The Great Train Journey begins...

So I'm on my way home... The slightly long overland route though, traveling on the Trans Mongolian and Trans Siberian Railway then through a bit of Europe before getting to Berlin before the end of November. So i wont be gracing your couches eating cheese and chutney sandwiches and generally pissing you all of by complaining I have no money because I've been on holiday for 9 months just yet!

After convincing the taxi driver I wanted to go to the train station and not the airport I got n the train early on Saturday morning without any hitches. The cabin is a nice spacious 4 bunk with a door and I'm joined by an Aussie lady going to visit her son in Mongolia and 2 Mongolian sisters who are about to take the 2 of us under there wing for the next 31 hours of train travel.

Not that we really needed looking after but they insisted ad the trip was made most enjoyable by there tales of Mongolian culture ad custom andgeneral health and safety tips. I was also given a Mongolian name "Tengis" which means wide blue ocean, just like my eyes I'm told!!!

The border crossing where the most tedious part and after getting up at 6am no ne appreciated being kept up til 2:30 the next morning waiting for our passports to be returned on the other side. It takes so long to cross because there are so many people going through customs and we all have to "pass" the inspection AND the wheels on the train have to be changed as the Mongolians run there trains on a different gauge to the Chinese!

Arrived in UB the next afternoon about 1 hour late. Very cold.

written by

Dan on October 27, 2008 from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

from the travel blog: Been there, Dan that!

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Well Tengis is a change from Deefer. It would be a different start to traveller's tales.

Bill.

written by Bill Atherton on October 31, 2008

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