*crossed*
by Rob
On the K3 train from Beijing to UB (for us, although it continues on all the way to Moscow)
“This will be one of the easiest border crossings,” I had commented earlier as the friendly Chinese immigration officials had collected our passports from us right there in our cosy carriage. We had been on the train for over thirteen hours now, having boarded at 7am in Beijing and spent the day watching the slow evolving panorama unfold out of the windows as we headed ever-westwards.
The train trip up through North China to Elian (the border crossing into Mongolia) was smooth and comfortable. No third class sleepers on this train, we had two compartments completely to ourselves, each with four berths and one extra bed in a third compartment. All our luggage could be safely tucked away, including the five large bags of food we were hauling as provisions (most of which we did not end up needing as we were given complimentary meal vouchers for lunch and dinner in the dining car. Yahoo… the kids were excited to be able to finally eat in the train restaurant.)
We had plenty of space for the children to play, and the change in scenery from Beijing to Erlian was truly fascinating to watch. I had fun using up my phone credit by posting a blogpost from the phone… just because I COULD. Well, make that SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO. I ran out of credit just before clicking “publish” so the post remained on my phone. Oh well, sometimes technology does let you down.
see the Great Wall?
As we travelled we wondered about the border crossing. Reports said that it would take up to 5 hours, and that we may have to disembark and take all our luggage with us. Not so bad, except that we were scheduled to arrive in Erlian at 9pm and the night-time temperature could be around –6 degrees. Hmmm….with eight tired children, NOT our idea of fun. However, we had struck up conversation with a Mongolian man and his daughter, who had given us some hope.
“You may be able to stay on the train and not take off your bags, it depends on the guards,” he shared his experience. We hoped for friendly border guards!
Arriving at the border we were not disappointed. The Chinese officials were friendly, fast and efficient. Hence my thought that this would be the easiest crossing yet. We were the only ones in our carriage who did not have to open bags – although Grandpa must have looked at least a little sinister – he had to show the contents of his under-bed-storage-unit were all legal.
An interesting aspect of this crossing was that the train has to change lines into Mongolia, where, along with Russia, a slightly wider gauge track (1.5m) is used…so all the bogies have to be changed. Another piece of technical wizardry – the train was shunted into the “bogie changing shed”, where hydraulic lifters raised the carriage compartments up in the air about one meter, the old bogies were towed away and the new bogies slid into place. The carriages were then lowered back down, the train was re-coupled and then we were ready to roll again. All the while passengers were able to remain on board, meaning we got a close up view of all the goings-on.
So we were able to remain on the train, but the shunting and re-coupling was so severe that none of the kids managed to sleep through it, despite the hour of night. And the bogie-changing took time. In fact, it was well past eleven by the time they had been replaced. Then the Chinese officials brought the passports back on, again wanting to check faces before handing them back. Border crossing over? Nope, we had only cleared China exit formalities, not yet entered into Mongolia. The train slowly shuffled through no-man’s-land to the Mongolian border. By this time it was midnight. No sleeping allowed yet either (despite the fact that by now some of the children had drifted back into NeverNeverLand), as the Mongolian border officials wanted to see everyone’s face clearly to verify the passports. Twice. Fair enough, although half asleep children did not appreciate being made to sit up AGAIN with all the lights on to stare bleary-eyed at the officials. And it seemed to take a LONG time to check the passports. Good thing too – it gave ER2 time to throw up her dinner into a plastic bag while we waited! It was 1:30 am before the officials returned passports. We all could have gone to bed then, except some of us were still waiting….
You see, one thing they should tell you BEFORE you come to the border is that all the toilets will be locked until the border crossing is complete. Makes complete sense when you think about it, given the hole-in-the-floor nature of the loos, and the fact men are crawling around changing bogies underneath. However, even though we did know the toilets were inaccessible during station stops, it caught some of us out, so we may have crossed the border, but there were still a few crossed legs! It was close to 2am before the train finally pulled out of the station and we were able to prompt our not-so-congenial train attendant to unlock the toilet doors!
Border crossing completed: 5 hours and 15 minutes. We won’t be boasting about it being the easiest, and certainly not the quickest.
Tags: children, health, postcard: China, postcard: Mongolia, toilet, tradition
rayres
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