In which we wait a lot, sleep a little, read a lot and see a little.
We’ve been very impressed with all the pharmacists we’ve encountered on the way. If you have the name of what you want – even written in English – or explain the problem, they’ll fix you up with what you need over the counter, without charging you an arm and a leg.
I returned with courses for both of us, just in time to find that Juli had ordered tea, which I took to be a good sign. A little later we went out for some supper at a very reasonably priced family restaurant attached to the Beta Stores supermarket, which sells everything, including the Beta brand of tea we had at the Khan’s Palace in Sheki, Azerbaijan on Juli’s birthday. (Beta Tea: Super Tea!) After that, we went back to the hotel again – they were very good about letting us hang out in their (otherwise unused) business centre, even though we’d checked out in the morning – and waited until 10.00pm, when we got them to call a taxi for us, which took us to the train station, two hours early for our train. Russian trains, like ours, all run on Moscow time, which is two hours ahead of Bishkek time. We knew that really, but we wanted to be absolutely sure not to miss it, which would have buggered us up no end.
At about 02:45, we stopped at the first border post (leaving Kyrgyzstan) and soldiers boarded. They searched our compartment (and everyone else's, I presume) and took away our passports. Unusually, they also insisted that one of us should accompany them to get our exit stamps. Juli, who was on the bottom bunk and with quick to slip on sandals, volunteered and left the train with the soldiers. After a while, I decided to join her on the platform with the other non-ex-soviet state foreigners (just half a dozen of us in all – obviously not a popular tourist train) outside a small, well, shack really, while one of the others – a woman – was made an example of by the official. Not sure what it was all about, but there was quite a bit of shouting, particularly from the woman. In the end, the official put his big hat on, got up, took the shouty woman’s husband outside an had quiet word with him. That seemed to do the trick, because, shortly after that, we were all back on the train (with our stamped passports) and shortly after that (at about 03:45) the train moved on.
Forty five minutes later (04:30) we arrived at the Kazakh side of the border. Here, in addition to the usual gruff boarder guards who search your luggage, check your documents and stamp you in etc., they had sniffer dogs, who seemed to be having a lovely time running up and down the carriages, popping their heads into compartments at random, having a quick sniff then running off again.
Finally, at half past six in the morning, after next to no sleep, the last of our bunk mates boarded (a young, dark-haired man with the palest skin you ever saw) and quarter of an hour after that we were on our way again, a full four hours after first stopping.
The rest of the day was spent reading our books, chatting with Natalia (no English) who’d been staying at Issyk Kol (apparently a very popular holiday destination amongst Russians) or just staring out the window. There’s not much to see, however. Kazakhstan seems to be mostly open scrubby grassland with the occasional one-donkey town to break the monotony. There were a couple of larger towns, at one of which Juli got off to buy some fruit – including some very delicious apples – just for something to do really; it’s a very slow train, which frequently has to pullover to let other trains, including really long freight trains, pass or overtake us.
We’d brought bowls of instant noodles (like Pot Noodles but bigger) to eat on the train, only the hot water samovar at the end of our carriage (every carriage is supposed to have it’s own) had broken down, so we couldn’t reconstitute them. Nor could we make tea (we brought tea bags too – Beta, of course) until the guard come round with a kettle of hot water.
The next night was uninterrupted by borders and the scenery the next day was more or less uninterrupted by features.
We reached Semey, northern Kazakhstan, at about 14:30 and the border about two hours after that. The same border crossing procedure then ensued (including this time searching through the guard’s rice with a curtain pole ripped from the window outside our carriage) and by about 9.00 pm we were in Russia.
There was a stop at about 5.00 am the next morning when all the unofficial cargo was offloaded. Unfortunately, this included the guard’s rice and necessitated the occupants of the bottom bunks – Juli and Natalia – getting out of bed so their bunks could be lifted out of the way.
