Set the alarm for 3.30am and Ivan picked us up at 4.10 and got us onto our 4.50 Chinese train K4. These consistent early starts make us feel we are on one of those large group tours that start every day very early, but the personal aid from our guides make it all much easier for us. When Real Russia booked our train tickets, for some reason we do not understand they put the two women in one compartment and the men in another. This was glossed over by the guards on the two Russian trains so far, but our officious Chinese guard was most put out and had a long consultation with another guard before reluctantly agreeing to leave us where we were. The compartments in this train have double bunks which means Ken and I have to climb a precarious ladder. The compartments have internal access to a small room with a sink and a flexible shower hose. These rooms are shared with another compartment but once again Real Russia did not ensure we had compartments that we shared facilities with each other. We only had 26 hours on this train so did without the shower.
The first part of the trip was over the hill up to 900 metres and down the other side to Lake Baikal at 500 metres, then following the lake for several hours.
It is a long way across and much further along to the top. Locals were out fishing in rubber boats and probably caught plenty in this isolated area. We passed many rivers that feed into the lake and arrived in a town with a sleeping steam train.
We passed through a very large city which we did not identify but it had dozens of large apartment buildings and much industry.
The train windows had not been washed since it left Beijing on its round trip to Moscow, it seemed so we had some trouble seeing and photographing through them. We also passed another very large lake.
We also passed a power station.
After this we were disturbed to hear the train driver continuously blow the horn for a minute or so and the train slowed. A corridor window was opened so we stuck our heads out carefully and saw a herd of horses up ahead crossing the line. I was just to late to snap the last horse.
But I whizzed over to our compartment window and caught them running away.
We eventually stopped at this station - Naushki - at about 6pm.
We were getting close to the Mongolian border and this was the Russian Customs and Immigration check point. An official woman collected the passports of everyone on our carriage and took them away to an office on the station. Money changers came through the carriage and we still had roubles to the value of about A$5 so we swapped them for 3,320 Mongolian Turgots. We later found that even though it sounded a lot it was worth $2.50. Other people got better exchange rates. Perhaps they had more money to change. Someone looked up the proper rate on their phone and negotiated a fair swap.
The Russian military came through with a sniffer dog and three German Shepherds. They asked us to step out of our compartment and searched it. A Mongolian official asked us if we had anything to declare? We thought of answering "such as?" but just answered no, with no clue as to what was declarable. After more than 4 hours at the station with nothing to do, they finally brought our passports back and asked us to fill in a Mongolian card. It was one of those days when Lyn read a whole book (large print). Every time we stopped at a station the guard locked the toilets so there was often a queue by the time we got going. 18 people sharing one toilet. We went to bed but were wakened by Mongolian Officials near midnight and passports were taken away, compartment searched again and passports finally returned at 12.15am
The first part of the trip was over the hill up to 900 metres and down the other side to Lake Baikal at 500 metres, then following the lake for several hours.
We passed through a very large city which we did not identify but it had dozens of large apartment buildings and much industry.
The Russian military came through with a sniffer dog and three German Shepherds. They asked us to step out of our compartment and searched it. A Mongolian official asked us if we had anything to declare? We thought of answering "such as?" but just answered no, with no clue as to what was declarable. After more than 4 hours at the station with nothing to do, they finally brought our passports back and asked us to fill in a Mongolian card. It was one of those days when Lyn read a whole book (large print). Every time we stopped at a station the guard locked the toilets so there was often a queue by the time we got going. 18 people sharing one toilet. We went to bed but were wakened by Mongolian Officials near midnight and passports were taken away, compartment searched again and passports finally returned at 12.15am
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