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-   -   From Moscow to Beijing by train. Part Four : Going to Mongolia ! (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=185825)

Nantais Oct 16, 2010 10:22 PM

From Moscow to Beijing by train. Part Four : Going to Mongolia !
 
Here is the fourth thread about my train journey, in last july, from Moscow to Beijing.

The links towards the three first threads :
- the first thread (about Moscow) :http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=185517
- the second thread (about Siberia) :http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=185578
- the third thread (about the Baikal):http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=185653

In this fourth thread, I will post pics that I took from the train during the journey from Irkoutsk to Ulan Bator. The journey lasted two nights and one day (including the long eight-hour waiting at the border).

It should be noted that the atmosphere in the train between Irkoutsk and Ulan Bator was very different than in the first part of the Transsiberian.
Here, the train was literally packed with young European globe-trotters (from France, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, Great Britain, etc.) while from Moscow to Irkoutsk, there was a lot less tourists and we were more with the everyday-Russian people taking the Transsiberian as an ordinary mean of transport to travel inside their huge country.
So, in a word, lot of tourists, few local people. On a side note, I didn't meet one single tourist from North America, what I find strange, considering the dozens (hundreds ?) of European tourists who were in this train.
Myself, I shared my room with Angela, a German-Swiss girl who was going on a world tour, and Mark, a crazy guy from the Netherlands, who also wanted to tour the world, but without taking plane. He had left the Netherlands on a moped, and then was going on by train after his moped had been stolen in Estonia or Russia (I don't remember).

Enough of words, here are the pics :
1- Waking up on board. The train left Irkoutsk the day before at about 10:00 PM. Ruins along the tracks. We've passed Ulan Ude during the night. We're still in Russia :
http://imgur.com/hUSNq.jpg

2-
http://imgur.com/t6wvv.jpg

3-
http://imgur.com/oU3oD.jpg

4- The landscape is more hilly :
http://imgur.com/dAzIb.jpg

5-
http://imgur.com/TM6xA.jpg

6-
http://imgur.com/toaN2.jpg

7-
http://imgur.com/sTMDu.jpg

8-
http://imgur.com/yQwK7.jpg

9-
http://imgur.com/dwi6V.jpg

10- Crossing a river :
http://imgur.com/Q8Clg.jpg

11-
http://imgur.com/9YUiU.jpg

12-
http://imgur.com/fqxc2.jpg

13-
http://imgur.com/rO4tQ.jpg

14-
http://imgur.com/vMwrO.jpg

15-
http://imgur.com/cmlrG.jpg

16-
http://imgur.com/cT36O.jpg

17-
http://imgur.com/xjBY7.jpg

18-
http://imgur.com/Rz0XR.jpg

19-
http://imgur.com/2rMZl.jpg

20-
http://imgur.com/FJHm3.jpg

21- Approaching another lake, just before Mongolia.
http://imgur.com/fl7ap.jpg

22-
http://imgur.com/Nsgq7.jpg

23-
http://imgur.com/PyvBh.jpg

24-
http://imgur.com/uudZC.jpg

25-
http://imgur.com/fe9KG.jpg

26- Our train, the great Transmongolian !
http://imgur.com/QlFoD.jpg

27- Lot of old water tanks all along the Transsiberian and the Transmongolian :
http://imgur.com/OCcoD.jpg

28- Last ruins of Siberia :
http://imgur.com/smCZP.jpg

29-
http://imgur.com/Twxk2.jpg

30-
http://imgur.com/gl06k.jpg

31-
http://imgur.com/STrUW.jpg

32-
http://imgur.com/MzUwY.jpg

34-
http://imgur.com/xeVhw.jpg

35- Here is the last russian train station before the border. This is the beginning of a very long wait to cross the border. Fortunately we could go out of the train and take a very refreshing (but not free) shower in the train station.
http://imgur.com/wZksX.jpg

36-
http://imgur.com/ULZSc.jpg

37-
http://imgur.com/G2uMr.jpg

38- The customs building :
http://imgur.com/M0pSp.jpg

39- After waiting four or five hours, the train left at last the last russian station to enter Mongolia. When entering Mongolia, there were mongolian soldiers saluting the train all along the tracks. I could not take pics of them as taking pics was not very welcomed at this moment. Here is the first Mongolian train station :
http://imgur.com/xUu9G.jpg

