Didn’t sleep a wink last night. Tried to be good and go to be early in our prison cell but woke up at about 11.30pm and then couldn’t get back to sleep. Phil was awake too so we stayed up chatting for ages until about 2am then Phil tried to get some sleep. I think I might of got about an hour but we had to get up at 3.30am so we could get showered etc before we got picked up at 4.30am. Galina knocked on for us at about 4.25am with a bundle of home made pancakes for breakfast to take with us.
The transfer to the station was only about 15 minutes and the train was already in so we got straight on. When we got to our coupe there was already somebody’s stuff on one of the bottom bunks. As we were getting sorted he turned up and introduced himself. He had heard us speaking English and was please as he was Dutch and could only speak Dutch and English so had struggled with the last guy who was Russian.
The guy was called Peter and he lived in Amsterdam and worked for a large drinks company, that produced the different flavours of BOLS liqueurs. He worked in the product development department and was responsible for coming up with different flavours. We all chatted for a bit and then at around 5.30am we decided to try and get a few hours sleep.
Woke up at around 1pm and had managed to sleep quite well until then for a change, probably due to not having any sleep the night before. This train seems even hotter than the last one, I’m not sure if it’s because this one runs on coal rather than electric but Peter tested the temp in the coupe and it was +32 degrees inside. Then you get off the train and it’s –20 degrees outside. It just makes it a real hassle every time you stop at the platforms as sometimes it’s only for 10 mins or 20 mins and you have to quickly go from shorts and T-shirts to about 4 layers of winter layers.
I went to meet our train attendants to introduce myself so that it would make it easier later in the journey if we needed anything. The Mongolian people seem a lot friendlier than the Russian ones so I took them some bits of foods down as a sweetener ;-).
We stopped at the Russian boarder after a few hours travelling, which we had already been warned about before coming. We had to sit on the train whilst the immigration and customs people came on the train and went to each coupe. This took 3.5 hours in total as they first came on with a customs declaration form in Russian that we couldn’t understand. Then came with an English one and asked us to complete both. Next came another lot of people with sniffer dogs to check each carriage. Then they came again and searched under al our bunks etc . Finally they came down again to return our passports, shortly after this we were on our way and had left Russia, so didn’t get chance to get off and buy any water or anything.
After travelling for another 30 mins through no mans land we reached the Mongolian boarder and had to go through the same thing again to enter Mongolia This time they didn’t seem as thorough as they didn’t search the coupe’s here they just looked in.
You can tell though that there is a lot of corruption involved though as about 30 minutes before we arrived at the boarders there was a hive of activity of people rushing up and down the carriages with boxes of stuff on wheels and parcels etc, moving them out of their coupe’s. I’m not sure where they were taking them but 30 minutes after crossing the boarders they would be doing the same thing again taking them back to their coupes. Attendants would then be going past with handfuls of notes. Even mentions in the guide books that traders who travel up and down the train tend to pay off the attendants so they will hide the things they have brought to sell and aren’t declaring. It kind of makes a mockery of the whole thing really when even the Lonely planet books talk about it.