Mongolia

Nerd warning: this is a short post and it’s a little bit nerdy; read on if you’re interested in train timetables, or gain mildly autistic pleasure from such things; maybe skip this one if you don’t.

Back aboard a train. This time a Russian and not a Chinese train; thankfully. Nothing personal here, but after our experience of the Chinese-run Trans-Mongolian Express service, I’m very glad to be in the hands of the Ruskies once again. For one thing the wagon is clean; our cabin is spotless; the toilet is clean, and there’s plenty of toilet paper; the provodniks (cabin attendants) are stern yet efficient; the beds are more comfortable; and the set of bed linen and a hand towel we received was laundered to the point of being the paragon of what every housewife or husband in a washing powder advert dreams of achieving. I’m sure the Shanghai to Beijing bullet train and other services are exemplary, but the Moscow-Ulaanbaatar-Beijing service is pants.

Well what an experience this has been. A succession of quite randomly different places to stay, in some stunning locations, interspersed by gruelling amounts of long drives over rough dirt tracks through breath-taking landscapes. This is a big country, made all the bigger by the lack of paved roads, at least between any of the locations that we've been to. We've spent ten days, mainly in a Lexus 4x4 with two people we'd never met before, and who hadn't met each other before, performing a massive loop across the Southern and Central areas of Mongolia, spending the night in gers, and taking flying visits to some of the country's tourist attractions.

I'm involved in a slight altercation. I decided to have a crafty cigarette in the section at the end of the waggon we're in; it's the place where the проводник (provodniks - the cabin attendants) stoke the coal fire that warms the carriage and keeps the samovar at a steady 80degC. Smoking here isn't as naughty as it sounds because there's a little sign saying 'smoking compartment’ fixed to the wall above an ashtray. The problem is that the Russian train guard, Pavlov, is telling me I'm not allowed to smoke.

I've just got the third and final visa that we needed to get before we left on our adventures; the Mongolian one.

We needed three to start with: the Russian Fedaration, the Rublic of Belarus and Mongila. The first two we'd arranged through Real Russia, spending a little bit more money, but saving us the legwork and hassle, but the Mongolian one I decided to do myself.....