Through the Gobi Desert

Our final leg of the train journey (sob) was from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing, a journey which took us through the heart of the Gobi desert. About five hours after leaving UB, the snowy wastes finally petered out, only to be replaced almost immediately by this:



Most of the Gobi isn't officially true desert, so the sandy wastes were mixed with a lot of scrubby grassland, but it was certainly large and empty enough to see why Outer Mongolia is pretty much used as international shorthand for 'the middle of nowehere.' It is quite surprising just how much of the Eurasian steppe is simply empty and desolate waste or one kind or another.

There were, however, a surprising amount of camels. According to our trans-Siberian guidebook, which was written by a complete train geek and is usually correct on anything train-related, there are only about 500 camels left in the Gobi. As such, we weren't expecting that we would see any at all. I now suspect, however, that whoever did this survey may have adopted the scientifically dubious method of counting camels from the train window, as I'd say we saw about half of the Gobi's supposed camel population within about 12 hours. Either that or the camels just really like playing chicken with the train. Don't suppose there's much else to do.
Anyway, if you squint really hard you might be able to identify these humped creatures as camels:



Until the Chinese border, the train also boasted the most blinged-out restaurant car in the world, ever. Our little faces lit up with sheer delight when we saw the tack-tasticness of this:



Sadly, our belief that we had a lot of Mongolian togrogs left to spend was misplaced - the huge wad of notes we had was actually composed of notes worth about 0.5p - so we weren't able to fully sample the delights of this magical world. But although the cups of coffee we were able to afford certainly did not afford us with too much joy, the surroundings more than made up for it.

After a long stint in the bogie-changing shed at the Mongolian-Chinese border (I dread to think how many listless hours we have spent on sidings and in sheds during the trip) we finally made it to China. The guidebook had told us that the Chinese border post was decked out in fairy lights and that the Vienna Waltz was played to greet each incoming train, but sadly this proved not to be true. There were, however, soldiers hiding out in the undergrowth, which always makes you feel very very wanted and welcome indeed.

The Chinese province of Inner Mongolia looked remarkably similar to its Outer neighbour (viz: desert), but when we woke up in the morning the desert had been replaced by some rather tall mountains and.....a rather large and famous wall. Sadly my camera ran out of batteries just before wall sightage, but northern China looked generally like this:



Before too many hours the train finally trundled into Beijing and we stepped off, knowing we'd made it through the desolate wastes and arrived at a part of the world that is people-friendly enough for lots of people to actually live in. For the first time in weeks, the temperature was not prefixed with a big fat minus sign, meaning that it felt positively balmy.

And so (blub), that was the end of our trans-Siberian journey. The blog has now finally also made it to China, and so there will be no more posts about vodka, or pelmeni, or mutton, or instant noodles, or, unfortunately, about frozen wee. I hope I've managed to convey a little of the literal and figurative uber-coolness of the trans-Siberian trip to you guys, but if not, suffice it to say that I've had an ace time, and would recommend this trip to anyone. Except people who can't stand cold.