Chooo chooo

The first train trip was an epic adventure. Not only was it our first time sleeping on a train it also involved the border crossing from China to Mongolia as well as boogie changing.

We watched the landscape change as we chugged away from Beijing through industrial to isolated towns and spectacular mountains. Before we knew it night was upon us but we couldn't sleep yet as we had to go through immigration and customs for both countries.

The process was relatively painless although they do lock the trains bathrooms while the officals are on the train for about five hours. While our passports were being processed to leave China the train with us on it was taken to a workshop where each carriage was separated and lifted up into the air for new wheels to be placed under the carriages. A very long, involved and interesting procedure which we watched with fascination.

We got our passports back with all of the correct stamps and it was into Mongolia to go through the paperwork again. Sleep was at around 2am.