Crossing Continents

Before we set off on this trip, one of the things that most people wanted to know about was the leg of the journey on the Trans-Mongolian - now it comes to it, however, it is rather tricky to write about. Not that it wasn't interesting, it most certainly was but it was on a slightly calmer, more personal level than for example the sights of Moscow or Beijing.

It would be easy to answer people's questions, if I could remember them! I think one of the most common was "won't you get bored?" The simple answer is "no"! There wasn't really time. Sure we were on the train for 4 days straight and we had both stocked up on books which came in handy but otherwise we kept ourselves entertained fairly easily.

We shared a compartment that was about 2 metres by 3 metres with two lads from Switzerland. That was a bonus because we could easily chat in English (they of course were excellent) and a little French (Leon did what he could!). They were also cool guys and we played cards and shared many a beer!

The rest of our carriage seemed to be full of Chinese traders. At some point (we never worked out when) they filled every available nook and cranny of the train (including the roof space and the ventilation shafts!) with merchandise (all sorts of things - clothes, computers, medicines!) and whenever we stopped they would leap off and frantically sell what they could to the people who met them on the platform until the whistle blew and then they would all jump back on! As we got further from Moscow and deeper into Siberia the number of customers grew so it seems that one can't get shonky leather jackets outside of the big cities in Russia!

There were also people waiting on the platforms selling things and considering that we stopped for at least ten minutes every three hours or so at the longest there was never much chance of going too hungry or thirsty. We had stocked up before we left Moscow but it was handy to keep the cold beer supply full!

Other than that time seemed to pass fairly quickly as we made our way through Russia, left Europe and crossed into Asia, and finally crossed the border into Mongolia. Personally I am always happy watching the world go by train windows, and the few hours we spent passing Lake Baikal were particularly impressive.

We pulled into Ulaanbaator a little tired (border crossings always seemed to be in the middle of the night!), fairly dirty (no showers, or really any hot water to speak of in the bathroom/toilet) but a little sad to think that the longest no-stop train journey of our travels was over.