Mongolia to Beijing

View blog top tags

Mongolia to Beijing

This leg was like a trip from heaven. Having endured the 5 day stint Moscow – Ulan Bator, with its russian restaurant car staffed by someone with huge boils on his face and a chef whose clothes were so dirty he may as well as have been an abbatoir worker, this Mongolian train was something else. It must have been brand new stock. I had my own TV at the end of my bunk, the entire train was spotless (including the windows, which you could even see out of) and the toilets were cleaner and more deluxe than any I have seen since leaving Bristol. The restaurant car was like a 5 star dining area, with a menu to match – I felt underdressed in my shabby outfit of unwashed garments with array of food smears down the front. It was like a luxury aeroplane on wheels.

The views out of the the windows were breathtaking, and sunset across the mongolian steppes viewed through the restaurant windows in the jampacked car actually produced an awestruck, collective, appreciative 'oooooh'. Everyone was rammed in there trying to spend the last of their mongolian tugriks before hitting the chinese border. I had 4 beers without even realising it, having hooked up with a couple of swedes – one a young death metaller called Jonas who despite his menacing appearance was sweet and lightness itself. Another mature swede joined us – she was a tour guide but was a chain smoking party animal who produced a pot of 'snooz' – small teabags of tobacco you insert inside your upper lip. When Jonas realised she had them he begged her for one as he had been without it for two weeks. Intrigued (and drunk, obviously) I asked for one and shoved it up my philtrum, waiting for something to happen. It was actually quite pleasant, flavoured with liquorice. It was obviously my first 'snooz' though because whilst the other two continued to look normal, my upper lip bulged out on one side and my teeth were involuntarily displayed, creating a lop-sided sneer. I only realised this when I went to the toilet after another beer.

During the Mongolia-China border crossing we were shepherded back to our cabins. Because my agency in Ulan Bator had managed to lose my ticket and got a replacement at last minute it meant I was in the Mongolian carriage. All the others were packed to the rafters with international backpackers. It turns out that my mongolian room-mates were very welcoming and when I returned from the restaurant car they were really worred as I had been gone for several hours and they knew I was travelling alone. I was feeling quite inebriated and they offered me their food – homecooked delicious stuff – and gave me juice. I only remembered the snooz too late when it became mixed up with the dumpling I was eating and I chewed on it for about 30 seconds before spitting it out. I don't think I could have been more disrespectful to my mongolian friends. Then they asked why I was travelling, and I told them, and then I asked them, and two of them were brother and sister on their way to Beijing for medical treatment for some kind of terminal illness. I felt like such an arse. It sobered me up quite quickly.

When I thought I could not be more of a waste of space, ever, they then started to grill me about english football. I don't think it could have got any worse. I felt like such a failure. There can't be anyone less informed about football than me, but I struggled on, making uninformed and madeup statements statements about Chelsea and Gary Lineker, and the mongolians corrected me continuously, but ever graciously. I eventually crawled up to my bunk with a newfound level of self hatred and disappointment and fell unconscious with a bag of biscuits open in my sleeping bag, so that on waking this morning I had them stuck at various locations across to my body and face. I think this must be karma of some sort.

They changed the wheels on the train last night – I thought they did that in Russia too but I was mistaken. Last night we got shunted into a big shed and they lifted the train carriages up on hydraulic lifts and slid out the wheels then replaced them with different width ones in order to fit chinese rail tracks.

This morning we woke in China proper – and I am beside myself with excitement. It is everything I imagined – I really cannot recommend the train journey and experience from Ulan Bator to Beijing enough. We have passed through tunnels cut straight through the rocky hillsides, suddenly revealing lakes nestling deep within the mountains, and now we are less than an hour from Beijing. ARGH!!!!

I have located some people on this train who are staying in the same hostel as me so we will club together on the platform and venture forward as a group to get ripped off by a hookie taxi driver outside the station. I can't wait!!!!!