9 October

Ah, this is the life! I woke to an overcast dawn at about 0700, looked around and went back to sleep.
At 0800 I finally got up and had a look at what was outside. The scenery was very familiar to me, similar to desert country in parts of Australia – flat to undulating, sandy to rocky, lightly grassed through to medium spread of tussocks with occasional washaways and lakes. Life included the odd worker, cattle, goats, at least one camel (yes, I did get a picture of it – one hump or two? Two!). Yurts were visible, some close to the tracks, some in the distance. There were roads (dirt of course) and the odd car on them. Also, we were now being pulled by two diesel electric locomotives (I think – I’ll check in Ulan Bator) as there are no overhead power lines (so fewer poles in the photographs).
I had a shower (well, a wash with a mitt and a dry-down with a flannel – there is truth in advertising as the sign in the door has a showerhead with three streams and only droplets coming out) or more correctly a trickle, then dressed. After a cup of tea and some biscuits, I felt ready to face the day looking over the Gobi Desert.
At one stage I had a bit of a panic as the power went off, just as I was charging some batteries, but after a time it went back on (thankfully, because otherwise I can’t charge the camera batteries or the computer). After a chat with Christopher and Tom, I went down to the dining car – now a Mongolian restaurant – and was soon chatting to a couple from England and another couple from Boston. We swapped travel notes and generally chatted for a time, until I went back to my lonely writer’s garret (Cabin IV, Carriage 10) and wrote up yesterday and part of today and downloaded pictures from last night and some from today. After naming them (and borrowing a picture from Christopher) I got more pictures of the train, snow-covered mountains and the countryside. If anyone describes the scenery as boring or monotonous, they just haven’t been looking!
After a while I ended up talking to a couple from Luton (England) who had a corrupted memory card in the husband’s camera. I loaned them a card and gave my address to post it back to after they get home and transfer all the pictures to their computer.
At this stage we were about fifty kilometres out of Ulan Bator so I changed batteries in the camera and got ready to leave the train. We came in on schedule and, although it looked cool, it was quite comfortable outside just in shirtsleeves (on the train I am in tracksuit pants, train slippers (compliments of the Xi’an to Beijing train) and shirt, but once I get off I had shoes and socks on – in addition to the others, not just those. I got a bottle of coke (two litre size) at a price dearer that Beijing but cheaper than buying it on the train. Our free meal tickets seem to have dried up, so I looked for bread, but that was not available on the platform and I didn’t want to stray too far.
Then, too soon, it was back on the train and off. Here, Tushin (a Mongolian) introduced himself and then went off to Carriage 15, with threats to join him and drink Mongolian beer. Then all four of us we spoken to by a Russian fellow, who couldn’t understand anything we said (but that worked both ways) but had evidently had a skinful recently. He eventually wandered off, to return a few minutes later even more under the weather. After that we all retreated to our little havens and did our things – Dan and Christopher to catch up on sleep, Tom to catch up on “War and Peace” and me to write a little. The train is not so steady and so writing in pen is not an option, and even typing can be hit and miss as I attempt to hit the correct keys but miss them and hit the wrong ones.
The scenery outside went from suburbs to country, with small settlements along the way. Often there was a mixture of modern housing, yurts and small older houses. In a lot of places, they were surrounded by fences enclosing areas from a suburban block size (say one eighth of a hectare) up to paddock size (say four hectares). Some, with yurts, had up to four vehicles there as well, so living in a yurt does not necessarily signal poverty or subsistence living.
The general countryside changed from desert (the Gobi desert) in the south, which we saw while waking and had travelled through during the night, to river valleys in the north, which is what we travelled through until sunset.
At about 2050 we stopped at Suhe-Bator for Mongolian Customs and Passport control, having been given the paperwork earlier. We finally left at 2205 and were given our forms to fill out for Russia, which should occupy some time from about 2238 (1738 Moscow time, which is what the train will then be travelling on).
We arrived at Naushki at around 2230 and there we stayed until 0305 the next morning. Here the Mongolian restaurant car was changed for a Russian one.