THE MONGOLIA-RUSSIA BORDER — In case you were wondering what it is we do all day on the Trans-Mongolian, here’s a snapshot of our second train leg, which took us from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to Irkutsk, Russia.
9 p.m. Board train in Ulaanbaatar
So far, all of our trains have been remarkably on-time. Train 263 from Ulaanbaatar to Irkutksk pulls out right on schedule at 9:10 p.m.
10 p.m. Trade travel stories with your neighbors
On our train to Mongolia, we had the compartment to ourselves for almost the whole journey. So this is our first time meeting a fellow traveler onboard. He’s a talkative Dutch gap-yearer who is very eager to show off his Antarctica passport stamp and tell us where he’s been so far.
12 a.m. Drift off to sleep
As long as there aren’t any snorers in the compartment, I find falling asleep on trains to be quite easy. But tonight, I have to clutch my blankets around me for warmth.
5 a.m. Wake up with the sun
I wake up as sunshine begins to drift in through the unscreened windows, just in time to catch a final glimpse of Mongolian horses on the grasslands. After snapping a few pictures, I clamber back up to my berth for a few more hours of shut-eye.
8 a.m. Fill out border paperwork
Our friendly providnitsa (carriage attendant) wakes us up bright and early to distribute customs and entry/exit paperwork for both Mongolia and Russia. The Russian form asks us to declare any “printed matter.” We debate whether or not to include our many (mostly unread) books, and decide yes.
9 a.m. Empty your backpack, then repack
When the Mongolian customs officials come knocking, they decide that mine is the backpack they want to open. As I take out one rolled-up T-shirt at a time, I remember how hard it was to squish them all in in the first place. The thought of repeating the feat is almost painful. The customs official takes pity on me about halfway through and decides she’s seen enough.
11 a.m. Change your watches
Despite the fact that we’ve been traveling to the northwest, Daylight Savings Time means that Irkutsk is actually an hour ahead of Ulaanbaatar and Beijing. Even though we haven’t moved much for the past 3 hours, it feels like progress.
1 p.m. Officially enter Russia
Trains waiting at Naushki Station, the Russian border crossing.
The Russian border crossing is easier than anticipated. Given the customs official’s laughter, we probably didn’t need to declare those books. But no one asks me to unpack my bag, which is good enough for me.
2 p.m. Explore the Russian border town of Naushki
Now that we’ve got our passports back, we can get off the train and see what there is to see in Naushki, officially our first destination in Russia. As it turns out, there’s not much. Outside of the station, a little market sells clothes, fruit, a few packaged foods, and many varieties of cookies. With the help of a Ukrainian trainmate, we get a few dulce de leche-filled sandwich cookies that make our Western-baked-goods-deprived selves quite ecstatic. A cold Coke, which never sounded so good, is nowhere to be found.
Naushki: So sleepy that the railway workers bring their cows to the station.
4 p.m. Get moving!
After eight hours of very little progress, the train gets moving again at 4 p.m. It’s exciting to be in Russia, but the scenery mostly looks the same.
5 p.m. Read
I expected to spend most of my time on the train reading, yet somehow it seems like there is always something better to do. Finally, before dinner, I crawl up to my bunk to start a new novel — A Confederacy of Dunces
7 p.m. Look out the window
The coolest thing about the Trans-Siberian Handbook
8 p.m. Find out there’s no dining car
After two meals of bread, jam and peanut butter, we were hoping to sample the fare in our first Russian dining car. But when I pointed to the sentence “Where is the dining car?” in our guidebook, the provodnitsa just muttered, “Nyet, nyet.” Evidently Train 263 doesn’t merit a restaurant car, since we’ll be getting into Irkutsk just after 7 a.m.
9 p.m. Grab snacks in Ulan-Ude
Train 263 makes a mind-boggling 45-minute stop in Ulan-Ude, the first major city we passed through in Russia. It’s long enough to cool off on the platform AND grab snacks from one of the well-stocked station stores! Concerns about nutrition have faded after 24 hours on the train, so I go for the easiest thing to point to: Lay’s potato chips.
10 p.m. Finish off the laptop battery with The Sopranos
12 a.m. to 6 a.m. Back to sleep
The provodnitsa wakes us up at 6 to hand back our sheets and hand towels, and then again when the train arrives in Irkutsk just after 7 a.m.
7 a.m. Get off the train — finally!
33 hours and 518 kilometers later...
I’m posting every day during my journey along the Trans-Mongolian Railway! See previous posts in my Trans-Mongolian Diary or subscribe to my RSS feed to follow along.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Come to Naushki – a wonderfully romantic place where railroad employees can’t bear to be apart from their significant udders.
Wow you make it look so easy, all of mine would be 1) look out the window 2) check the time 3) look out the window 4) check the time.
You get the idea
You have quite the impressive schedule! I am awful at killing time on planes and trains. 30 hours would be exhausting. I love the picture of the cow at the station too.
I’m with ayngelina, my ADD mind would drive me nuts.