The train pulled into Novosibirsk dead on time at 9.07 am, and, after saying goodbye to Natalia, we walked the short distance to our hotel and were able to check-in and go to our room (on the 23rd floor) almost immediately, despite our early arrival, which was excellent and meant we could have showers straight away to wash the train away. After a lie down we sorted laundry and went down to the hotel’s bistro bar, where we had a veggie, meaty, soupy broth served in a hollowed out loaf of dark, nutty bread. Delicious.
While we were trundling over Kazakhstan, Natalia had a visit from 10-year-old Masha, who, together with her mother and grand mother, had been on holiday at the lake at the same time as Natalia. Masha was quite possibly the most confident 10-year-old I’ve ever met and spoke excellent English, all learned at school. She spent that afternoon in our compartment, chatting with Natalia and Juli, who, for some reason taught her about haikus. Just before the train pulled into Novosibirsk, Masha and her mum came into our compartment again with a map they’d made of Red Street, a major thoroughfare in Novosibirsk, with all the important landmarks plotted along it and instructions on how to find it. So, armed with this map, plus another that the hotel had given us, we set out to find it. We found parks with fountains, parks with statues and a couple of old churches – one on a traffic island – that had somehow escaped the sweeping away of religion during soviet times and the more recent sweeping away of old buildings to make way for many new ones. We also found a KFC (for later) and a supermarket (for more train supplies the next day). After all that, we went back to the hotel, and I finished ‘Stone Monkey’ (recommended, by the way, if you like fast paced crime thrillers).
Juli checked her e-mails and learned of the sadly anticipated, but far too early passing of her uncle Bob, whom we had hoped to see in Australia, together with Juli’s Aunt, Connie, and the rest of the family. I met Bob and Connie’s daughter Sam when she came to England for a conference along with her husband and two young children. We had planned to spend Christmas with Bob’s family and still will, but it will be a different occasion now with Bob gone. Bob was apparently an avid follower of this blog, and (unaccountably) looking forward to meeting me. I’m sorry that’s not going to happen, and sad too for Juli, who was so looking forward to seeing her ‘Australian’ uncle in Australia. Bob and Connie were going to meet us in Sydney and drive us up to their home near Brisbane, showing us some of their favourite places there and along the way. We had an e-mail recently from Sam who told us that Bob had told her all the places he’d hoped to show us and how she hopes to be as good a tour guide as Bob would have been. Having met her, I’m sure she will.
After lunch, we sent a Moonpig card and gift to someone who’s birthday is quite soon – If you don’t already know it, Moonpig is great, by the way – then Juli went food shopping for the train while I guarded our bags and put a new pin in our Google map for Novosibirsk and plotted our revised route. Soon it was time to return to the train station and await our train in the very grand, ornate and vast waiting hall.
When we boarded our train around 10.00 pm, there to meet us were Adam and Corinne who had come by train all the way from Moscow (and who were still on Moscow time). After stowing our bags and chatting to our bunkmates (Mongolian couple, 50s or 60s) to sus them out a little, we decided it was safe to leave our kit (anyone nursing a young apple tree they’d bought can’t be all that bad) and went along to Adam and Corinne’s compartment to catch-up. Somehow, they had been lucky enough to get a four-berth compartment all to themselves the whole way from Moscow. (We had the same thing when we took the same train in the opposite direction 10 year ago, but that was after paying for a first-class two-berth compartment and being downgraded.)
After an hour or so (we were on Novosibirsk time) we went back to our compartment, where our new Mongolian friends were entertaining their Russian friend on Juli’s bunk. The Mongolian man invited me to join his friend on Juli’s bunk, but I made it quite clear that, actually, we’d come back to make up our bunks and go to sleep. I think he thought that was a bit unfriendly, and that rather tainted our relationship for the rest of the journey.
The next day, after an okay night’s sleep (no soft mattress, just the rather lumpy seat cushion) we spent the morning watching the very much more attractive Russian scenery go by. Lots more trees, mostly pines and silver birch already in their autumn colour. Such a treat for our eyes after so many weeks of scrub and desert.
