The third train ride

Tuesday dawned sunny - the rain and clouds were gone and the sky was once again back to what we expect of central Asia in August - a vault of blue. Under cloudless skies and cold, we were driven back to the main station. Arriving, the first thing we saw was bus-loads of European tourists - older folk mostly - arriving to join the same train as us. On the platform, more Europeans, younger this time. In fact, nearly everyone we had seen on the last two trains was here waiting to join the train to Beijing.

The passengers in the train are predominantly European and young. The train is full of tourists. Austrians, Italians, Ozzies, English, Indians, Czechs. The gilded youth of Europe and the west travelling around. 

The fourth berth in our compartment was taken by a pleasant Czech fellow called Michael who spoke English with a strong German accent. 

The city was soon behind us, replaced by firstly, grassy and featureless steppes, then, later, bluffs and cliffs and low hills. It was noticeable that the Mongolian railway was fenced off, whereas in Russia there was nothing to stop the general public wandering onto the tracks - and they did. It is a single track railway and the rails were not welded together, so we were treated once again to the clickety-clack sound, a sound that reminds me so much of the holidays of my childhood that it cannot but put me in a good mood. In fact, the sight of a diesel locomotive, even the smell of one or the sound of one passing in the distance, is enough to put me in a good mood, so much do I associate diesel trains with holidays.  

All of the trains have travelled at what we in the west might consider a sedate pace. Even the trains on the Trans Siberian rarely passed 60mph. Here in Mongolia the train trundles at best, perhaps just clearing 50mph.

We opened the compartment window - but could we close it? For a while we sat in the cold and shivered. but eventually - what a palaver - we called in the chinese provodniki, and these two uniformed gentlemen were unable to get the window shut. They just gave up and left us, suggesting by dumb show that we should instead lower the blind to keep the cold out. We chose not to notice this advice. 

Eventually, after herculean effort, the Czech guy Michael and myself got the window shut to within a centimetre of the top. 

9:23 a.m: we just clattered through a hamlet with a little station, and the station mistress was stood, almost at the alert, on a little stand especially for the purpose, holding up a yellow flag as the train rumbled through. I can't say "tore through" or "roared" or "thundered through" as these verbs, applied to trains in English, do imply a greater speed than the train is in fact making. The GPS records 85 km/h - a little over 50mph. 

11 a.m: we are now on a featureless, though by no means flat, steppe. I imagine that much of Nebraska or Montana is similar. As time goes by land that was green glass and flat slowly rises to become more hilly. ("Hilly" in the sense that say, the Lincolnshire wolds are "hilly"). Also the land is drying out; vegetation is becoming less green and more scrub-like. We are around 4000' above sea level. The cloudless skies of earlier in the morning have been replaced by 3/8 cover of fluffy "fair weather" clouds. At 11.45a.m we stopped at Чойр ("Choir" in English).

1 p.m: The land becomes drier still; sand is starting to become more common than grass. The fair weather clouds are becoming thinner and fewer. In the distance ahead, over the desert proper, there is no cloud at all.
Years' worth of litter flung from the passing trains is drifted against the railway fence - this is rather displeasing to the English eye. Electric pylons and the trans-Gobi road march across the arid plain just a few hundred yards from the railway track. The sole users of the road appea
r to be an endless series of west-bound (in the sense of coming out of China into Mongolia) heavy articulated lorries.

4 p.m: we have passed Saynshand, where the train stopped briefly, and are now into the Gobi desert proper. The landscape appears to be about 3/4 sand and the vegetation is sparse and scrubby. There is not a cloud in the sky.