere. Tall forests of birch trees lined the train track for long periods of time. We would occasionally come across a village made up of wooden houses with battered old Russian cars hobbling around on mud roads. Between forests and villages, there was a whole lot of nothing. There was a lot of marsh land and several frozen rivers. Our only proof that we were making progress was the kilometre signs that flew by the window, though when they start in Russia at 5500km to Moscow, you know you are in for a wait!

On the morning of day four, we had some new scenery when we pulled up the blind. The world was green and blue again. That day, at kilometre 1777, we passed back into Europe. A small, blink and you'll miss it, white pillar market the spot. It was anti-climactic for a moment that represented our return after 300 days abroad. It did however feel good to see the familiar. The Russian men and women still looked slightly different to us, but what we have come to recognise as the Asian look on people, was gone. We were nearly home.

We passed our time playing travel games, writing blogs/diaries and reading from the veritable library we had brought with us for this occasion. All our long journeys in China were good practice, for this the mother of all train trips. For the most part we had the carriage (and thankfully the bathroom) to ourselves. Our attendant was a grumpy Chinese man who had an English vocabulary of about twelve words, none of which was please or thank you. We ate mostly what we had brought with us, namely cereal, sandwiches and noodles, with enough chocolate to feed an army. The food was as repetitive as the scenery outside the window. On our last full day the supplies were running dangerous low, so we foraged as far as the Russian restaurant car at the end of the train. It turned out to be a grand, old style restaurant carriage, and the food wasn't half bad either. (Although we would probably have eaten anything that wasn't noodles at this stage!)

Cabin fever never truly set in, but when the kilometre markers turned from thousands to hundreds, we knew we were on the home stretch. As we neared Moscow the landscape became a lot more industrial, and our thoughts turned to getting home. Over the course of the six days we have gone through a roller-coaster of emotion about our travel plans to get home. The first joyous moment was when we got the text to tell us that despite the strike, BA were running our flight out of Moscow. We got a day or two out of that one before hearing that there was an ominous ash cloud hovering over Ireland that would probably close Heathrow Airport on the day we need to land there. That was it, we were on to plan C - to get a plane/train to somewhere in mainland Europe and make our way to Holland from there. The most irritating element was that we were completely dependent on texts from home, and couldn't figure anything out without internet access. Then suddenly we were back to Plan A, because the cloud had gone away, meaning we might get to Dublin after all!

By the time we set foot on the platform in Moscow we didn't know what to believe, but we made a pact not to look at the computer until we had seen a bit of Moscow. First off though we had to negotiate our way through the Moscow metro system.

The Trans-Mongolian Train trip is a mammoth journey that would probably more enjoyable if it was split up into three or four sections. That said, if you are doing the whole trip, first class is the way to go. If you bring enough supplies, it is like a long camping trip - without the camp-fire (unless the coal burners at the end of each carriage count?). It is a great way get a taste of Mongolia and see the variety of Mother Russia with none of the cold weather nor any of the hassles of trying to get around. It is the trip of a life time, and one that is thoroughly recommended!

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Photos

First class carriage
We had it all to ourselves!