Trans Mongolian Part 2. Long train running.....
Trip Start
Sep 25, 2008
1
6
29
Trip End
Apr 01, 2009
Irkutsk,
Siberia,
Russian Federation
Saturday, October 4, 2008
By the middle of day 3 the 'real' time was already 3hrs ahead of Moscow, but the time-tables and station clocks all stick firmly to the Moscow time, so you're never really sure when you should be eating or sleeping.
The only way to avoid getting jet-lag when you get to Beijing is by re-setting your clock every time you pass through a time zone. When it's dark outside you feel like you should be going to bed, but between the people on the train there were two distinct groups, those that followed this rule and those that did not, by the end of day four we'd be 5 hours ahead of Moscow and something had to give....
Dodgy Playform Food
.The morning of day 5 brought us to Irkutsk, we would spend several hours rounding the southern tip of Lake Baikal, the largest body of fresh-water in the world.
Up until this point the scenery had been fairly ordinary, fields and trees and not a great deal else. The station stops were fun, you'd typically get one every 4 hours or so, jumping off the train to stretch your legs and see what the old ladies had to offer (dissapointingly this was nearly always fish).
I got out of bed at around 6:30am (now 5hrs ahead of Moscow). The german lads Sven, Andre and Sepp, along with Steve from Beligium were still up drinking whisky. 'Guys you're crazy, it's nearly 7 and you're drinking Whisky!"
'What?, it's not even 2am yet!' came the reply. They would regret this later!
By some coincidence, at least 6 of our carriage-mates were semi-professional or indeed professional photographers, it was a bit like being in Jessops with the number of SLRs that were being waved around
Sunrise at Baikal
. I'm not sure if it's by design, but the train is next to the lake at exactly the right time to catch the sunrise. The morning was slightly cloudy, but the colours over the lake were spectacular, a really special moment.
As I was sitting with the Whisky drinkers, resisting their offers of a wee dram, Steve mentioned something rather amusing.
We were all aware of the dog in our carriage, the poor thing was hurried off the train to relieve itself at every station- although I suspected the bathroom floor was being used for the same purpose and attributed the truly awful smell to him.
Anyway, Steve was sharing a room with Marius, a Romanian. The previous morning they'd both woken up and agreed they'd heard a cat in the night. A cat? That was just riduculous. They'd both been drinking so thought nothing more of it.
This morning, however, Steve had come out of his cabin and there it was, running up and down the carriage
More sunrise
! The owner of the dog had smuggled on a cat! Now I know it's not really up there with Opium or AK47s. but I was thinking it was fairly illegal to just take undeclared animals through customs. What'll happen to the poor moggy when we reach Mongolia? And what about the dog??? We were only about 12 hours away, so we'd find out soon enough!The train arrives at Naushki, the last town in Russia, at around 10:30pm and on come the sniffer dogs and Russian officials like something out of James Bond. These guys mean business, they must really want to keep people from leaving because they check every compartment and crevice to make sure you're not hiding anyone. There was no way they wouldn't find the cat!
The dog, it turned out, had a dog passport! The sniffer dog found the cat which was by now, quite literally, out of the bag.
But hey, no problem, they just delayed the train a bit while the Russian vet came on, gave puss a check-up and issued a Cat passport on the spot!
We spent about 4 hrs on the Russian side of the border, the customs check consisted of 'Narcotics, No?' wink wink. I guess we don't look like drugs mules.
We spent about an hour on the Mongolian side, they don't realy seem to care who comes in. Our passports were collected, stamped and returned and day 5 was over, we were now a very long way from home!
