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Irkutsk to Ulan Bator
Ok, how long do you think it should take to cross a boarder crossing? When the train arrived at our Russian Boarder crossing at 1pm we were told that it could take 4-5 hours to move the train carriages ready for the boarder crossing which would take a few hours more. Most of us got of the train, from 19 Carriages that left Irkutsk 11 arrived at the Russian Boarder Post of Naushiki, carriages 10 and 11 were at the back and as were later to find out the only ones going to Mongolia. I don't know why, but Russian railways decided to move the carriages one by one on to the other track in order to separate the train as carriages 1-9 were going back to Irkutsk plus a convict wagon. Why they did this I haven't a clue, surely they would have been better off putting us all in the front of the train then splitting the carriages on one track. This took something like 4 hours!
It turns out that almost everyone travelling to Mongolia were tourists so perhaps it was Russia's way of saying goodbye? However because of this long stop quite a few of us got chatting and discovered that we had pretty similar train experiences up to that point, i.e. where were the Russians drunk on Vodka?
Well at 5pm we handed in our passports, around an hour and half later customs came on board with sniffer dogs then we managed to get out passports back and the train headed off for no mans land. This is an area guarded by an electric fence, outposts and 2 new Vera's telling us off for photographing the outpost.
After reaching Mongolia, the soldiers at the outpost saluted the train as it went past (very sweet). The Vera's then allowed the locals to use the loo but no one else (loo's are closed on board at train stations and half an hour away from train stations, loo breaks have to therefore be timed!).
At the Mongolian customs stop of Suhbatatar, we had to again sign various forms and hand in our passports for checking. Finally we got our passports back and were allowed of the train, it took a grand total of 8 hours to get through the boarder stops and travel 21km!
That evening pretty much turned in to a blur. I think most of the travellers were so fed up of the waiting around to cross the boarder they turned to drink, so much so we had a party in our carriage with quite a few of the other travelers much to the annoyance of the Vera's. I can't remember very much to be honest about the whole evening! The Vera's got their own back on us, they woke us up at 5am for our stop at Ulan Bator
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