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 ! |
I really like this thread.
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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. |
I can't wait for the next one!
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Thanks! I love it!
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Very interesting trip report. Great job:tup:
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Great thread... |
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!
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You've done it again!
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Awesome. Thanks for posting.
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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.
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what an awesome trip!
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You never hear or see much about Mongolia, or Siberia. I like these pictures.
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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?
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Thanks to all for the comments. |
This is such a killer trip. I'm loving these threads!
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This is quite awesome!
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Awesome thread. Thanks for sharing.
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wild although Mongolia to me I always identified as an arm of China but their alphabet and lettering looks Russian
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