Stop. Go. No, Stop. No, Go. Wait, where Is The Engine Car?

We are awakened by the older cabin matron who jolts our door open, points to her watch, shouts “passport control” and slams the door shut again. It’s seven thirty. An hour later the train rolls into Mongolian border control and we are boarded by suited officials. Let the waiting game begin.

I run through the day in my head: “okay, so this many hours for this, another x number of hours for that, some time to eat and a decent night’s sleep.” DAY PLANNED!

DAY LOST. For whatever reason all sense of time and space seems to disappear on this epic adventure. We are all convinced this is in part due to the obscene amount of time we spend not moving in a state of perpetual “um, border control? wait, toilet? um, huh, what, where, who...” that really curtails any type of forward progress.

We are re-boarded and our passports are returned to us. I look at my watch. It has been TWO HOURS. The train rolls all of ten feet forward and we are boarded again - this time by Mongolian customs officials. The waiting game begins yet again. Caroline from down the hall stops in to tell us what’s going on. How she found out, I have no idea. “We’re going to be here for a while and you can get off and go to the bathroom. I’m gong to feed that dog over there.” I de-train and use the toilet not because I have to, but because I am bored. In fact, I haven’t needed the bathroom for what seems like days. Friends had told me horror stories of getting trapped at the border for ten and twelve hours with no access to toilets. In anticipation, I cut myself from all fluids an hour before we boarded the train. Maybe dehydration is part to blame for lack of mental prowess.



I re-board and another hour passes before we begin to screech slowly forward yet again. This time we carry on for a good thirty minutes crossing from Mongolia to Russia. We pass the electric fence (yes, electric fence) that runs the length of the border to stop all those pesky Mongolians from fleeing to the frigid, snow-covered, poverty-ridden Siberian side and pull into the Russian passport control and customs station, where we are boarded by at least twenty Russian soldiers that all look exactly like what you’d think a Russian soldier should look like.

They inspect our passports with excessive seriousness then instruct us to “leave cabin.” The four of us get up, unsure of where we’re going. A small gymnastic woman enters our cabin and proceeds to do an uneven bars routine while looking in every nook and cranny for who knows what. Drugs? Money? Mongolians? I de-train, [pretend to] use the bathroom, arrive back to find they’ve moved a bit further down the cabin and return to my flux state-of-being that is both unproductive and uninteresting.



I also notice that we are no longer attached to an engine car, which is just super. FOUR MORE HOURS PASS. The cabin matron has made yet another wardrobe change (she has a different outfit for each activity - collecting trash, punching tickets, doing needlepoint, screaming at me, etc). She is now vacuuming THE ENTIRE TRAIN with a dust buster, even coming into our room. She motions to our feet and points up. We lift and she sweeps under our feet. She then motions to our feet and points down, as if we would have stayed in that formation permanently otherwise.

We are shaken by an abrupt “push” forward as an engine is attached. We start moving ever so slowly forward. Caroline reappears to inform us of the party happening later in the evening. “Apparently there is actually a Russian on the train and he has invited all of us to a Vodka party later.” Everyone enters a “do your own thing” mood for a few hours until we’re reuniting to attend the party.

The four of us - Andy, Charlotte, Matt and I - pick out our outfits and get dressed as if we’re going for a night on the town. Having sat for nearly 36 hours, actually having something to do is rather exciting.

The real-life Russian never shows but sure enough we end up with 3 Aussies, 4 Americans, 2 Brits, 1 Austrian and 1 Belarussian all squeezed into the same cabin. All proceeds well until a few of the attendees decide they want to drink with the Russian Army, who have invited the whole lot of us to the dining car. Valuing my life as well as my unbroken bones, I pass and head to bed. WHAT. A. DAY.

--

Kyle Taylor

Caroline, Queen of Siberia

My watch reads 8:23pm as our train pulls into the Ulaanbaatar platform. We’re standing in the blustery cold under nearly 2 inches of snow thanks to a fluke snowstorm that forced the temperature down 35 degrees in twelve hours. Matt is to my right attempting to dodge the sways and dips of a very drunk Mongolian man. To my left is a dapper American fellow named Chris. Chris is a missionary from the Mormon church, which I identify from the universal name tag that all missionaries seem to wear.

He asks me where I’m from which is followed up with: “so, have you heard about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?” While I award an A for effort all I can think is, “does this really seem like the right moment to pitch the church? I’m wearing a 40-pound backpack on my back and a 20-pound pack on my front standing in two inches of snow on a train platform in Mongolia.” The whistle sounds and I excuse myself, apologizing for needing to hop aboard.



We are joined by Andy and Charlotte in our 4-person, 4-bed, microscopic cabin. It appears that - once again - all the foreigners have been placed in the same coach. We begin to chat our plan our coordinated attack on arranging our berths. “Okay, if you put your right foot here then I can put my left arm there and pull down this bunk. Good. Now, if you suspend your body from that rail I can do a front somersault vaulted twist into my bed. Ready, steady...”

Conversation on travel, work, school and home (they’re both UK residents and London-bound!) shifts abruptly as Caroline bursts into the cabin. We first met Caroline in Beijing, as she and her partner were on our group tour to the Great Wall. They miraculously reappeared on our train to Mongolia, where we brushed shoulders and spoke of our epic adventures. While we stayed in different places in Ulaanbaatar, both of us took overnight trips to the National Park (though we did not see each other). Then, while standing in the snow and chatting with the Mormon missionary, I caught her gaze across the platform.

Caroline seems to know everyone on the train, including the staff, border guards and customs officials. Austrian, she lives in London and “take one major trip every year.” You can hear her bubbly, enthusiastic laugh from six cabins down and whenever she shows up you can be sure there is some new train-wide news or gossip to be disseminated. She is the foreign traveler’s matriarch on our train journey through Siberia and thanks to her precise smoking schedule, I could set my watch by her movements.

She offers us Vodka all around which the four of us politely decline. This is followed by a number of hilarious anecdotes including a profile of her new Mongolian friend, her love of feeding dogs and how she made friends with our on-board cabin matron. The conversation carries on for several more highly entertaining hours before the four of us are sufficiently tired. Matt and Charlotte both accidentally stumble into the matron’s berth whilst looking for the bathroom and get a stern gaze for interrupting a frantically paced session of needlepointing. With that, we drift off to sleep...

--

Kyle Taylor