Border crossing

Today I embark on the Trans Mongolian from Beijing. The train leaves Beijing from the main Railway Station which is huge. After scanning the bags and collecting the tickets, off we went into our respective compartments, which we share with 3 others. I booked through Intrepid Travels so I had 3 other foreigners on my compartment. My buddies for the next 30 hours. Which is how long the train takes to reach Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital.

The scenery keeps changing from city to rural to deserted landscape as the train passes through some rough terrain in China. It is interesting to see how some of these villages are made of and how farmers in China live compared to their wealth counterparts in the big cities. Some of these houses are made of mud and clay, or least that is how it looks like.

We reached a mid point between Beijing and the border and the train now will start to climb. In order for that to happen, a new engine is now added to give it more torque to pull the carriages. Then we start the ascend. The train now slows to about 60kmph. The terrain now gets even more sparse and the air outside gets cooler. I spotted another Chinese sign that made no sense in English or shall I say meant something else.

After 14 hours, we reach Earlian, the Chinese border post along the Trans Mongolian. As our train arrives, the Chinese put on an amazing evening show with much fanfare. The Vienna Waltz blares from speakers to welcome us. The station is decked out in red neon fairy lights. After awhile the Chinese customs come on board to collect our passports and after that the carriages are taken to the shed to change the boogies. The Chinese use wider gauges and the rest of Europe uses a narrower gauge so the wheels need to be changed.

For the next 3 hours, we are amazed as to how meticulously the wheels of each carriage is changed by hoisting the body from the wheels and replacing them with the narrow gauge. Once all is done, the engines play a mating call from one end to the other while the carriages are regrouped and joint. We then come back to Erlian to collect our passports. After everything is complete, we leave for Mongolia. It is now just after midnight. Still no sleep as we need to complete the Mongolian border formalities.

We reach the border about 10 minutes later and I was surprised that the border is separated by a picket fence which is about 2 feet high.

A little while later we reach the first Mongolian town and the customs immigration officials come on board to do the same. Unlike their Chinese counterparts who were stern and official looking, the Mongolian officials (all of whom were ladies) were rather friendly and smiling. All had lots of blings on their uniform.
The Chinese who brought their wares to trade in Mongolia are now starting to rush around to hide their stuff to avoid being taxed, I guess. We later found out that this was a common sight. Traders get on the train in Earlian and then bring their wares to Ulaanbaatar to sell.
Immediately after all that, I called it a day. It was now close to 1.30am.