When we judged that Adam and Corinne’s body clocks would have told them to get up, we waited a bit longer then went along to their compartment and passed a very pleasant afternoon talking about what we hoped to see and do in Ulan Bator and, later, in Beijing. We also discussed the possibility of making the journey from Indonesia to Australia without flying. Corinne had done some research on the Daily Mail Readers’ Offers website, which now operates independently of the paper, and has hundreds of discounted cruise offers. One of these was a short cruise from Singapore to Sydney (leaving on our wedding anniversary) via the port of Benoa on Bali and Darwin, Australia, passing through both of these around the time our trip does. She promised to forward the details to us when we got into UB. It would be great to achieve the whole circumnavigation without flying, and, if we can afford it and they will sell us just a short segment, something we’ll give serious consideration to.
We woke on the third day just as we were passing the southern shore of Lake Baikal. The early morning sun making the Silver Birch trees shimmer in the low light. Both the railway and the main road that go through these parts stick pretty close to the shore and we did wonder if we’d see a familiar orange truck as we passed by. We didn’t, but I bet we were close.
After the lake, the train turns south towards the Mongolian border, which we finally cleared (after about five plus hours and much to-ing and fro-ing) by about 11.00 pm Mongolian time: another hour lost for now.
Some Mongolian traders got on – quite possibly the same one’s that drank all the Champagne on our train 10 years ago (not that I hold a grudge you understand) and proceeded to rip us off when we changed our left over Roubles into Mongolian Tugrik, giving us what we now know to be less than half what we should have got. (Will we ever learn?)
TTFN - N
Day 78 (Bishkek)
After a breakfast of something like scrambled eggs with something like cold bacon, we paid our bill – no card dramas – then went to find a bookshop we’d seen advertised in one of the hotel magazines that claimed to have some English language books. I chose a Jeffrey Deaver (‘Stone Monkey’ – I read another one of his on our Africa/Middle-east truck trip ten years ago and remembered as being a good read) and Juli selected ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’, which she’d been meaning to read for a while. Next we went back to the ‘ZUM’ State Department Store for a few more souvees and Christmas presents and lunch, after which Juli wasn’t feeling very well again, so we went back to the hotel, where we looked up the symptoms and medication for Giardiasis. (It’s not that uncommon amongst travellers and is caused by a little parasite you catch from impure water. We think we may have picked it up in Dushanbe from the Hotel there.) I left Juli close to the loo and nipped out to the pharmacist with the name and dose of the drug we needed.We’ve been very impressed with all the pharmacists we’ve encountered on the way. If you have the name of what you want – even written in English – or explain the problem, they’ll fix you up with what you need over the counter, without charging you an arm and a leg.
I returned with courses for both of us, just in time to find that Juli had ordered tea, which I took to be a good sign. A little later we went out for some supper at a very reasonably priced family restaurant attached to the Beta Stores supermarket, which sells everything, including the Beta brand of tea we had at the Khan’s Palace in Sheki, Azerbaijan on Juli’s birthday. (Beta Tea: Super Tea!) After that, we went back to the hotel again – they were very good about letting us hang out in their (otherwise unused) business centre, even though we’d checked out in the morning – and waited until 10.00pm, when we got them to call a taxi for us, which took us to the train station, two hours early for our train. Russian trains, like ours, all run on Moscow time, which is two hours ahead of Bishkek time. We knew that really, but we wanted to be absolutely sure not to miss it, which would have buggered us up no end.
Day 79-81 (Bishkek to Novosibirsk)
The train arrived just after midnight. We had no difficulty finding our carriage, compartment and berths, but the space meant for our luggage was already full of goods and goodness knows what, stashed there by various traders, who have an unofficial (and highly lucrative, judging by the amount of folding stuff we saw changing hands) ‘arrangement’ with the train guards. Fortunately for us, the only other passenger in our compartment for four was a Russian woman named Natalia who just happened to work for the Russian railways and was having none of it. She soon saw that the guard made other arrangements for all this cargo and very glad we were too. Imagine having to explain to the various border officials (invariable humourless, in the middle of the night and with no common language) that all this other stuff was ‘nothing to do with us, officer, honest it’s not.’ We still had to put up with a few bags of rice however, which the guard insisted was okay. Hmmm.At about 02:45, we stopped at the first border post (leaving Kyrgyzstan) and soldiers boarded. They searched our compartment (and everyone else's, I presume) and took away our passports. Unusually, they also insisted that one of us should accompany them to get our exit stamps. Juli, who was on the bottom bunk and with quick to slip on sandals, volunteered and left the train with the soldiers. After a while, I decided to join her on the platform with the other non-ex-soviet state foreigners (just half a dozen of us in all – obviously not a popular tourist train) outside a small, well, shack really, while one of the others – a woman – was made an example of by the official. Not sure what it was all about, but there was quite a bit of shouting, particularly from the woman. In the end, the official put his big hat on, got up, took the shouty woman’s husband outside an had quiet word with him. That seemed to do the trick, because, shortly after that, we were all back on the train (with our stamped passports) and shortly after that (at about 03:45) the train moved on.
