Trans Siberian Train (Mongolian Route)

Day1
Moscow has about 9 train stations so I wasn't quite sure which one I was meant to be at for my trans-siberian trip and neither were the guards or workers at the stations! Anyway i eventually made it to the right place with just a few minutes to go and what a nice surprise - the train was a Chinese train with Chinese guards - smiling friendly welcoming faces. :) It really didn't matter that they couldn't speak any english, just the fact that they were friendly more than made up for it. And there was more! I ended up in a luxury first class compartment all to myself. I was the only one on hte train with such luxury. The compartment had 2 bunks another window seat, a table and a shower room with a sink and an extendable tap, which could at a push be used as a shower. The room had a carpet and wood panelling, and the toilet was at the end of the carraige. Everything was kept very clean by the guards in first class. I was queen for a week. I ended up sharing on the last day though with a big wheezing American guy. He was very nice though.

There were a lot of other Europeans particularly Scandinavians on the train. And the Dutch couple in the next cabin were also carrying pee mates with them...which was a real coincidence...but quite normal for them.

Anyway the train began rolling at 9.30pm and made a couple of stops in hte night at Vladmir and Gorki.


Day 2
Breakfast in the Russian restaurant...nothing for veggies except half cooked fried eggs and stale white bread, but even that is delicious when you are hungry and have no choice.

The rest of the train consisted of 2nd 3rd and 4th classes. A lot of Europeans in 2nd, in 3rd and 4th classes huge Chinese families from grandma to grandchildren sprawled all over the corridors, fat Russian families with their chickens and fish and tough Mongolian traders smuggling huge boxes of goods and every nook and cranny they could find.

Along the route the train stopped many times giving us time to get off and buy food from the little old Russian ladies in their scarves and woolly cardies selling their home grown veg. I ended up eating fresh tomatoes and cucumbers for lunch and dinner every day for the rest of the trip.

The train chugged along at about 50mph max passing a lot of forest interspersed with odd little villages with collapsing wooden shacks each with their own vegetable patch. Occasionally passing small rivers and meadows full of wild flowers over rolling hills. A lot of the trees were being logged here.

Day 2 continued...
Well while on the train I was accosted by a lovely Mongolian man.. a bit
of a wheeler dealer, funnily enough he
had completed the Art of Living meditation course...what a small world...anyway
it just so happened that he
was helping some other Mongolian smugglers with illegal goods on the train,
he seemed to know all the officials
at the border points, all the train workers etc...anyway he proceeded to
seranade me with a Mongolian love
song, and wanted me to go and live with him and his horses and his family
in the Gobi dessert in his Ger
(Mongolian tent). Maybe next time.........

In the evening we reached the Ural mountains, well more like hills really,
and as I sat in my cosy little wood
panelled cabin, I watched the sun setting over the lakes and mountains,
a beautiful bright red sunset...really
stunning. The Urals are heavily mined for coal and lot of surface mining
still goes on in these parts as well as in
China. We made stops in hte night at Sverdlovsk, Tumen, Ishim and Omsk.

Day 3
Another beautiful day, past many colourful meadsows and some small towns,
again the houses were small wooden
shacks each with vegetable patch. It was a very flat landscape you could
see for miles...a bit like Norfolk! We
travelled all day across the West Siberian Plains. Spent the day drinking
beer with the Dutch next door and
reading...managed to read the whole lonely planet Trans-Siberian Guide
from cover to cover.
Stops today included Balabinsk, Novosibirsk and Tomsk (yes, as in the Womble!)

Day 4
More soggy uncooked fried eggs and by now even staler Russian bread for
breakfast....better than starving I
suppose. Back in the moutains today, covered in silver birches again interrupted
at intervals by small wooden
shacks. A lot of logging goes on here and many freight trains with logged
timber passed by. Don't know what
their environmental policies are like?

Not so sunny today either, but no less pleasant. I managed to buy more
home grown tomatoes and cucumbers
from the little old Russian ladies at the station, to stock up on my supplies,
I even managed to get a couple of
bananas, a bit exotic for this part of the world, but I had to pay dearly....5
Rubles each (20p total).

Met a lot more Europeans on the train today, Lithuanians, Swedes, Norwegians,
Dutch. Celebrated summer
solstice with the Swedes...lots of beer and champagne.

Stops made today include Kroasnoyarsk, Ilanskaya, Taishet, Nizhne-Udmsk,
Zima, Angarsk

Day 5
Woke up at hourly intervals throughout the night to gaze out at the sun
rising over the beautiful Lake Baikal,
the worlds deepest lake, was 7km deep but now with sedimentation is 2km
deep and is in the process of
widening. One day it will be the worlds5th ocean. It also contains 1/5th
of the worlds fresh water. Although it
is becoming very polluted from the local industries. Anyway it was still
an amazing sight, very still lake with mist
rising against the surrounding tree covered mountains.

