28 Hours on a Train into Central Asia

Cara and I left the calm oasis of her apartment in Liangmaqiao at about 9:45am Saturday morning and headed into the thick of Saturday traffic in Beijing, which Cara explained to me is extraordinarily bad. It took us about an hour to get there, and when we did the crush of people outside the station was overwhelming. It took us a while to figure out that we had to go through a ticket check outside the station to actually get in and get to our train. We were stressed because we were getting close to our train’s departure time and we still needed to get food. We had heard the train food was pretty terrible and though we had an epic snack collection with us, it wouldn’t be enough. No one was answering our questions, or taking our orders at Subway. It’s strange, we were asking for the things one always asks for, and Cara was asking for them in Chinese, and her Chinese is excellent. But people just sort of could only hear and see “foreigner” and they either willfully chose to ignore or misunderstood everything she was saying.

So we got on the train with our hard-won sandwiches and took our seats/beds in our little cabin. There were two bunks, a small table, a WC shared with the cabin next to us, and a little chair in the corner opposite the bottom bunk and table. We quickly discover that no one involved with the running of the train speaks English or Chinese, only Mongolian. This did not prove to be a problem initially. We enjoyed the first few hours alternating between fast, slow, and glacial paces through the Chinese countryside. It proved to be lovely, and varied. As we worked our way north and further inland, the mountains flattened and the fields and sky opened up. We passed wind farms and small rivers, lots of fields and agriculture. Shepherds on motorbikes were tending their herds. People were fishing in suspect bodies of water outside super-industrial complexes spewing unbelievable amounts of pollution.

Cara and I walked the entire length of the train, scouting out the different cabin arrangements, standing out on the caboose balcony and getting asked to come back in because “we weren’t supposed to be out there” but really the dudes running that car just wanted to smoke out there. We then retired to our cabin after inspecting the whole train and finding where we could get water that was not boiling hot. All water is served hot as a default in China, I’ve found. It is sometimes served room temperature, and never ever served cold. Cara even said that women are not supposed to drink cold water while menstruating because it is considered EXTREMELY hazardous to your health in China. We found the dining car which I think hasn’t really been touched since it was produced in the late 1940s. It had seen better days but it was also like a time capsule, so in that respect it was cool.

We headed back to our cabin and hung out and talked for a few hours. These long, drawn out catch-up conversations, and being stuck on a train together for 28 hours, really allows some amazing rabbit-trails to be followed. I wonder what would happen if I had that kind of dedicated time and space in a lot of my other relationships. It was sweet time. Then I started falling asleep and Cara did some more exploring and met a bunch more people on the train. Cara came to get me around 7pm saying that most of the food was gone from the dining car and if we wanted to get dinner, we would have to hurry. So I dragged myself off the top bunk and down to the dining car where we sat down in the train car that time forgot.

The menu was handwritten on the back of a piece of an 8.5x11 advertisement for a restaurant in Ulan Bataar. Only 2 of the original 8 menu items were available 5 hours into our train ride. Our waitress came up to the table, folded the menu in half, and pointed at two things, rice and soup, and scrambled eggs with tomatoes, and asked which one we wanted, reiterating that everything else was gone. Cara discussed the offerings with the woman in Chinese and there were some negotiations. We ended up splitting the egg and tomato thing and each getting rice and soup. Nothing to write home about. Another couple who sat down after us were given different offerings. Cara and I both noticed this and Cara, ever the inquisitive mind, asked our server about it. She received some of the most blatant and patronizing snark she’s ever been given in Chinese. “Oh, well that’s the meal for the staff, but if YOU want it, you can have it. But it’s supposed to be my meal.”

Wow. Okay. So Cara had wanted a beer at that point, but the woman was clearly very angry at being called out about the serving of the good food to someone else. And then we were definitely put on the black list. So we didn’t order the beer and quietly slunk away to our cabin. We met a New Zealander on the walk back who was traveling with another Kiwi, two Aussies, an American, and a French girl. We were immediately accepted as hip foreigners who travel to out-of-the-way destinations, and invited to their cabin party in Carriage 4. Sweet. We made it back to our cabin in Carriage 7, and then I offered to go back and purchase the beer from the dining hall dictator. When I got there, she clearly recognized me as the accomplice and pasted a sickly sweet, forced smile on her face, and brought me the two beers I asked for. I returned to the cabin, we hung out for a bit longer then went and joined the Carriage 4 party, which was actually a serious party. There were like 8 people in their group, not everyone who was hanging out could fit in one cabin, and there was lots of beer, and music, and a toy helicopter drone. Aussies and Kiwis are, as a rule, hilarious and charming. Men and women, young and old, without exception. I find it unbelievable. But we had a great time until we were approaching the Mongolian border and the attendants told us go back to our cabin to get our documents and stay there to have them checked. Thus began the 5-hour saga that took place between about 10pm and 3am.

