Second day of Trans-Mongolian Railway

June 9, 2011 5:15 pm Mongolia
Last night was pretty brutal, we were so tired after getting up at 5:30 am and couldn’t go to sleep until 1:40 am after a three hour “stop” to go through immigration and leave China and enter Mongolia. The immigration officers boarded our train car, asked for our papers and passports and then took them away for the next two hours. We got to walk outside a bit as our train was divided into two sections and our orange engine was taken away somewhere. While China was dealing with everyone’s passport we got back on the train and were pushed into a hanger-like building for trains. Each car was separated from their bogies and then jacked up about 3 feet and the bogies were all pulled away and replaced with others. It seemed like the track was the same though, so we don’t totally understand. But it seems to us that neither China nor Russia will conform to the other’s type of track, so this process will continue for years to come. We then reconnected with the rest of our train totaling 15 cars, swapped out the China café car for a different one. Mongolian? We got our passports back and then rolled away at 11:59 pm towards the Mongolian immigration procedure. We could hardly keep our eyes open, but were on our way again at 1:40 am to enter the dusty Gobi Desert pulled now by a green diesel.
We woke up this morning at 7:00 made coffee and oatmeal using hot water that is available to us from a coal fired, yes coal, hot water heater at the end of each car. We had noodles for lunch that we brought with us. I read for a while, Lisa napped, mostly we spent the day standing in the hall with our arms resting on the top of the open window looking outside as the scene changed. Throughout the day we went from desert to dry scrub land with plants no taller than a quarter inch. Rolling hills with no people in sight, the absolute openness broken only by the occasional solitary white yurt. The land changed, we passed a few small groupings of houses, goats, cattle, horses, sheep grazing in the foreground and background. Brick buildings, red, green, silver, orange, blue metal roofs. Fences made of wood. Piles of cow dung meticulously kept near the house, for fuel? The sky big and blue, power lines following the train tracks. The least densely populated country on earth proving this statistic correct. After lunch, we entered a verdant valley with a river running through it. Our train meandered left and right and left. It was beautiful! Really stunning scenery, sparkling river, grazing animals, GREEN grass, yellow, purple, pink, white wild flowers, scattered trees along the river bank and in the hills in the distance. Kids playing in the river, a distant yurt or house with a red roof, no neighbors. Nothing could be more opposite than Hanoi. Open, quiet, green below, blue above, tranquil and still. It was like therapy just looking at it. We made five stops today including Ulan Bator, the capital city. The city is booming in recent years due to mining in the area. Precious metals and rare earths—some of the components in computers, phones and electric car batteries—as well as coal.
Tonight we leave Mongolia and enter the mother of the Cold War tensions with the United States. We have heard the border crossing can take up to 5 hours. We’ll see how it goes.