Where do you think we are now?

I sent detailed emails to the family about our time in Beijing, and since this blog is for them, I won’t spend any time re-telling those stories now. Perhaps on a slow day in Spain I’ll recap some of the adventures and include a few pictures

We tumbled out of the hostel at 6 am with our three suitcases, two daypacks and a guitar. The first cab we saw was booked for someone else. The second cab driver didn’t seem to want to go to the rail station. I thought it was because we were on a one way street going the wrong way, so I started to walk toward the main street. No, wait, he’s called over another cab, driven by a woman, and he’s telling her how to get to the railway station, which is really only about six blocks away. She gave us the six ways to turn right on the first ring road tour of central Beijing and finally we were there.

The biggest challenge of the day was getting out of the maze of the taxi stands and into the main hall of Beijing Station. It’s huge, but not too confusing, we found our way to Waiting Hall Number 2, train K23, with time to spare. Any concerns we had about being in the wrong place were erased when backpackers and travelers from Europe and North America began arriving for the Trans-Mongolian. Once past the guards and onto the platform it was easy to find Car #2, Berths 17,18 and 19. Lucky for us no one came to claim berth #20 so we had the compartment to ourselves for the trip.

The train left at 7:45 and we got to Ulaan Baator at 1:30 the next day, so it was about 30 hours, 4 of which were spent at the China-Mongolia border where they had to change the train wheels (bogies) for the wider gauge track used by the Mongolian and Russian trains. That was between 8:30 pm and 1:30 am, so real sleep did not come until we were across. John fell asleep in no-mans-land between China and Mongolia and the Mongolian customs, health and border crossing guards had pity on us and did not insist on waking him. Already we could tell that Mongolia is more relaxed than China!

The train ride was just what the guide books, blogs and Utube movies prepared us for. Hot water from the samovar at the end of the car to make our Chinese instant coffee and noodles. Toilets clean enough and not smelly at all because the waste goes onto the tracks! Clean sheets, blankets and pillows provided by the steward, make your own bed when ready. People selling snacks and beer from carts at the stations We only stopped a couple of times but we did manage to take advantage of that. On the China side the restaurant car sold only Chinese food (too bad for John) but the beer was cheap. In the morning we discovered that the restaurant car had been changed for a Mongolian one and the food was more familiar: toast and jam and ham slices for breakfast. I thought we were getting eggs too, but we must have misunderstood the translation “breakfast complex”.

In the compartment on one side of us were a girl from Chicago on her way from Tokyo to Moscow, a man from Belguim who has been traveling for 18 months and another American. Next to them two girls from Oxford, England and a couple more Americans. On the other side of us, three cars of Chinese travelers. On the next car, two Canadians from the east coast who were on vacation from their teaching jobs in Korea.

During much of the train ride we were at the windows saying “Where do you think we are now?” We don’t have a detailed map, and the station signs went by too fast for us to translate After a while we just let it go past, we knew when we woke up in the morning we were in Mongolia because the landscape outside was desert and the pollution was gone. They call it “blue sky country”!

At Ulaan Baator Station we were met by the guide from Samour Magic tours and hustled onto the van to go to the Ger Camp After ten days of Chinese characters the Cyrillic letters on the signs looked quite familiar. By the time we were out of the traffic jam that is the city I could read the words bank, restaurant and supermarket - what else does a person need?