#AtoZChallenge in China: Trans-Siberian Railway (Part 1)

It’s our #AtoZChallenge in China again! In this entry, we start traveling from Beijing to Moscow via the Trans-Siberian Railway, which turned a century old last year!

So far, my Trans-Siberian Railway (TSR) journey is one of the best I’ve ever had. It opened my understanding of what traveling was. While writing this post, I couldn’t help but to think how beautiful the scenery was and how great I felt during the six-day trip.
When an office colleague introduced to me the idea of this long train travel back in January 2016, I immediately said, “Yes, I’m in,” without having any second thoughts. Fast forward to October, it was already autumn in Beijing and so was my feeling of uncertainty in some personal matters that I almost backed out of the trip. I glad I didn’t.
It was also my TSR trip (and the succeeding journey to the UK) that inspired me to make my own travel blog. Actually I have begun writing a series about that autumn holiday but haven’t completed it yet (shame!).
T is for Trans-Siberian Railway
Day 1: Let’s begin the travel in the Chinese capital…

That’s 北京站 Běijīng zhàn (Beijing Station) or the southern terminus of the TSR. See the clock tower? We left the capital more than an hour later (see more of my travel preparations on the first entry of my Great Journey series).

These were the quaint but somehow dusty soft sleeper beds… I slept on the top bunk. The train passage looks like a little hotel hallway.
In my recollection, it took us more than five hours to reach the third Chinese station somewhere in the Gobi Desert. It was already afternoon and because it was autumn, the sunset came in early.
At night, when my colleague watched a movie on his laptop, we realized the power sockets inside the train were different from the standard plugs in China. So that’s a not-so-big problem, I thought, since I brought my power packs and fully charged everything before I left. But things went rather different as soon after we found that having no batteries would make us unplug and instead enjoy the scenery in the next few days.

When we reached the Mongolian border just past midnight, we were greeted by polite Mongolian immigration officials. But they didn’t know we were visa-free to their country. Haha!
It was also a rough night because we changed train cars, so literally everything inside was moving as if there was an earthquake.  and the sounds of machine working were rumbling. It lasted for about 30 minutes and I found it hard to go back to sleep.
Day 2: Mongolia
It was snowing lightly when we reached the capital, Ulan Bataar, in the morning. I felt giddy when I saw one of the oldest trains used in the first few years of TSR.


Too bad the photographer didn’t take the whole picture of the train!
In the few minutes we were allowed to explore Ulan Bataar’s station, I saw part of the Mongolian capital’s cityscape that’s rather underwhelming but interesting. There was the combination of yurts and gray buildings and old carts and cars. And when the train went on, I was awestruck to see the Gobi Desert in its majestic yellow form… with train tracks traversing the desert’s nothingness.

Much of our day we looked at the desert. In this time, I chatted with our “neighbors,” or the next-door passengers. The couple next to our room was from Scotland. Then the young men from the next room were from Greece. They got off in Ulan Bataar, where they would visit along with another group of tourists on the other train carriage, Scottish couple said.
In the afternoon, the scenery started to change from yellow desert to tundra. It was an amazing view… and then it started to really get cold.


I chatted with the Scottish couple, Jinti and Andy Boycott, and learned that they were on a holiday that had begun a couple of weeks earlier in Australia. They had flown to Beijing a week before their TSR journey and visited some tourist locations like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. Then I learned that Andy was a retired Royal Air Force pilot and that their three sons are all working for the UK armed forces. It was an enlightening chitchat… and I forgot to say that a couple of hours before I went to their room and offered some biscuits given to me by my sweet manager.
At midnight, when we reached the Russian border, it was rather a surprising event because the immigration officials were quite harsh and frowner.
Thanks for reading! Tomorrow, we’ll continue our journey to Moscow with more stories about the TSR.
And next on #AtoZChallenge in China, we will continue talking about trains!
Featured photo taken at various stations and locations along the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

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See more of my #AtoZChallenge: Chinese Adventure