“Yonder comes the train let’s catch ‘er on the fly!”

This summer I am doing the Trans Mongolian Express from Beijing to St Petersburg covering over 7000 miles by train. Check out the picture for the route.

I am currently watching the sunrise over the Mongolian dessert at 5:20am July 8, 2010 from my train cabin as my three Aussie cabin mates sleep. I was a little under the weather with a stomach bug yesterday that allowed me to sleep most of the day and night on the train, so hence the early start. We are currently 21 and half hours into a 30 + hour train ride from Beijing to Ulan Batar (the capital of Mongolia). We will eventually make our way to St Petersburg Russia via the Trans Mongolian Train.

So with a little stomach bug that makes for an interesting train ride. The toilets get shut down when the train is not in motion and at the border crossing the wheels need to be changed, do to different track sizes in China and Mongolia. So the toilets were out of commission for six hours. I survived, but it was interesting. During this stop your passport is taken and returned to you two hours later while they take it into immigration/customs and you stay on the train. It is brought back to you and you move ahead a bit and they take it again for a couple of hours on the Mongolian side.

The wheel changing process is pretty interesting. At the border they jack the train up with the passengers in it still and change the wheels out from under you.

I am doing the Trans Mongolian Trail with eleven other people in our group and a guide. I have a net book for this trip, so I plan to be updating the blog when I am in Wi-Fi areas and type it on train trips or the like. I haven’t been able to update the blog yet as I couldn’t access it in Beijing. The Chinese sensor a lot of things and my blog was one of them. When I was here three years ago I could write the blog in China but could not see it myself. This time no such luck. Got to like communism, so hopefully in Mongolia I will be able to post this.

Our group is made up of lovely people, Irish (3), Aussies (3), Canadian (2), and (3) British. It is a combo of two teachers, a banker, three doctors, one unemployed consultant, two optometrists a lawyer and a nurse.

We spent a few days in Beijing, what a great city and it has changed so much just in three years since I was here last. The city is very clean and very advanced. They are sure into their flat screen TV’s and have them everywhere. They are on the subway, in the busses at the gas station there was one bigger than a car giving off advertisements and then these two seem wrong. They had two in front of the monument on Tiananmen Square that had to be 500 meters in length, each, all just showing ads. Oh yes and after our hike on the Great Wall, which is one of my favorite places to be my roommate and I went to have a massage and even in that room they had a flat screen for us to watch as we received our massages in lazy boy chairs for $14. They did do a good job, but the TV was no babbling brook like at home.

We visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City with everyone else in Beijing, it was busy and extremely hot, my thermometer said it was 45 degrees C and 40 in the shade. The Great Wall was awesome again, I love it there. This time I visited a different part of the wall which was nice. It was quite the hike up to get to the wall. It had to be 2km’s of stairs straight up in that heat, wow she was warm. It was exciting to finally make it to the top and be on the wall. Once onto the top the heat didn’t bug me, even though it was direct sunlight. The Wall is just spectacular. We had a cool option of coming down from the wall on a sled through a kind of loge track that zigzagged down through the trees. It was also fun.

There are way more cars on the road in Beijing and fewer bicycles than the last time I was here. Everyday 1000 new cars are put on the road. There are over 4 million cars on the road in Beijing and 20 million people. They have restrictions that you can only drive your car on certain days of the week and it depends on your license plate number. For examples if yours start with a one you can drive on Monday and Wednesdays etc.

We went to a very cool acrobatics show, wow the things these little Chinese people and twist themselves into. When in China you have to try the crazy things they eat. So I tried scorpion, this time heavy on the shell and therefore very crunchy.

July 9, 2010 I am up at another ungodly hour today. I don’t think my body has quite switched over yet with the jet lag. I am 12 hours ahead of you at home and will be going through I think seven time zones.

We are currently in Ulaan Bataar the capital of Mongolia. Mongolia has a population of 2 million people and the capital houses 1.2 million of them. It is interesting country side, very vast, dessert and no trees. They say 40% of the population lives a nomadic lifestyle. So as you make your way through the country by train and there are nomads sprinkled throughout and then we arrived on the capital which is one of five larger cities in the country. It is an interesting town, a mix of old and new. Dodgy looking streets and buildings but then when you go in the building they are extremely modern and house major department stores.

We went from being soaked with our own sweat to being soaked with rain last night and it was much cooler in the low 20’s.

We went to a great cultural show last night. Really interesting instruments and they are throat singers. They can make crazy sounds deep in their throat. You will have to look it up. The Mongolian music was very nice. We then went for a Mongolian bar-b-q where you choose your meat and veggies and they grill it up on a huge grill in front of you. I had to go for the horse meat, mutton and chicken. I have to say the horse meat was the best and the chicken my least favorite. From my choices I think you can tell my stomach is feeling better.

Having a little trouble with internet connections and uploading pictures. Hopefully soon.