We waited for a knock that came with the passport control officer at our door. Chinese passport patrol took Cara’s passport and mine and started questioning her pretty heavily. She has a different kind of passport and has to travel to a bunch of different places for her job, so they raised some eyebrows at her. They largely ignored me. They left with our passports and we weren’t really sure what was going to happen. Then the passport control officer came back with three other people and another guy questioned Cara. Then they left again. We were very uneasy about what was going to happen and waited in tense confusion. Then another knock came, and our carriage attendant lady showed up asking us to leave the train and take a break in the station we had stopped at. Cara does a ton of research whenever she travels and had read a travel blog about this very moment. You CAN get off the train when it stops at this particular point in the journey. It stops at a station but the station is closed, and dark, and cold, and there is nothing around. And if you get off for a short time just to stretch your legs, you could end up stranded for three hours because the train pulls away to a special hanger, quite a ways away, where they change out the bottom of the train to fit the Mongolian tracks. Confused? I was too. More on that later. So we knew we shouldn’t get off the train. So the lady goes away. About 10 minutes later, she comes back, this time with a large dude. She opens our cabin door, turns on the lights, (it’s almost midnight at this point) and asks us to step out and to allow the gentleman to come in. We just sat there with blank looks on our faces and didn’t move, dumbstruck by the ridiculous nature of her request. Then she motioned for us to let the man in, I thought, to use our bathroom. I said no. Then she motioned for me to stand up and sit on the bench in the cabin. I had no idea why she wanted me to do this, or why I complied but I did. Cara and I were completely confused and our jaws were gaping open. She then proceeds to go over to the chain I had just been sitting in, unscrew it from the wall and the floor, and lift it up. The guy with her came in behind and grabbed a huge box that had been hidden under the seat and took it and left. The woman screwed the chair back in, kept saying the Chinese word for apple to Cara, asked us if there was any problem, gestured that we probably shouldn’t mention this to the Chinese passport controllers, thanked us profusely, and then left. WTF. We peeked over to our next-door neighbors because we heard the same thing happening in their cabin. Sure enough, a box was produced from under the chair in their cabin too (also a pair of Americans) and the cabin next to them. We came to the conclusion that we had just witnessed the retrieval of smuggled contraband from our train cabin! Unreal. So many unanswered questions. What was in that box??

THE CHAIR!!

Now, probably you have lots of questions at this point, and probably the least pressing one is, why were were even stopped for three hours in the middle of nowhere to begin with? Unfortunately, that’s really the only one I can answer. Because national pride knows no limits and manifests itself in very strange ways, the gauges of the trains tracks in China are different and incompatible with those of Mongolia. So the bottoms of every single car in every train that crosses the border has to be changed out for ones that fit the tracks in Mongolia. This process takes over three hours. They take every car apart, and split the train in half, the wheel it out to a special hanger where they have the hydraulics. They put the train cars up on lifts over the tracks and then detach and wheel out the old ones. There are many, many men with flashlights who wander around the train peering under it and looking at things, seemingly inspecting, but I’m not sure that’s the whole story either. It was pitch dark outside and we saw lots of people far off in the distance, nowhere near any trains, also surveying the area with flashlights. There is extremely loud clanging and sounding of horns associated with the cars separating and coming back together and detaching and reattaching to the undercarriages with different wheels. Sleep was a physical impossibility. Also, the passport saga was not over yet so we were just generally on edge.

Switching the wheels on the cars

The train also does not allow passengers to use the restroom while the train is stopped and to enforce this policy, they lock the door 30 minutes before stopping without warning. And you can’t really get off the train! So basically, you are captive from 10pm to 1am while this switch is taking place, and you better hold it! There are no good options for you.

