Trans-Mongolian Beauty

At the beginning of our journey we both marked countries that we anticipated to be highlights of our year on the road. We both noted the entire continent of Africa and were not disappointed. Colleen achieved a dream and visited Borneo. I marked Nepal, a place which I was anxious to return to and also noted Mongolia, more out of curiosity and intrigue than anything.

We were slightly anxious to get out of Beijing. Kudos to their blossoming economy but the resulting tradeoff including neglect of the environment and a spotty human rights record left us hoping for more changes in the future.

Our long road out of Beijing was actually a train track, most commonly known as the Trans-Mongolian Railway and ends in the Mongolian capital city of Ulaanbaatar. The journey took us 31 hours and oddly we were the only two souls (plus one guard) on our train carriage. Nearly the whole rest of the train was completely empty. The scenery was amazing; some of the best of our trip thus far. We passed vast open fields, desolate desert, mountains ranges and small villages with their tidy train stations proudly proclaiming their names. We watched as foxes, wild horses, hawks, wild dogs, geep (goats/sheep), herders and cattle passed outside our window appearing almost as some sort of film reel for our constant entertainment.

The border crossing took place in the middle of the night. First the Chinese officials came on the train, searched our cabin and left wordless with our passports. Polite but very brisk and directed. They eventually returned with our passports and the train moved for 15 minutes. The train then sat idle another 2 hours while they changed the track gauges as the Mongolian tracks run on Russian gauge, which is slightly larger (I remember that they had to do this when crossing from Sweden to Finland as well). Next the Mongolian officials entered. They were friendly, smiled, spoke English and when they returned our passports to turned our lights off, shut the door and told us “sleepy, bye-bye”. We knew we were going to love this country.