The Trans-Mongolian Railway: Irkutsk to Ulaanbaatar

We wanted to walk to the train station before it got dark, so ended up getting there 3 hours before our departure time. We hadn't been there half an hour and the Indian looking Dutch guy walks in (I swear he was following us...) to buy his ticket to Ulaanbaatar. We didn't have much to do, so just ate a bag of interesting crab shaped crab flavoured crisps and twiddled our thumbs. Eventually, our platform was called meaning we could board and get settled. I'm sure having Russians or locals in our cabin would have been interesting but we were relieved to have another then tourist in our cabin, a Norwegian, whose name we did not catch. It was also nice to find out that we weren't the only ones worrying about the Russia-Mongolia border crossing. As we departed at 10pm it wasn't long before we were tucked up and ready for the long stressful day ahead. We had an early morning stop in Ulan-Ude, which is on the opposite side of the lake to Irkutsk. Charlotte and I tried to disembark but the delightful (she actually was really nice this time) provodnitsa didn't let us. We had to make do with a photo of a rather random statue of 3 bears taken through the window. We read that the leg between Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude is possibly the most scenic part of the railway but obviously we had missed it as our trip was overnight. What followed were small towns and villages built along the railway as we approached the border. We got off at the next long stop and the provodnitsa attempted to have a conversation with us about where we were from, where we had been, where we were going and how much money it had cost us. It was a bit of a struggle though, she understood Moscow, Irkutsk and Ulaanbaatar but not Belgium, Denmark and the Terracotta Warriors but it was quite funny. The rest of the journey was uneventful until we reached the Russian border town of Naushki, although the town was probably more uneventful than the journey. After a very quick passport check, we were told we would have to get off the train for 2 hours. All 7 of us left on the train reluctantly got off to loiter with the hordes of hungry dogs on the platform begging for scraps of food. The slowest 2 hours of our lives ticked by gradually, allowing us to return to our cabin, to sit there, for another 2 hours. The second 2 hours were slightly livelier, as we had a passport and customs inspection, with a huge German shepherd clambering all over our room. Mercifully, we finally pulled away from the wonderful Naushki and crawled across the border to the even more wonderful town of Sukhbaatar. Along the way, a lady barged into our cabin and asked if we fancied changing any money to local Mongolian Tügrüg. Mongolian currency isn't available outside of the country so that was the first opportunity we had to pick some up. At first we were very reluctant, we had read about these people beforehand and there were warnings that they try and shift fake money. After the Norwegian guy in our cabin changed his money we decided to risk it and get a little bit to start us off. We sat waiting for the inevitable sniffer dog attack but none came. Only someone collecting our passports and a stern looking customs officer wanting to route through the entirety of our rucksacks. We were clean. We got our passports back with a good looking stamp and were then told we had 2 hours here. We weren't impressed to say the least. We could have done the journey in less than a day if it wasn't for all these silly little stops. Anyway, we trudged off the train once more to Sukhbaatar train station. We were bombarded by women asking us to change money and being stared at by every Mongolian in the place. It was a Friday night and seemed to be the place to hang out for the entire town. We weren't stuck off for the whole time this time round and clambered back on to eat our packs of noodles we had purchased for the trip. There was something wrong with the locomotive and we didn't end up rolling out of the station until well after 10pm, meaning the whole crossing had been well over 10 hours. My uncle had made it from London, GB to London, Ontario in that time. We collapsed into bed after a stressful day and pulled into Ulaanbaatar station still on time at 6 o'clock the next morning.