At 1pm we stopped at the Russian border, we had to wait 4 hours while the Russian mafia, took our passports away went off to watch telly for a bit, play cards and generally feel that the

Day 5 continued...
At 1pm we stopped at the Russian border for 4 hours (at stations the toilets are locked so we have to cross our
legs the whole duration), while some Russians border control officers took our passports away to their office,
had lunch, watched telly, played darts, others just wondered up and down our train looking authoritative. Well
they have to look like they are doing some work! Luckily on our train were a Russian dancing school, so the
kids all got off the train and practiced their dances on the platform...that kept us entertained for a good two
hours. They were excellent too.

Eventually we got our passports back and we were off again, everyone rushed to the loo in the proceeding half
hour before we reached the Mongolian border crossing where we would have to wait another 4 hours for the
same process to take place. The Mongolians were a little friendlier than the Russians and kept reminding us of
the fact, but they were also much more switched onto the fact that they could make money out of tourist, so
one of the officials - a woman, came onto the train with dodgy looking printed cards which she told us were life
insurance and obligatory if we were travelling through Mongolia, even if we weren't spending any time there,
after a bit of questioning and arguing I ended up paying her 10 dollars for the piece of card. So now I have
Mongolian life insurance. Well I didn't want to risk being taken off the train for questioning if i refused to buy
it....I obviously hadn't read the bit in the Lonely Planet which warned of 10 dollar life insurance scams in
Mongolia!

While we had stopped we had changed from an electric to a deisel locomotive.

The landscape had also become much more dry, coming into the dessert, dusky mountains in the background,
with another beautiful red sunset forming behind the peaks and horses roaming on dry grassy plains.

The train made the following stops today, Irtusk, Slyudyanka, Ulan Ude, Guisinoy Lake, Jida, Naushki, Dozorne,
Suhe Bator.

Day 6
Woke up in Mongolia, a much more lively city, which rich and poor living side by side. Also on the outskirts of
the city were gers ( herders tents) set up wherever they had felt like it. Cows and horses roamed freely over
the dry land. You could tell how rich a herder was fromthe number of horses that he owned. In hte autumn
they would kill their cows for food becuase they would not be able to survive the freezng winters, where it
reaches -40 degrees. However the horses were much more resilient. If they ran out of food though they would
occasionally kill a horse too. The gers were enormous tents which they moved every 4 months or so, they were
canvas on the outside and lined with felt on the inside, they also laid wooden flooring and had a central fire
place, rather cosy. An outdoor toilet and washing in the nearby river...god knows what they did about washing
in the winter...probably heated up some water on the fire. Its amazing to think that during Genghis Khans
rein, the Mongolians had conquered all the countries between Hungary and Vietnam, including all of Russia and
China!!!! The biggest empire ever, they even pushed backthe Roman empire.

Well this morning I also had a big wheezing retired American man arrive to share my little cabin, a bit of a
squeeze, but it was ok for a day and a half, good job it wasn't for the whole journey.

Later this day, we entered the Gobi dessert......sand for miles and miles. You couldn't even get bored looking
out at the dessert all day...it was spectular, always something coming up, the occasional ger, hawk, camels.
Even a camel being skinned for food. This was all part of the old silk route. The temperature outside was 39
degrees, but our train was nicely air conditioned.

We stopped for 4 hours again at the Mongolian border, on leaving the country. Then 45mins later stopped again
at the Chinese border. They were much more efficient, only 2 hours and each time the cabins were checked
for smuggled goods, don't know how the Mongolians had got away with it...probably bribes.

The train was then taken to have its wheels changed. Each carriage was jacked up with us in it and the wheels
replaced for the different gauge in China. ( The Russians wanted to have a different gauge than the rest of the
world to stop invaders!).

Stops made today, Darhan, Zonhola, Ulan Bataar, Choyr, Sain-Shada, Dzamynude

Day 7
Awoke to rows of crumbling but very beatiful 500 year old chinese brick houses. Also plains of vegetated land
with huge crevices at very regular intervals where rivers had washed away the crumbling sandstone. It was
the most spectacular sight, very romantic, just like a chinese painting. I was gobsmacked and just spent the
rest of the day staring out at the beauty of north China.....the paddy fields, corn fields, donkeys and farm
workers. This reminded me very much of India except a lot more organised and less chaotic. We came into
the mountains, really steep craggy rocks in the mist and got glimpses of the amazing great wall, I can't beleive
how steep it is in places, incredible how they built it in such conditions. One of the most beautiful sites I have
ever seen.
Arrived in Beijing at 2.30pm. Felt quite sad at leaving the train, the cosy room, the cheery guards and all the
friendly Europeans, Chinese and Mongolians and even Russians I had met.