Ulaan Bator - Moscow
Ok, so the train didn`t take exactly 6 day, but it worked rather well as we only had 5 days of noodle supplies with us anyway.
The train trip itself was quite the experience! We took the mongolian train, not the chinese one like the last time, and it ended up being quite something else. We must admit that we are still have not quite taken to the mongolian people. Including the train trip we counted 7 mongolian smiles the whole time we were there. The cold weather there seems to have built up quite the smile deficit!
One half expects some mysterious events when on such a long train trip. Luckily nobody was poisoned or murdered when we went through a tunnel this time, but there was a whole load of smuggling. We were the lucky passengers of smugglers-express to Moscow. It looks like around 80% of the passengers were mongolian smugglers, as were pretty much all the conductors and the local police on both sides of the boarder.
What were they smuggling pray tell we hear you ask. Not, drugs, guns, or peoples no no no no; just piles upon piles of rather ugly jeans, horrible synthetic handbags, tracksuit bottoms and blankets with tigers on, all from china.
All this lead to to some rather strange events. The train staff varied between trying to force tourists to say that that a few of the giant bags of clothes and handbags was theres or they would not turn on the plug sockets in the room. When they said no, all the toilets were suddenly closed for them for the first day. The other tactic was to give the tourists “gifts” of some of the tiger blankets to have under their mattresses. At the boarder, every time russian customs confiscated the smuggled goods, the train staff ran and took them back as soon as russians turned their backs. Add to this the non planed stops in stations where the buyers stood with money in hand in anticipation while we met a blocking hand and/or strange hissing noise when we tried to move around the train or get off, and you get a rather mystical but fun trip.
