Trans-Mongolian Railway - Part 6: Train on stilts

After spending a few days in Ulaanbaatar, it was time to board the Trans-Mongolian Railway again for the last journey to Beijing. The train that will bring us to Beijing is much more modern than the train we had from Moscow to Ulaanbaatar. Although the other -older- train also had its charms, this was a way more pretty.

A new train also meant new tourists to share our compartment with. We are not entirely sure if we were happy with that. But later more about that. First something rather remarkable happened. Late in the evening, we arrived at the border between Mongolia and China. Where the Mongolian railway system is based on a 1.520 mm wide track, the Chinese railway is based on a 1.435 mm wide track. Meaning that the carriage cannot drive straight from Mongolia into China. Where we thought we had to change trains, some clever people found another great solution for this problem: let's lift the train and change all the wheels. We don't know if it is the fastest solution, but at least it is fun to watch. As we had to stay inside the train, we couldn't see what was happening to our carriage, but we could see the carriage next to us. There were Chinese and Mongolian people running all over the place in order to change the wheels of the train. Crazy to see. This whole process, including customs at both the Mongolian and Chinese border took several hours.

When the train started rolling again, we went to bed. At least, we tried to go to bed. Just when we lay down, the door of our compartment opened. We prefer to keep the door closed at night as this reduces the noise just a little bit. As it sometimes happens that the door opens by itself, we closed it again. Less than a minute later, we hear a deep sigh and some sobbing. One of the other tourists we shared our compartment with, opens the door and ran off. Her husband went after her, leaving us staring at each other in our berths. When the husband returns he explains that his wife is a bit claustrophobic (claustrophobia and the Trans-Mongolian Railway: what a great combination!). We understand the problem (if she had told us before...) and accept that the door remains open during the night. We construct some type of curtain so that we are not laying in full side of the people walking by. Despite our curtain, we did not really slept well that night.