Mongolia - China Train

by Biedjee

Of the three trains we had taken so far this was by far the most beautiful. As if Mongolia needs to make a point towards China and Russia the Mongolian trains of the Trans-Mongolian Railway have hyper-modern carriages. Super clean, air conditioned, equipped with showers and each individual berth has a TV.

Unfortunately this was also the only one of the three trains where we weren't as lucky with the fellow travelers on the train. Not that there weren't any, the train was packed, but we didn't meet any nice people at all. We shared our cabin with a very nice Mongolian lady and her daughter, and while nice, the lady's English was too limited to have any proper conversations. The rest of the carriage was filled with a French tour group consisting of very sour looking 50+ folk doing the stereotypes of their country justice by being very rude and not speaking a word of English. The attendants kindly catered for the French guests by showing only films dubbed in French on the TVs...

The whole train was divided according to nationality, it seemed. We were in the last carriage, so we had quite a long walk to the (excellent) restaurant carriage. Our carriage was French, the next was filled with Mongolians, then came the German group tours, then the Dutch, then a carriage full of families with a lot of children, etc. And all independent travelers were squeezed in between with those groups, rather than grouped together like it had been on the previous stretch.

The view wasn't very exciting either. The train was ran through the Eastern Gobi desert, an area characterized by its bleakness and flatness and ugly Soviet era mines.

The Mongolian and Russian trains run on a wider gauge than the rest of the world. The reasoning behind this was that if there would be an attack on Russia enemy trains would not be able to cross into the country.