Forty five minutes later (04:30) we arrived at the Kazakh side of the border. Here, in addition to the usual gruff boarder guards who search your luggage, check your documents and stamp you in etc., they had sniffer dogs, who seemed to be having a lovely time running up and down the carriages, popping their heads into compartments at random, having a quick sniff then running off again.
Finally, at half past six in the morning, after next to no sleep, the last of our bunk mates boarded (a young, dark-haired man with the palest skin you ever saw) and quarter of an hour after that we were on our way again, a full four hours after first stopping.
The rest of the day was spent reading our books, chatting with Natalia (no English) who’d been staying at Issyk Kol (apparently a very popular holiday destination amongst Russians) or just staring out the window. There’s not much to see, however. Kazakhstan seems to be mostly open scrubby grassland with the occasional one-donkey town to break the monotony. There were a couple of larger towns, at one of which Juli got off to buy some fruit – including some very delicious apples – just for something to do really; it’s a very slow train, which frequently has to pullover to let other trains, including really long freight trains, pass or overtake us.
We’d brought bowls of instant noodles (like Pot Noodles but bigger) to eat on the train, only the hot water samovar at the end of our carriage (every carriage is supposed to have it’s own) had broken down, so we couldn’t reconstitute them. Nor could we make tea (we brought tea bags too – Beta, of course) until the guard come round with a kettle of hot water.
***
We reached Semey, northern Kazakhstan, at about 14:30 and the border about two hours after that. The same border crossing procedure then ensued (including this time searching through the guard’s rice with a curtain pole ripped from the window outside our carriage) and by about 9.00 pm we were in Russia.
***
The train pulled into Novosibirsk dead on time at 9.07 am, and, after saying goodbye to Natalia, we walked the short distance to our hotel and were able to check-in and go to our room (on the 23rd floor) almost immediately, despite our early arrival, which was excellent and meant we could have showers straight away to wash the train away. After a lie down we sorted laundry and went down to the hotel’s bistro bar, where we had a veggie, meaty, soupy broth served in a hollowed out loaf of dark, nutty bread. Delicious.
While we were trundling over Kazakhstan, Natalia had a visit from 10-year-old Masha, who, together with her mother and grand mother, had been on holiday at the lake at the same time as Natalia. Masha was quite possibly the most confident 10-year-old I’ve ever met and spoke excellent English, all learned at school. She spent that afternoon in our compartment, chatting with Natalia and Juli, who, for some reason taught her about haikus. Just before the train pulled into Novosibirsk, Masha and her mum came into our compartment again with a map they’d made of Red Street, a major thoroughfare in Novosibirsk, with all the important landmarks plotted along it and instructions on how to find it. So, armed with this map, plus another that the hotel had given us, we set out to find it. We found parks with fountains, parks with statues and a couple of old churches – one on a traffic island – that had somehow escaped the sweeping away of religion during soviet times and the more recent sweeping away of old buildings to make way for many new ones. We also found a KFC (for later) and a supermarket (for more train supplies the next day). After all that, we went back to the hotel, and I finished ‘Stone Monkey’ (recommended, by the way, if you like fast paced crime thrillers).
