Ulaanbaatar

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.