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.

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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