Day 82-84 (Novosibirsk to Ulan Bator)
After a very disappointing breakfast (for a business hotel) we checked out (no bill to pay) and settled down to wait for our train in their little library, to which I added my now finished Jeffrey Deaver.Juli checked her e-mails and learned of the sadly anticipated, but far too early passing of her uncle Bob, whom we had hoped to see in Australia, together with Juli’s Aunt, Connie, and the rest of the family. I met Bob and Connie’s daughter Sam when she came to England for a conference along with her husband and two young children. We had planned to spend Christmas with Bob’s family and still will, but it will be a different occasion now with Bob gone. Bob was apparently an avid follower of this blog, and (unaccountably) looking forward to meeting me. I’m sorry that’s not going to happen, and sad too for Juli, who was so looking forward to seeing her ‘Australian’ uncle in Australia. Bob and Connie were going to meet us in Sydney and drive us up to their home near Brisbane, showing us some of their favourite places there and along the way. We had an e-mail recently from Sam who told us that Bob had told her all the places he’d hoped to show us and how she hopes to be as good a tour guide as Bob would have been. Having met her, I’m sure she will.
After lunch, we sent a Moonpig card and gift to someone who’s birthday is quite soon – If you don’t already know it, Moonpig is great, by the way – then Juli went food shopping for the train while I guarded our bags and put a new pin in our Google map for Novosibirsk and plotted our revised route. Soon it was time to return to the train station and await our train in the very grand, ornate and vast waiting hall.
When we boarded our train around 10.00 pm, there to meet us were Adam and Corinne who had come by train all the way from Moscow (and who were still on Moscow time). After stowing our bags and chatting to our bunkmates (Mongolian couple, 50s or 60s) to sus them out a little, we decided it was safe to leave our kit (anyone nursing a young apple tree they’d bought can’t be all that bad) and went along to Adam and Corinne’s compartment to catch-up. Somehow, they had been lucky enough to get a four-berth compartment all to themselves the whole way from Moscow. (We had the same thing when we took the same train in the opposite direction 10 year ago, but that was after paying for a first-class two-berth compartment and being downgraded.)
After an hour or so (we were on Novosibirsk time) we went back to our compartment, where our new Mongolian friends were entertaining their Russian friend on Juli’s bunk. The Mongolian man invited me to join his friend on Juli’s bunk, but I made it quite clear that, actually, we’d come back to make up our bunks and go to sleep. I think he thought that was a bit unfriendly, and that rather tainted our relationship for the rest of the journey.
***
When we judged that Adam and Corinne’s body clocks would have told them to get up, we waited a bit longer then went along to their compartment and passed a very pleasant afternoon talking about what we hoped to see and do in Ulan Bator and, later, in Beijing. We also discussed the possibility of making the journey from Indonesia to Australia without flying. Corinne had done some research on the Daily Mail Readers’ Offers website, which now operates independently of the paper, and has hundreds of discounted cruise offers. One of these was a short cruise from Singapore to Sydney (leaving on our wedding anniversary) via the port of Benoa on Bali and Darwin, Australia, passing through both of these around the time our trip does. She promised to forward the details to us when we got into UB. It would be great to achieve the whole circumnavigation without flying, and, if we can afford it and they will sell us just a short segment, something we’ll give serious consideration to.
***
After the lake, the train turns south towards the Mongolian border, which we finally cleared (after about five plus hours and much to-ing and fro-ing) by about 11.00 pm Mongolian time: another hour lost for now.
Some Mongolian traders got on – quite possibly the same one’s that drank all the Champagne on our train 10 years ago (not that I hold a grudge you understand) and proceeded to rip us off when we changed our left over Roubles into Mongolian Tugrik, giving us what we now know to be less than half what we should have got. (Will we ever learn?)
Day 85 (Ulan Bator)
The train arrived, yet again, bang on time at 06:30 (local). We’d arranged to be met at the station, but the promised driver with our name on a board was not in evidence, so Juli hustled us a cut price taxi – though we didn’t realise quite how cut price until we learned the real Dollar/Turgrik rate – to take all four of us to the Golden Gobi Guesthouse, home for the next five days and nights, about which, more later.TTFN - N
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