Because jumping while traveling is awesome!
Finally ! After 5 hours at the Chinese border to change again the carriage boggies as we did back in Belarus (which seemed ages before !) and after a last night in the train, finally we arrive in China for a first stop in Datong.
There, they changed the chinese orange coal locomotive we had had at the border for a blue electricity powered one. At least we felt we saved some more trees running on electricity rather than coal.
Oh wait… where does most electricity come from in China ? Damn it.
And back in the Trans-Mongolian, this time, direction China !
The picture below was taken at one of the few Mongolian stops, in Sain-Shanda (aka Saynshand sometimes), in front of our locomotive.
In Sain-shanda, we stopped enough time to buy some water, as well as some dehydrated Korean spicy noodles (just add some boiling water, and that’s ready). Quite good… when you’re hungry !
Korea and Mongolia seem to get along quite well. We saw an impressive amount Korean shops in Ulan Bator. Maybe it is because both countries are surrounded by huge and powerful countries that they feel it is easier to deal with countries of their size ? Just a thought though, i’m not an expert in koreo-mongol politics 🙂
Last moments in Russia ! After 10 days of intense train-ing in Russia, we arrived at the end of this first journey and we were fully ready for Mongolia desert country.
Oh ! And last bit of Cyrrilic lesson (i really love that alphabet):
– Y = oo (like in “food”)
– Ш = sh
– И is still I
NAYШKИ = Naushki (“na-oosh-ky”)
Behind us you can see the train destination: Moscow – Ulan Bator!
