I woke myself up this morning and thank god everyone had set alarms. I was pretty hung over and I was fighting to keep it together. I managed to get everyone up and ready and then off the train at Irkutsk, where thankfully our driver was waiting and had actually come on the train to get us. He walked us out of the station and straight onto a waiting bus, where he put on a DVD about seals and everyone proceeded to fall asleep for half an hour while that was o...

In Africa, there was desert madness....no on the Trans Mongolian Railway, there is Train Crazy... I love my job. I woke up on the train this morning at the Mongolian border at Sukbaataar. We sat there for about three hours before the Mongolian customs guys came on the train and stamped us out of the country. We then shunted across to the Russian border where we waited another seven hours for the Russian border guards to get on with sniffer dogs and also sta...

This has been a most random day. Firstly we got on the bus at 10am as planned and were taken to a meditation centre, as planned. When we got to the meditation centre it was halfway up a small mountain and we had to walk up to it. It was in some of the most spectacular scenery I had ever seen and had actually been built in the shape of an elephant, even though there are no elephants in Mongolia. All the way up to the centre there were Buddhist proverbs on si...

This morning I came down for breakfast which was brought out to me and resembled something that one would get in Turkey. I then went out in my limited amount of time before leaving for the Ger camp to find a working ATM. This search took up the entire hour and I only just made it back to the hotel in time, which included a panic stricken moment where I actually thought I had gotten lost. At the last minute I realized I was standing next to the huge monastery...

After shunting around for about half an hour we reached the Mongolian border and the customs officials got on and collected up our passports. Everyone was really tired by this time and some people had already gone to bed. I couldn't stay awake during the hour and a half long process and managed to get in a quick nap before my passport was handed back at around 2:30am. After I got my passport back I was out like a light. I woke up around 8am to the glories o...