Advertisement
Published: December 14th 2004
Runaway
The daily Irkutsk to Ulaan Bataar speeding away after I jumped off.I wish I had a photo of myself jumping onto the moving train as it pulled away from the station at the Russian - Mongolian border. The timetable said that we were stopping here for 5 (yes five) hours, so there seemed to be no problem with going onto the platform and using the loo but I when I emerged, the train was moving away from the station, all the doors were shut and I may have used the word 'bollocks'. There goes my passport and worldly goods. My futile attempt to ride the train didn't pay off as the doors were locked. With yours truly holding onto the outside of the train, the driver put his foot down. I decided it was wise to jump off before I found myself frozen to the side and passing through a tunnel at 50mph. As it happened, the train stopped 400 yards after that. I looked behind me and a Spanish guy from the next compartment was running through the snow in a higher state of panic than me. The entire day was taken up crossing the border.
The capital of Mongolia, Ulaan Bataar, is a pretty bland place. It has very
high unemployment and some of the locals have got 'on their bike' (thanks, Norman) and found a niche in mugging tourists. I wasn't there that long so I didn't see anything bad, just heard a few fireside tales of tourists having the shit kicked out of them. However, stories aside, all of the Mongolians I met were very nice people - especially the pissed bloke on the train who offered me a job in UB because of my star sign.
A whole bunch of Peace Corp Americans were staying at the hostel and seemed to know their way around so we hit the nightlife with those guys. Three hours sleep later, had to get up to hit the sticks in the Teralj national park. The place was amazing and we had to stay in a "ger" (semi-nomadic tent type thing). It wasn't exactly a kicking atmos at night tho', and it was bloody freezin'!
We couldn't get the direct train out of UB to Beijing (full), but the helpful hostel owner told us how we could get there with local trains. Only third class was available for the overnight journey and it was the carriage from hell. So
Jeff (a Chinese-American guy who was going the same way) took the initiative (cheers, Jeff!) and did a bit of detective work, getting us an upgrade to sleeper 'kupe' class. Lucky for us, 'cos we met some friendly Chinese/Mongolians there who knew the route and one guy basically did all of the thought-work, got us our tickets and then bought us dinner in Hohhot (a Chinese custom apparently - I'm lovin' it!). A bus, three trains and two days later, we arrived in Beijing.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.395s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 14; qc: 110; dbt: 0.3424s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
deleted_3426
deleted_3426
Jynx
That's a great story!