Mongolia

by Biedjee

Unfortunately, the same goes for passenger trains during peace time, so at the Erlian border crossing the train had to change to the standard gauge.
Now to describe what exactly had to be done here at the border crossing. There is a huge customs and immigrations building right at the station. A few hundred people's passports and bags have to be checked, there are many tracks running everywhere, both standard and broad gauge and there are several trains at the shunting yard. Now how would you imagine the Chinese would deal with this?

Exactly! But that is precisely how they don't!

No, rather than offloading everybody from the train, ushering them through immigration and customs and putting them on a Chinese train to continue, the officials instead come aboard the trains to take everybody's passports.

Then the trains are locked, the toilets are locked, and the whole train drives about half an hour over the shunting yard to a huge shed where each individual carriage is lifted up by a crane - with the people still in it - and the boogies are changed for standard gauge boogies. This whole exercise takes almost 9 hours. All the while you cannot use the toilets, you cannot go outside, the electricity is off (and thus lights and air conditioning)...

Once back at the immigrations officials come back in the train to check bags and compartments for contraband and then finally you get your passport back and you are allowed to walk outside - for about 10 minutes. There is a duty free store, which can not cope with the hundreds of people trying to do some shopping in these 10 minutes, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that here too the toilets are closed.


This must be, without a doubt, the most inefficient border crossing in the world. Sure, with only two trains in both directions every week, they only have to do this exercise four times weekly, but even so, it is a ridiculous waste of time, money and resources.

And that was the end of Mongolia and the start of China, where we were greeted with big neon lettering and loud classical music playing over the station platform speakers.

Final thoughts on Mongolia? Well, absolutely fantastic! Every aspect about it. It is just a gorgeous country, largely undeveloped and still unspoiled by mass tourism. This is definitely one of the most special countries I have ever visited on my travels.

Mongolia seems to be a very self-containing country, which somehow manages to thrive with just over two-million inhabitants (most of which are unlikely to pay any taxes). 16 years of stable democracy have made Mongolia a role model for most other third world countries. Squeezed in between the two super powers of Russia and China it is amazing such a country can even exist, let alone thrive as it does.

Sure, the country has its share of problems, there's corruption, poverty and rising street crime, but comparing this country to some of the places I have seen in South America or elsewhere in Asia, many of the issues characterizing most third-world countries are blissfully absent in Mongolia.