September 26, 2001 – Aboard the Trans Mongolian Railway

Then the customs antics began. It was around midnight and we had all nicely settled down to sleep when the first of several interuptions began. We stopped at the Chinese border town of Erlan for immigration and customs formalities. First the Chinese customs guys came through and looked at our passports and visas and luggage. We had just gone back to sleep when the train lurched to a stop. There was a lot of jerking and banging around, as the train cars were shunted into a building. There they were raised up and the whole underneath was disconnected and the car was put on a new "bogie" which had the wheels matched to the gauge used by Mongolia and Russia. Apparently the track guage is not the same. Okay, after horsing around for about an hour and a half, the train finally continued on its way, moving to the Mongolian border town of Dzamyn Ude. Then there was another knock on the door. Now the same customs guys came through the car again, checking and stamping all our documents again, looking under our beds for stowaways, but this time they were doing so on behalf of Mongolia! By then our sense of humour was wearing a little thin, and we let the 'officials' know it.

Our train took us through a dramatic change in scenery, from the lush mountains of China to the barren landscape of the Gobi. Continuing into the vast grassy plains, this huge expanse is home to almost half the Mongolian population.

In the vast Mongolian Steppe, we saw an occasional horse and rider or ger camp. Here is one of the little mile markers that we saw along the train track as we made our way towards Ulan Bator.