40- We are in Mongolia !
http://imgur.com/Dgwcl.jpg

41-
http://imgur.com/IppxX.jpg

42-
http://imgur.com/q6XUO.jpg

43-
http://imgur.com/bAtkb.jpg

44-
http://imgur.com/GSQwY.jpg

45- First mongolian town. Not so different from Russia :
http://imgur.com/n5mus.jpg

46- We've just made some miles into Mongolia and we stop again for two or three hours to let the Mongolian customs do their job :
http://imgur.com/BxPk0.jpg

47-
http://imgur.com/bGkij.jpg

48- Here is Boris. A crazy French who was trying to rejoin his girlfriend working as a nurse in the middle of Mongolia :
http://imgur.com/xr8AL.jpg

49-
http://imgur.com/Ysj3M.jpg

50-
http://imgur.com/jXBNM.jpg

51-
http://imgur.com/otvKv.jpg

51bis-
http://imgur.com/oTNhu.jpg

52-
http://imgur.com/4USpG.jpg

53- The train is advancing again into Mongolia. Lot of huge more or less abandonned industrial buildings there too :
http://imgur.com/2cB5y.jpg

54-
http://imgur.com/XapF7.jpg

55- The next day. It's about 6:30AM. We're entering the outskirts of Ulan Bator :
http://imgur.com/UbUMY.jpg

56-
http://imgur.com/A3sSn.jpg

57-
http://imgur.com/elDe0.jpg

58-
http://imgur.com/4hihm.jpg

59-
http://imgur.com/2vyy0.jpg

60-
http://imgur.com/jGJyg.jpg

61-
http://imgur.com/XLp6S.jpg

62- A yurt, while we enter the Ulan Bator train station :
http://imgur.com/kFmkW.jpg


We stayed in Mongolia for two days before taking again the train. Don't miss the next threads !


Edit : if a mod could rewrite Moscow with a capital letter in the thread's title... Thanks !

Cementglow Oct 17, 2010 1:02 AM

I really like this thread.

SouthByMidwest Oct 17, 2010 1:48 AM

I'd say you went the extra mile with this one.

Siberia is usually thought of as this frozen, desolate wasteland but there are some beautiful sights to be seen, obviously. You shot these from a moving train and through windows? Good stuff.

ColDayMan Oct 17, 2010 4:50 AM

I can't wait for the next one!

olga Oct 17, 2010 9:51 AM

Thanks! I love it!

Jiang Oct 17, 2010 10:14 AM

Very interesting trip report. Great job:tup:

SHiRO Oct 17, 2010 4:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nantais (Post 5018755)
Edit : if a mod could rewrite Moscow with a capital letter in the thread's title... Thanks !

Fixed! :tup:

Great thread...

KVNBKLYN Oct 17, 2010 4:57 PM

I'm loving this series. It's making me very jealous. I've wanted to check out the unglamorous cities of Siberia for a while now and I'm always a sucker for a transcontinental train journey. Great photos!

mthq Oct 17, 2010 6:58 PM

You've done it again!

Lecom Oct 17, 2010 7:55 PM

Awesome. Thanks for posting.

Yankee Oct 17, 2010 8:11 PM

Great series! Thanks for taking us on this awesome trip with you, I can't wait for the next one. I'm surprised Mongolia looks so much like Russia, I know it was in the Soviet sphere of influence during the Cold War, but wow their signs are even in Cyrillic. They're lucky they didn't get annexed.

Chelsea Spy Oct 17, 2010 9:16 PM

what an awesome trip!

highriser1 Oct 18, 2010 12:18 AM

You never hear or see much about Mongolia, or Siberia. I like these pictures.

xzmattzx Oct 19, 2010 2:54 AM

Nice pictures. We don't see Mongolia on here that much. Does Mongolia use Russian characters and letters, Chinese characters and letters, or both in every place or one near one country and another near the other?

Nantais Oct 19, 2010 4:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xzmattzx (Post 5021406)
Nice pictures. We don't see Mongolia on here that much. Does Mongolia use Russian characters and letters, Chinese characters and letters, or both in every place or one near one country and another near the other?

They use the cyrillic (russian) alphabet in Mongolia.

Thanks to all for the comments.

ArchMadness Oct 24, 2010 5:10 PM

This is such a killer trip. I'm loving these threads!

The Dirt Nov 1, 2010 3:17 PM

This is quite awesome!

Evo5Boise Nov 1, 2010 4:45 PM

Awesome thread. Thanks for sharing.

dfane Nov 8, 2010 7:35 PM

wild although Mongolia to me I always identified as an arm of China but their alphabet and lettering looks Russian


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