From Mongolia, with love

Greetings from Ulaan Bataar (aka UB), Mongolia, where it's swelteringly hot in the world's coldest capital city. It's currently 6pm and a rather toasty 34C.

I'm now most of the way through my journey, and only a few thousand miles from Beijing. Irkutsk proved lovely, and I was able to take in a very interesting tour around the house of a Decembrist, one of the number of people exiled to Siberia for political reasons in the 19th century. I also saw umpteen churches, a smattering of monuments, and an incredibly out of place catholic church - it's pure neo-Gothic, but the only neo-Gothic church in the whole of Siberia, and looks very quaint and peculiar sandwiched between a few Russian Orthodox churches.

That evening, I boarded the 362 train from Irkutsk to Ulaan Baatar, and our long train snaked off into the night. I was more than a little surprised to wake up and find that most of the train had vanished through the night, including the restaurant car. That situation got worse as the day got on: after a 6-hour stop in Naushki and a hike through the meadows stuffed with, oddly enough, wild marijuana, we returned to find that the international train was more like an international donkey ride: the train now consisted of two carriages.

Russian border control was relatively efficient, and didn't really much care for tourists. Mongolians crossing the border were quizzed and searched, while we enjoyed the tea run our provodnistas did. Our provodnistas on this train were fantastic: the entire carriage, toilets included, were scrubbed to within an inch of their life every few hours, and the train kept spotless. After Russian officers took the train apart looking for contraband, we crossed the border (large Russian control post with lots of saluting and military hedge clipping going on, big electric fence, no-mans land, small fence, little Mongolian control post) and pulled into Sukhe Bataar, on the Mongolian side of the border.

The Mongolians were evidently keen not to be outdone, and passports were taken and held next to one's head, while the passport officer engaged in all manners of officious squinting. Customs didn't really seem to care for us either at the Mongolian side, and just stamped all our forms, then the train was searched - revealing all manner of trapdoors and hidey holes we'd previously had no clue about!

At Ulaan Bataar, I transferred to a nomadic encampment in the desert for a few days, where I enjoyed pursuits such as hiking, trying nomadic cuisine (all rather cheesy), horse riding, getting a lift in the back of an open truck from some Kazakhs, digging a truck out of a sand bank after the Kazakhs took a wrong turn, and having a very intensive massage where the masseuse ended up walking up and down my back! I also met a trio of theology undergrads from my alma mater, Trinity - of all the places!

Mongolia is a wonderful, inviting, and friendly country, and surprisingly western and cosmopolitan: after 12 days in Russia, it was something of a welcome change to see people so welcoming and smiley! It's also incredibly cheap (2,500T is about 1 pound sterling - that gets you 3.5 hours in this internet cafe, a pizza, one and a half beers, or ten bottles of mineral water!).

Tomorrow, it's back on the train and off for Beijing. This trip has proven to be an absolutely amazing, and quite bizarre experience. On the last train, I started chronicling things a little better, so hope to flesh out the blog a little with the odd and strange events that have taken place from Moscow to Ulaan Baatar: I'm not quite sure that this is the tour that was intended, but it's turned out to be absolutely marvellous as a result!