I'll start by saying Ulaanbaatar was an absolute right off. Charlotte caught a nasty cold from the train from Irkutsk, suffering a terrible cough, high temperature, shivers and blocked sinuses. I caught it off of her the day we arrived and after a couple of days we were both bed ridden, spending the majority of Monday to Friday in our room. On the day we arrived we had booked a tour to a national park for a few nights but Charlotte had a hunch and we pulled out. It did cause a few issues with our hostel saying that had never happened before but we didn't believe that and stuck to our guns. We had emailed and spoken to a receptionist who spoke hardly any English but they claimed they hadn't heard anything from us. They tried to get us to pay the drivers off, claiming they had driven for miles to be there to take us but we refused as they had been at the train station the day before when we got picked up from the station. The only thing we really achieved was a visit to Sukhbaatar or Chinngis Khan Square (I'm not sure they can make up their minds what it's called) on the Sunday and trying the local Mongolian cuisine of Büüz (mutton filled dumplings) on the Monday. Despite our brief time out and about we also managed to hunt down a pin badge. The rest of the week was spent in bed, trying our best to feel better. Our room in the hostel was right by the reception which made it rather noisy. We had been due to leave straight for the train station on the Saturday but instead booked a room in a hotel for the Friday night so we didn't have a mad dash across the city first thing in the morning.
(Our £6 bag of grapes)
By the time Saturday morning came round, we had both started to feel better, which was a huge relief for our journey to Beijing. Our roommates were once again with us the whole way and were once again Dutch. The journey was just over a day and was pretty much uneventful. From Ulaanbaatar to the border it was Steppe followed by the vast expanse of the Gobi Desert. Every now and again we would pass a herd of camels and then we were treated to a beautiful sunset as it set behind the sand dunes. The border was also somewhat uneventful, apart from when the Chinese passport control appeared in our cabin doorway and informed me that there was something wrong with my visa. At that point Charlotte and I were both thinking that our diversion to Edinburgh may have been for absolutely nothing. It turned out my visa was fine and the lady was very apologetic for the problem caused but we all had a good laugh. After that, we settled down, while they changed the wheels (they use a different gauge track in Russia and Mongolia to China) for a good nights sleep. We awoke to a change of scenery, rolling hills and large towns were followed by mountain passes, cliff-top views over sheer drops and a more than 50 tunnels. With an hour still to go we started chugging through the sprawling suburbs of Beijing. This brought to an end our Trans-Continental train journey, all the way from Moscow, in Europe to Beijing in the Far East of Asia.
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