Mongolia

Trans Siberian Railway Success: Arrival in Beijing

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by Michael

In my last account of train travel, we were stuck in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, trying to get a visa for China. We could fly from Mongolia to other destinations, but we wanted to finish the journey by train.

As Elizabeth explained, we managed to obtain Chinese visas.

Anyway, our desired train from UB to Beijing was the same train that we took from Ulan Ude to UB, but two weeks later. We knew that tickets would not become available until the day before it departs (and it departs at 7:30 a.m.). We figured this meant anytime the day before, so we went to the train station in the morning.  Unfortunately, that’s when we learned that the rule is that onward tickets from UB to Beijing are not sold until 6:00 p.m. the day before the train departs. I think this is because the train is subject to Russian jurisdiction until that time, after which the Russians give ticketing authority to Mongolia.  For travelers, it means leaving everything to the last minute.  Which is sort of right up our alley at this point.

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10 Things to See and Do in Ulaanbaatar

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by Michael

We arrived in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia after making our way across Russia on trains, and came back through the city as we finished excursions to Terelj National Park and the Gobi Desert. UB (as seemingly everyone calls Ulaanbaatar) is not the world’s prettiest city. It has Soviet-style apartment blocks and busy congested roads. During the cold winters, the city is known for having atrocious air quality due to the large number of surrounding gers that are heated by coal. But it’s a good stop-over for travelers, with things to do, easy ways to re-supply, and backpacker-oriented accommodations.

Here’s a sampling of what we did during our stays, in no particular order:

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Chinese Visa Struggles in Ulaanbaatar

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by Elizabeth

One of the challenges of long-term travel is getting visas while abroad.  In order to complete our journey along the Trans Siberian Railway, we needed a visa to enter China.  Ideally, we would have applied for our Chinese visa in the US.  However, I had heard that the Chinese consulates in the US won’t issue tourist visas nine months out (before we left on our trip) and we didn’t have enough time during our stop in New York to apply for both Russian and Chinese visas.  I didn’t this that this would be a big issue because I’d read a bunch of reports of people easily getting their Chinese visas in Ulaanbaatar (“UB”), Mongolia.  Problem solved.  Or so we thought…

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Waiting outside the Chinese embassy in Ulaanbaatar.

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Gobi Desert Hits and Misses

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by Elizabeth

Stopping in Mongolia along the Trans Siberian Railway was a no-brainer for us.  When else would we have an opportunity to visit a country that is largely known for being in the middle of nowhere?  However, when we showed up in the capitol city of Ulaanbaatar (known as UB), we didn’t really have much of an idea of what we wanted to do during our time in Mongolia (surprise!).  What I did know is that I wanted to stay in a ger (yurt) and I wanted to see the legendary Gobi desert.  It turns out that finding a ger to stay in was not a problem at all.

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Ger camp in the Gobi.

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Our Journey Along the Trans Siberian Railway

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by Michael

The Trans-Siberian Railway is not so much a single railway line as a set of tracks and routes that cross Russia, Mongolia, and China. Direct trains from Moscow run to Beijing via either Mongolia or Manchuria. The other line, the official “Trans-Siberian” line, stays in Russia and ends at Vladivostok, on the Sea of Japan.

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This is what the trains and stations look like.

Our plan was, and is,* to take trains across Russia and Mongolia to Beijing, with stops along the way. This is known as the Trans-Mongolian line. We’ve previously written about the various Russian stops that we made along the Trans-Mongolian line, and will post shortly about our time in Mongolia. This post, however, is just about our time on the train since it has felt like a completely different journey from our town time.

*As of this post, we are in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. We plan to continue to Beijing by train, though we are in a bit of a pickle. Apparently, the Chinese Embassy here stopped issuing visas to non-Mongolians for a few weeks last month.  It looks like they have started issuing visas again, so we have our fingers crossed that we’ll be able to pick up our visas tomorrow.  Otherwise, we’ll have to fly out of Mongolia since we are land-locked between Russia (where our visa has expired) and China.
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