Next stop from Mongolia was China. Approx. 1.5 days on the train but this did include another border crossing. And what an eventful border crossing. A little train fact about Mongolian/Russian rails and Chinese rails, they are approximately 2mm different so our train had to have its wheels changed. (China was worried about invasion via rail....)We were warned that this process would take about two hours in which we could stay on the train and watch or get off in the station, however things never go plan...
We arrived in Mongolia border at 7pm to start formalities so we were restricted to cabins once again and made our way over to China border, at this point we were expected to get off the train for a break......Chinese officials thought over wise and the whole train was shunted off in the wheel changing shed. In order to change these wheels they have to split the train into 2 halves and then separate all the carriages, it took forever. We were expecting strong men to appear to fix the new wheels on, but no our carriage attendants (trolley dollies) had changed out of their pretty uniforms into overalls, grabbed their spanners and climbed under the trains.
In the mean time we were still doing passports.... two member of the group had tummy upsets with one throwing up in front of the officers (after signing her declaration of good health to get in) and Dula was marched off the train as they did not like her passport. She returned before we had managed to start the free Dula campaign!
The whole process was eventually finished by 2am which was reasonably quick but the whole time we had been stuck in our carriages without access to bathrooms - there were plenty of grumpy people once we did eventually get going again. At some point after 2am we were allowed to go to the bathroom in the station - my first experience of Chinese squat toilet......I can confirm that they do infact smell really really bad.
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