Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Mongolia to Irkutsk
The train we boarded in Ulaanbaatar was a Russian train and differed greatly to the older Chinese train that had brought us here. The carriages were far newer, and whilst some how smaller in size, were more comfortable. We thought we had hit the jackpot as there were only three of us in the four berth cabin, an English fellow from our tour group, Krissy and me. This meant we could forgo the usual game of Tetris, trying to fit in all of our gear and use the spare bed as a storage space. Making the situation even better were the two bags of groceries Krissy and I picked up before we boarded. This was made possible by the fact that we could actually read some labels in the Mongolian supermarket. Most importantly it meant that we would not have to rely solely on pot noodles as our only source of sustenance for the next few days. We settled in for what we were sure would be a swift and comfortable trip.
At 3.15am the next morning this notion was shattered. Our door swung open and we awoke to the sight of a Mongolian woman with bags under each arm, looking rather disgruntled that her bed was covered in our baggage. For the next hour, in a sleepy haze, we poked, prodded and jimmied bags into the few storage spaces our wee cabin possessed. Finally our new comrade's bed was freed from our clutter and she placed her bag on it and went down the carriage to her friend's cabin for the remainder of the night.
The attendant came around early that morning to wake us up in preparation for our boarder crossing into Russia. She needn't have, as the 30 degrees that they insisted on heating the train carriages to, made sleep next to impossible. We filled out the requisite paper work and presented our passports to a young Mongolian, clad in a military style uniform, who insisted we each "stand and look at me!" when handing over our documents. Little did we know at the time, but to leave Mongolia would take our train seven hours! Six and a half of which were spent sitting motionless at the station. Krissy and I both agree that train travel is an enjoyable and relaxing experience as well as a great way to see the country side. However for this to occur, the train needs to be in motion! This was a frustrating and time consuming exercise and we are still unsure why it needed to take so long.
We were informed by our new roommate, in broken English, that the Russian boarder was even worse. When we finally left Mongolia, the razor wire fence between the two countries was the centre point for an extreme contrast. The faces on the side of the tracks changed from the weathered faces of the Mongolians to the clean cut features of Eastern Europeans. The surrounding infrastructure transformed from the unplanned, scattered Gers and small buildings, to organised settlements of wooden houses and somewhat bland soviet-style compounds.
We prepared our bags for what we were sure would be a more rigorous search by the Russian custom officials. We watched as a number of officials bordered the train, each wearing crisp green coats with sparkling brass buttons and the customary Russian fur hat. Although we were asked at one stage to leave our room so they could search it, the whole process was relatively straight forward. I even made one of the officials smile, very briefly (and no doubt fulfilling her daily smile allowance) when I attempted some broken, phrase book Russian. Despite being relatively stress free, the process still took five hours, taking our time spent sitting waiting at boarders that day to twelve hours.
We were happy to finally be in Russia (a feat that would never have happened had it not been for an immense effort by Krissy to wade through the requirements of Russian bureaucracy) and very happy to be moving again. We settled in for our last leg of the journey to Irkutsk, content in the knowledge that we would not have to cross another boarder on our train journey. Our frustrations soon resurfaced when we quickly ascertained that we had been connected to a local Russian commuter train, which would stop every twenty five minutes or so, to drop off and pick up passengers. This continued through the night as we crawled our way to our destination.
Never one to waist an opportunity, Krissy spent her time challenging anyone who she could find to games of scrabble.
- comments
littlegeek geek love the toilet :-) wat do u think is better that one or nanypops ??