I lept out of bed at the sound of my alarm, not wanting to miss my train to Ulan Baator. It was still dark at 6am, the long summer days are quickly vannishing, but the street sweepers were already out, patiently whisking away the rubbish strewn everywhere by Russians who have an astounding disredard for the environment around them! The main square in Ulan Ude has a giant head of Lenin gazing over it, I mean a three storey high giant head. Kinda creepy in the morning twilight.
My compartment companions were Helena from Amsterdam and David from Coventry. Tea and conversation kept us going through the valleys and along the lakes to the border, I think it was the prettiest part of Russia that I saw, somehow on a scale that was more comprehensible than the ultra vastness of Siberia.

At the border town on the Russian side we had to get off the train after our passports were cursorily glanced at. 4 hours of pottering round the pitiful little market, fly blown meat, more blankets, shoes and ugly blouses than you could ever hope to cram in your backpack, but very little in the way of fruit, vege or packets of edible food. Helena and I climbed up the hill following the road out of town, hoping to find a lovely lake over the other side but it was only abandonded factories and ugly mounds of rubbish. It kind of goes against your ingrained sense to wander too far from the train with all your luggage so we, like everyone else, lingered on the platform, although our train had disappeared.
It didnt reappear until 4pm, when the sun was beating down at its worst and we had to sit back in our compartments, no windows would open, and wait for the officials. Papers to fill in, passports taken away, and luggage and compartments checked. Finally 6 hours later we pulled away and chugged towards the actual border. Once over the fun started. The compartment next to ours was full of little Mongolian ladies who had been constantly darting up and down, stashing massive boxes and bags. These were now dragged back into the corridor and they started stuffing them out a window they had managed to get open, one fat woman with way too much pink glittery eyeshadow directing the whole affair through her mobile phone. We spotted people lingering trackside to collect the parcels, one girl almost got knocked out by a flying carton. Things obviously didnt go quickly enough because the scurrying increased as parcels were redistributed through several compartments. We werent allowed to get off for an hour and a half at the Mongolian side whilst more forms were filled in and everything checked again. They even climbed up and checked the roof cavity next to the (nonfunctioning) airconditioning vent. The pile of discoveries on the platform grew quickly. No one seemed very surprised. Finally we were able to get off and lingered around for another 2 hours or so. After a while the discovered hoard of boxes were carried off but the group of people seemed to not be in too much trouble. Before we left though some men, whom I'm sure were some that we had seem earlier along the track, hopped on board and reappeared with more boxes and dashed off to their van with them! Cheeky things!!! In total there must have been 50 or 60 large packages and I guess they got away with about half. Talk about a living soap opera!!! It did end up taking us 10 hours in total at both sides of the border. By this stage there were only two carriages left of the train, the rest were wagons of wood, so we had a good opportunity to talk to lots of travellers, who were practically the only ones on the train, sharing stories and making new plans.