The Tran Siberian railway – Beijing to Ulaanbaatar
It’s about the journey, not the destination. Truer words have never been spoken. The Trans-Siberian and its sister trip, the Trans-Mongolian, are two of the most well-known train journeys in the world. And the Y20,000 cash I had carried into the Monkey Business office in Beijing would carry me on both if the office would ever open. As I sat on a bench waiting for a staff member to replace the ‘back in 10 minutes’ sign, I momentarily pondered whether I would ever see my passport again, fearing that everyone who walked by was planning on stealing my last remaining cash. When the staff member finally arrived and handed over my passport with its fresh Mongolian and Russian visas, my fear turned to excitement.
The Trans-Mongolian Railway traces the route of ancient tea caravans, winding its way from China to Russia via the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar, a total of 7500km. My journey started bright and early in Beijing, where I met Vicki and Suzy, a mother and daughter from England, who would be my travelling companions for the next two weeks. We boarded the train and settled in our cabin before heading to the dining car to find something to do. Finding out the dining car was the place to be, we settled into a pleasant afternoon and evening of food and beer with Suzy, Dash, Christian, Peter and the guys from the Vodka train.
Before long, as we reached the border town of Erlyan, it was time to cross the border into Mongolia. As we settled in Peter’s carriage, the border officer told us we would stop for 8 hours while the bogies were changed to the wider Mongolian and Russian ones. Train tracks worldwide do not have standard widths, and, as a result, there are several instances where the bogies (the chassis containing the wheels and axles of a railway car) need to be exchanged before the train can continue on its journey. With China using 1435mm gauges and Mongolia using 1520mm gauges, we needed to stop and wait for the railway team to manually change each bogie to accommodation for the 85mm difference.
Eventually, it was time to say my final goodbyes to China. My time here has been lovely, a life-changing experience I’ve been so lucky to have, and I’ll cherish the memories for the rest of my life. Fittingly, the journey was over with a truly typical Chinese experience. I was stuck in a cabin that wasn’t my own, having to choose between instructions from someone with really bad English who I think was telling me to return to my cabin, someone speaking Mongolian that I didn’t understand, and someone with perfectly reasonable Chinese telling me to say put. The lovely Chinese Provodnik eventually came looking for me, laughing at my experience, and helping me fill out some forms, one of which was entirely in Russian, although it was a Mongolian form. I’ve never been sure what it was for, but they took it off us at the Russian-Mongolian border, so it must have served a purpose.
Mongolia
We reached Ulaanbaatar at about 1 pm, about 28 hours into our epic journey. Our Mongolian tour guide Nakhi met us on the platform, a strange (but lovely) man with an enthusiastic desire to be ‘open-hearted’ about everything, including that he and his girlfriend were comfortable enough to shower together. He struggled a little with the English language, and we often listened with glee as his answers to our questions covered a close but altogether unrelated topic.
Our first stop was the Gandan Monastery, the only fully operational Buddhist monastery to have lasted through the Communist purges of the 1930s. Originally closed in 1938 and used as a place to welcome Russian officials, it reopened in 1944, albeit under the strict control of the Russian communists. The statue of Megjid-Janraiseg is a particularly large Buddhist statue. It was first built in 1913 as a symbol of Mongolian independence towards the Manchu system, made of gold and bronze, thanks to donations from the Mongolian people to heal the eyesight of the Bogdo Khan (the 8th Javzandamba who became the Emperor of Mongolia). It was demolished in 1937 to make bullets during the siege of Leningrad but was rebuilt after the end of the Communist occupation in 1990 and inaugurated by the Dalai Lama in 1996. It is now covered with gold offered to Mongolia by Nepal and Japan.
The second stop was Sukhbaatar Square, the main square of Ulaanbaatar. The square originally housed the Yellow Palace, a temple complex dedicated to the Jebtsundamba Khutughtu or Mongolian spiritual leader. In 1921, in response to the growing sinification of Mongolia by the Chinese, the newly formed Mongolian People’s Party (supported by the Russians) revolted and formed the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR). The temple complex was destroyed, and in 1923, the central square was named in honour of the Mongolian revolutionary hero Damdin Sukbaatar. The square’s name was briefly changed in 2013 in honour of Genghis Khan, considered the founding father of Mongolia, but the original name was restored in 2016. The plaza’s centre features an equestrian statue of Damdin Sukbaatar, and the square’s north face is taken up with a large colonnade monument dedicated to Genghis Khan.
Starving and reaching the end of Nakhi’s English vocabulary, we were grateful for the offer of a light snack. Served in the karaoke room of a random hotel, our ‘light snack’ consisted of potato salad, bread and warm salty cow’s milk, followed by Mongolian noodles and beef and finished with toffee ice cream. No longer starving, we were taken to a banya for a Mongolian shower experience. Without warning, we were asked to strip down naked and shower with a well-endowed Mongolian lady and one of her friends before hopping into the warm pool and sauna. While the experience was lovely, we did feel that some warning may have been in order.
Now clean and full, we were taken to the Ger Camp, where we would stay for the evening. After an hour in a van, we stepped into near-freezing temperatures and hurriedly ran to a primitive-looking set of tent-like structures in what felt like the middle of nowhere. Pleasantly surprised by the warmth and luxurious decorations inside the Ger, we were provided with a ‘traditional’ Mongolian dish of cream of tomato soup. With a warm fire heating up our sleeping Ger, we retired for an excellent night’s sleep.
We awoke the next day to find that we were completely surrounded by snow. Just our seven or eight little Gers, a couple of staff, one other small group of people, a dog, a cute little puppy and loads of snow.
Over the next few hours, we learnt a couple of new games using the ankle bones of sheep, tried our archery, played with the puppy and ate some more traditional food.
The games were unusual. The ankle bones consisted of four sides: sheep, goat, horse and camel. Like playing with a matchbox, when you roll the bone, you are less likely to land on two of the sides (horse and camel). The first game, called camel-racing, involved lining up all the nones bar seven in a semi-circle, placing three bones (one for each of us) at the start of the line and rolling the other four dice. The aim was to roll a camel or roll four of a kind to move your ‘camel’ bone to the end of the line before anyone else. The second game involved throwing all of the bones on the table and trying to hit sheep into sheep or horses into horses to remove one of them from the table. The person with the most bones won.
My favourite part of the day was when I realised we had found Narnia. With only a lampost surrounded by a load of snow, I was at peace with the world and could have stayed for days.
After lunch, we packed up and headed back into Ulaanbaatar via a city viewpoint to stock up on souvenirs and food for the next train journey (two days on a train with no dining cabin).
