Border Crossing

That evening we boarded the train at Irkutstk and headed out to cross into Outer Mongolia. We had a new cabin mate on this leg, Flaurent from France, a very nice bloke with a good sense of humour and a vast thirst for knowledge.

Unfortunatly on the slow train which meant 32 stops through to Ulan Ude where there is the world biggest head sculpture, of Lenin of course. I'd been hoping to get a photo of this but it was 5am when we pased through and we were not allowed to leave the station anyway.

Loads of shunting going on at each stop during the night so did not get a lot of sleep. Arrived at Naushki the next morning, the border town on the Russian side. More shunting going on continuously. It was pouring with rain so did not get out to watch what was going on. Some time later when nature called and naturaly all the train toilets were locked I made a dash for the station loos. I was somewhat surprised to see that a full train of about 30 carriages had been whittled down to just 2.

The station toilets were in no uncertain terms the most rancid smelling building in the known universe and had clearly not seen water on the inside since they had been built, using the rain water collected in the gutters to offer an occasional rinse was clearly too good an idea to have been thought of as the down pipes spurted out their wares straight out onto the station platform. Unfortuantly still suffering from a stomach complaint I had to brave the stench and luckily did not melt.

Anyway, back on the train the passport and customs officials finally decided to board and collect in all our papers and passports and give out more forms to fill in. Whilst all this was going on there was an amusing commotion going on with many Mongolian trades running up and down the carriages moving boxes and hiding things all over the palace, these turned out just to be cartons of cheap cigarettes that they needed to avoid the duty on. At one point a fellow passenger let on to the attendant where some boxes had been hidden and a frantic redistribution of the consignment was completed in what must have been record time.

Prior to all the passports being returned the customs officials came aboard again and seached the carriages thouroughly, this involved every cabin and even the ceiling lights were opened. I have no idea where the Mongols had put their haul as later on they collected all of the boxes back up and seemed pretty pleased with themselves. I can only assume a bribe was accepted.

Finally we moved of into no mans land between the two frontiers, only five hours had passed since arriving in the morning.

As soon as we arrived in the station on the Mongolian side this whole process was repeated, except for all the shunting, so only took three hours.