Emma picked us up using a different driver at 6.30am. The cook was sick at the hotel, so she got them to give us a bag of cream biscuits each instead of the packed breakfast we had paid for. The train was Mongolian owned but seemed similar to the Chinese ones.
There was a large group of locals saying farewell to passengers in another carriage.
They put the four of us in one compartment and the men occupied the top bunks. We were cramped, but mainly because there was not as much storage space for luggage.
We said goodbye to Ulaan Baator with plenty of good memories from there.
We passed a lot of gers and herds of sheep, horses and cattle belonging to the nomads. The grass was green and not at all like the barren country we were expecting in the Gobi Desert, which we were passing through.
Nearly always mountains in the distance on the western side:
Now was a good time to polish off our Mongolian ANZAC biscuits. Love to know the story behind that. Tasted authentic, too.
While we had a extended stop at a station we noticed this large symbol of Mongolian Russian co-operation in earlier times. Presumably against the Japanese. This teenage horse rider was determined to get his horse to climb the steps up to the station. He finally did it.
This was one of our train staff checking who got on and off.
And these were the Mongolian locos:
We reached the Chinese border at 10pm and at the first stop we handed in our passports for stamping and our Mongolian departure cards. This took an hour. As we then travelled across the actual border where Chinese soldiers stood 30 meters apart and saluted the train. Chinese officials boarded to collect passports and customs declarations. This stop took 4 hours or more as they needed to change all the bogies to the narrower gauge. The train was jerked strongly ever time the move another carriage into the jacking stations, which were a bigger version of a car lift.
They put the four of us in one compartment and the men occupied the top bunks. We were cramped, but mainly because there was not as much storage space for luggage.
We passed a lot of gers and herds of sheep, horses and cattle belonging to the nomads. The grass was green and not at all like the barren country we were expecting in the Gobi Desert, which we were passing through.
We reached the Chinese border at 10pm and at the first stop we handed in our passports for stamping and our Mongolian departure cards. This took an hour. As we then travelled across the actual border where Chinese soldiers stood 30 meters apart and saluted the train. Chinese officials boarded to collect passports and customs declarations. This stop took 4 hours or more as they needed to change all the bogies to the narrower gauge. The train was jerked strongly ever time the move another carriage into the jacking stations, which were a bigger version of a car lift.
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