Trans-Siberian Railway

 We arrived at the station early.  6:30 for a 7:15 departure.  The train arrived after about 15 minutes, and we said our goodbye's to Mr Tuvhsin and Mr. Shagai, both of whom had joined us early that morning, on their own time, to see us off.  We found our car (#6) and our cabin (berths 9&10.)  It was cozy, a little worn, but it was our own space aboard a pretty full train that had left St. Petersburg Russia 6 days before.  We stowed our gear and settled in. There isn't much to tell, just a bunch of pictures.  I'll try to show more than tell, but will just say that while it was in a way relaxing, we arrived at our first border checkpoint at around 9:00pm (exiting Mongolia)  and our second at around 11:00 pm.  The car then proceeded to change its wheels, since Russian and Mongolia both use a smaller gauge track than the rest of the world.  That changeover was a little rough with the car constantly feeling like you were in a 10 mph car accident at random intervals, over the course of an hour or two.  I apologize for the pictures that follow.  Every window on the train was filthy, both inside and out, so many of the pictures bear the results.

At one end of the car was a hot water heater.  It looked like many small domestic hot water heaters, except this one was heated by coal.  This small heater had a spiget and is used for anyone who wants hot water for making tea, having a shower in the bathroom, or making a cup of soup.  Behind that, past the inner door was a larger hot water heater, again this one heated with coal that was hooked up to a hot water heating system for the entire car.  When it got cold, the car attendant just added more coal to the fire making the water in the radiators hotter.  There was a bathroom at the other end of the car, shared by the 16 people in the car.  It was interesting in that it closely resembled what you might find in a porta-potty back home.  except instead of having a tank full of blue stuff under the bowl, when you flushed this one . . . . you just saw the railroad ties rushing past below.  They locked the door about 3 miles before each station, and you had to wait until you were a few miles past before they unlocked it.

The domestic hot water heater.  Want a cup
of tea? just open the spigot.

The larger coal fired hot water heater
that heated each cabin aboard the train.

Bags of coal waiting to be used.

The first 14 hours of the ride looked like this:

This is in fact what much of Mongolia looks like.  A very
typical picture, and what we stared at for the first 4 hours.
It might seem empty, but it never gets old.

Then it seemed to flatten out.  We were on the outskirts of the
Gobi desert.

We didn't see many of these, far more horses and some goats
on this trip, but enough camels to make me stop whipping
the camera out every time we saw more.

Night fell and we settled in for some short periods of rest, interrupted by people dressed in various police and military uniforms doing immigration and customs exit and entrance inspections and paperwork.  That kind of thing (who's that knocking at the door?  Oh it's just the nice Chinese Red Army officer wanting to look under our bed and see our passport . . .) is not conducive to a good night's sleep.  We woke in the morning to find the meal car we had had kind of grown fond of had changed in the night from a Mongolian one to a Chinese one.  Strange how quickly we become used to things.  The next 10 hours looked like this:

Every bit of land was utilized for something, and it seems the
default is farming.

There were many, many wind turbines
over much of the landscape.

The prettiest part of the journey was through the mountains
approaching Beijing.  We were supposed to be able to see
the Great Wall, but the smog or fog, hard to tell in many
places, was too thick when we neared those areas.