What to say about a six-day train jourrney!

It was mostly noodles, cous-cous, amazing views, cold station stops, games, reading, cryptic crosswords, sleeping and a ukrainian speaking toddler.

If you want to know in more detail, you can read the rest of this entry!

The scenery got more snow-covered as we left Moscow. It was basically deep snow everywhere, houses with a foot and a half of snow covering the rooves. It really made me want to jump off the train and play in it!

The stations varied in interestingness. Some had lots of traders selling food of various kinds, others just a kiosk and some nothing. We got off at most of the stations we could, it was good to get some fresh air and move around a bit (although the train wasn't as bad as you would expect). It was very long so a walk in either direction (although a little awkward) lets you stretch your legs and the cabins weren't very cramped.

The first morning I made friends with a little boy of about 3 called Artum who was playing with his toy cars. I thought he was russian most of the journey, then he turned out to be Ukrainian (probably why my very poor attempts at Russian completely failed). I learnt that car is 'machina' in Ukrainian and we could also communicate with 'pojest' (train). Apart from that we couldn't really talk to each other but he chattered away to me and I said 'da'! We played with the cars and with some toy trains Mel and Steve were given by Mel's nephew and neice. Artum seemed to like spending more time in our cabin than anywhere else! Even if he was just sitting there or looking out the window. One day he brought us a dried fish and proceeded to push it into our faces! (you can buy dried fish on the platforms)

Spending 6 days on a train isn't as boring as I expected! It's a bit like camping in that living takes up quite a lot of time. Although we didn't exactly cook, the eating and washing up took quite a lot of time, expecially when you consider we were losing about an hour a day with the time changes (one day me and mel only managed to be up for about 8 hours, when we were trying to change to local time!). Apart from eating, sleeping, getting off at stations and playing with Artum we did quite a lot of cryptic crosswords (Mel's addiction), played games, I discovered Racing Camels, which is a brilliant game with little plastic camels. I also taught Mel and Steve Racing Demon and Mel won every time. Somehow, we didn't manage to fit in a lot of learning Nepali. We did a few lessons; learnt the numbers, some basic nouns and bits and pieces but not as much as we should have! I also didn't manage to finish even the first book I brought! Bringing 4 books now seems to have been a bit excessive!

About half way through I decided it was time to try washing my hair. It's quite a complicated process when there's only a tiny sink and freezing water in the bathroom. It involved 2 people and carrying mugs of boiling water from the samavar at one end of the carriage to the toilet at the other! It was, however, possible and the next day we did Mel's hair!

Lake Baikal was an impressive view. I woke one morning to a greast expanse of snow and mountains in the far distance. Photos don't really do it justice. Later we saw some people fishing on frozen lakes, they had even driven their cars onto them!

The borders both came late evening, meaning we had to stay up quite late. We got away without having registered at the Russian border. The borders take ages, I'm not really sure why. They gave us customs forms, luckily for us all were in english  but we had to help the russians on out carriage because the mongolian one was only in english and mongolian. It was nice to be useful as at the belarussian border we'd had to be helped. Then they took away all the passports for ages. Sometimes they checked the cabins for stowaways. They showed us storage compartments we didn't even know existed! Then we had to go through it all again on the other side of the border with the authorities of the country we were entering.

At Ulan Bataar all the other people in our carriage got off (said goodbye to Artum) and a load of mongolian students who are studying in China got on. We had a guy join us in our compartment. We made friends with a couple of english speaking students and a guy who spoke german (Mel speaks german). The mongolian landscape went from greenish hills with some towns and yurts to the flat steps which are basically desert (at this time of year) although the mongolians disagree. It got a bit boring after a while but we did spend a long time looking for camels. We mostly only saw a few in the distnace. We saw them fairly close once which was amazing but we failed to get any good pictures!

In china we got free vouchers for the buffet car. It was simple food but nice enough and we met an interesting guy there who was australian but had a chinese mother and an english father. He had lived in pakistan and somewhere in Africa (I've forgotten where) and America. At the time he was living in China with his mother. We also saw the Great Wall of China from the train. When I get the photos up you can play 'spot the biggest human-made structure in the world' with them! It wasn't really that far away. I was quite disappointed though when Steve told me that the belief that you can see it from space is a myth! It's just the mountain range it runs along!

Well, that's about all I have to write about the train, sorry it's all a bit rambling and confused! I probably wrote too much about boring things and missed interesting bits out!

Tips (for Tansy, or anyone else)

to bring: flip flops/sandals for around the train (or hostels when you stop)

tea towle and washing up liquid (would have been very useful!)

some kind of box or bowl to eat out of and wash up in

toilet paper(most toilets don't have it, expecially by the end)

soap (if you mind that there's none in the toilets) or hand sanitiser (for when there's no water in the toilets

a hand-bag/shoulder-bag (useful fro carrying valuable when you get off at stops if you leave no-one in the cabin and better than a rucksack cos they feel safer in front of you rather than behind!)

Also

have some way of cooling boiling water for drinking water (we put it in a metal drinking bottle, filled up using a scarf to hold it, then transfered it to plastic bottles!)

Food

You can easily buy bread, chocolate, fruit, seeds (great snack), boiled eggs (not great idea!), meaty stuff, blinis - pancakes (cheese or meat), crisps, instant noodles (although probably best to bring from home if you want to make sure they're veggie), cheese (like dairylea).

The Russian buffet car is not really worth it. It's expensive and not very good food. The mongolian one is better. At least it's not expensice. We did manage a vegetarian meal but it wasn't great! The chinese one is good, we got free vouchers so I don't know if it's expensive. The vouchers give you a set menu, which for breakfast was boiled eggs, bread and jam! The lunch had enough vegetarian.