We've just arrived in Chengdu (South West China) but here's what we wrote when we arrived in Beijing, having travelled by train across Russia, Mongolia and into China. The journey was spectacular (see our albums) and we met some interesting people and had a couple of nerve wracking moments but at least we've now all had a shower after 7 days of washing at a sink on a jerky, wobbly train!
We'd just started to get the hang of a few words in Russian when we boarded the train in Moscow only to find that the train staff were all Chinese! So our first job on the train was to look up some Chinese phrases so that we at least had a few polite words to say to our Chinese carriage attendants. Just to confuse things even more, we tried to have a Nepali lesson each day too. These weren't exactly a resounding success but by day 2 our carriage was adorned with little pictures accompanied by Devangari script (so that's why it told us to bring clothes pegs in our Trans-Siberian Handbook!)
Our Trans-Siberian journey also put our culinary expertise to the test. Because our only means of cooking was to add boiling water to things using the handy samovar at the end of the carriage, we tried to reconstitute our various dried noodles, couscous and instant mashed potato with as much variation as possible (extra flavouring using packet soups or cheese bought on platforms for example). We enjoyed getting off at almost every stop and seeing what the locals had to offer to supplement our diet. Favourites included Russian Blini (pancakes), roasted seeds and fresh fruit.
The scenery was really beautiful, ranging from total and very deep snow cover in Siberia, to dry desert (though still cold) in Mongolia. We saw pretty snow-capped mountains as well as the seemingly 'endless steppes' of Siberia and the plains and dunes of Mongolia. Lake Baikal, totally frozen and covered in snow surrounded by snowy peaks was a favourite.
Getting to know the other passengers was also good fun. Artem (pronounced 'Archom'), a friendly 4 year old Ukrainian became best friends with our travel companion, Lorna, during the journey and spent most of the days in our cabin despite our lack of ability to speak the same language. The little 'Luca and Elise' wind up trains that Mel's niece and nephew gave her certainly helped when getting to know Artem! When the Mongolian customs forms (written in Mongolian and English) were handed around, it was nice to be able to help the others in our carriage for a change. At Ulan Bataar, all of the other passengers in our carriage got off and most made a special effort to say goodbye (especially Artem of course).
The journey from Ulan Bataar to Beijing was like a different train (in fact much of the train was different - new restaurant car, some carriages removed, others added). The passengers were now nearly all Mongolian and most were University students in China about to start a new Semester. Again, we made friends pretty fast, this time with Birgun ('Beck') and Sokhbar ('Soto'), one fluent in English and Chinese, the other fluent in German and both of course fluent in Mongolian. This meant that our conversations and card playing were carried out in 3 languages simultaneously.
Between Ulan Bataar and Beijing we also had the pleasure of seeing a bit more wildlife (and some tame life too!). These included deer, yaks, horses and Bactrian camels (with two humps!). Steve's binoculars came in handy for spotting these in the distance and also for spotting the 'Great Wall of China' which our excellent kilometre by kilometre guidebook told us to look out for.