After we had finished the switch out and were moving again, actually crossing the border into Mongolia, I really started to feel pinched. The attendant said I had to wait until after the had collected our documents and stamped passports at the Mongolian border. Judging by how long this process had taken on the Chinese side, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it. Our train did finally move forward a few miles and we crossed the border and pulled to a stop in another station, where I hoped to find relief. Surely they would at least allow me out to use the facilities here. Nope! I finally had to beg one of the attendants in my car to unlock my bathroom about 30 minutes into our next 2 hour stop.

While I was jumping from one leg to another waiting to see what kind of progress was being made by the second person who absconded with my passport sans explanation in the space of 3 hours, the train just started slowly going forward, and then stopping, and then going backwards in the train yard. This process was repeated countless times over the two hours we were there. Also, at one point a large Mongolian man banged on our door, entered our cabin, turned the lights on, and searched our cabin and our bathroom. Good thing they got that weird box out of there before the border! Although he didn’t look under the chair. Again, so many unanswered questions. Anyone but the most highly skilled somnambulists, or with pharmaceutical assistance, could never possibly have fallen asleep.

Finally, our passports were returned and our train started moving forward again at 2:45am, fully 5 hours after we had first stopped. The bathroom, I must report, is still locked at the time of writing.

The rest of the train ride was much less eventful. I got about 4 hours of sleep and woke up to the huge skies and sweeping plains of Mongolia passing by out the window. We saw yaks and camels, lots of herds of horses, and a whole lot of nothing. We hung out in our cabin a bit more and then decided to scope out the dining car, which had been switched to a new one when the train bottoms had been switched out. Upgrade! The attendant here had 1990’s high-energy club music remixes pumping and had funny demeanor about him. We went and ate around 11:30 am when the menu switched from breakfast to lunch. We sat down in the midst of the pulsing music and enjoyed the huge windows and great views surrounding us.

We weren’t very hungry because we had been making good progress on our epic snack collection, but we did order one lunch to split between us, saying multiple times that we only wanted one serving for two people, the man repeated back to us what we said and nodded, then went about preparing the meal. Out came two plates of vegetables, and one sizzling skillet of sautéed beef and onions. Because of the two plates, I felt it important to make clear once again that we only wanted one lunch to split between two people. We finished our mediocre meal and hung out in the dining car for a while, our next door neighbors came and sat at the table tent to us and we chatted. Then it came time to pay. Our guy brought us the bill and of course he had charged us for two people. The same thing happened to our neighbors. We talked to him about it and he just said “two people, one lunch each” and kept pointing at the number. I will say that lunch was not cheap either. I had a 10 course dinner in Beijing for the same amount this guy was trying to charge us. So we decided, corporately, that we would give him 60% of his asking price and we handed him the money, and he didn’t even flinch. I guess he knew what he was trying to do, and he conceded that this turnout was fair. I was very pleased. I felt, for the first time since being in Asia, like I had “w” in my column over people trying to take tourists out for a ride.

We went back to our cabin and our New Zealand friend walked by and stopped in for a chat. We got to tell him all our crazy stories from the night before. He told us that they had had good fun in their car until about 4am and were sad that we had not come back to join them. Also, since we were getting close to our destination, the attendant came to clean our bathroom and then, of course, locked it. However, she was in the bathroom for over 45 minutes. There is no WAY it takes 45 minutes to clean that bathroom. It is 2 square feet in area. As the three of us sat there talking and she kept banging around in the bathroom, it started to get weirder and weirder that she was in there. Then we thought maybe she’s freeing more contraband from hidden compartments to bring in country. Maybe not too far away from the truth! Our neighbors pointed out that Mongolia is landlocked and the train would be one of the most reasonable and accessible ways to transport goods.

We were approaching Ulan Bataar. Contact info was exchanged with our friends, and one of them drew us a tongue-in-cheek map of where New Zealand is so that there are no excuses for us not to come and visit. We pulled into the urban sprawl of the world’s coldest capital city, and saw lots of colorful roofs and squat residences. Arriving at the train station, we were met by our driver for our Ger camp and he took our bags and set off for the car at a pace that would have impressed Olympic speed-walkers. We made a beeline for the bathroom, which the entirety of the train did as well, and then we hopped in our Land Cruiser, and into the crush of UB traffic, worse than DC’s!