And so the Journey Begins

Here is Travel Bear and his sherpa (most of the luggage is his really!) waiting for the train in Beijing.
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It is a long way to Ulaan Baatar on the train. Especially when you have a cold.

We set off from Beijing very early in the morning in our train. I'd heard people rave about the trains in China and how they were heaps better than the trains in Vietnam. Obviously we got the dud train. We didn't have aircon, just a fan that sounded like it was going to die at any minute and that was switched off for most of the night. The bathroom was better than on a Vietnamese train but then again a pit toilet without a roof or a seat is better than a Vietnamese train. The beds were comfy enough but I wouldn't have called them soft. They did have really good pillows though.

This is the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. It is really green in places at the moment because of the rain.
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In our carriage were two Chinese men who seemed to bring most of the contents of a supermarket into the train with them. They yelled and screamed as they carried loads of boxes back and forth along the corridor and then tried to pack them into a four bed sleeper. They clearly didn't have the packing gene because I could have got so many more into the space and still had room to sleep. They spent most of the journey in fact, moving the boxes up and down the train. Especially when two girls arrived and announced that the top two beds were theirs. I assume that there isn't a freight compartment or it's very expensive.

These are the houses on the outskirts of Ulaan Baatar. Lots of people still live in the traditional houses even though they have land.
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We settled into the journey and slept lots after a couple of days of walking around in Beijing. We got given a couple of meals while on the Chinese side of the trip but unfortunately the restaurant car stopped at the border.

I was asleep when I woke up at the border (correct that was woken up by the offical yelling at me!) and it took us nearly 5 hours at the border to do Chinese immigration, change the wheels on the train for the Mongolian tracks and then Mongolian Immigration. Mongolia does so far have the nicest immigration officials in Asia. The lady wished us a pleasant visit when she brought our passports back at about 1.30 am.

I luckily because I was so sick, slept through most of this and actually managed nearly 12 hours sleep on the train plus a lot of lounging around.  I feel a lot better today and hope that another couple of quiet days will help.

There is a big difference between Mongolia and China. It is easily seen as soon as you cross the border. Everything in China is very the same and dull colours. The countryside is very drab. Mongolians might not have much money but they paint their houses bright colours and the kids wave at the train going past, they have play areas for the kids in the towns and basketball courts and the people generally look happier and more friendly. The desert here is very green at the moment because they have had a whole lot of rain so all the animals have been moved in to graze. We saw camels, cows, horses, sheep, goats and multiple types of birds (something that you don't see in China at all).

We haven't seen much of Ulaan Baatar yet so I'll write about that in the next entry. Tomorrow we are going to a village for a home stay so I'll have plenty to write about when I get back.