Ulan Bator to Beijing

Days sixteen and seventeen

April 22nd - 23rd

Total Miles 8500

Trip miles 6000

This was the last leg of our train journey.  We were sad to leave Ulan Bator, boarding our train in the ever present bright sunshine, dazzling our eyes, even at eight in the morning.

This train was a pleasant surprise.  Unlike the previous ones it was a chinese train.  This train was modern and quite clean.  There were many plenty of staff on board - most of them had a cheery disposition too.  The restaurant car was an riot of bamboo panelling.  It actually had quite a few of the items on the menu.  The day was spent maintaining the train routine - relax, school work, then a DVD.

That day was spent passing through the Gobi desert - wow.  More back of beyond travel.  It became quite hot and very sandy.  The carriages of the train were caked in sand, the windows taking on a yellow tinge.  It became fairly hot, but not excessively. There was not a soul to be seen.  The only stops were at small desert towns called Choir and Sainshand.  These were dusty, dry and uninspiring.  Their only link to the outside world being the Trans Siberian.

That night contained the now familiar ritual of knocks on our doors, showing passports and filling out forms.  There was one big difference however.  The width of the train track in Mongolia and Russia is different from that in China.  As a result on passing the border, our bogies had to be changed.  Our train entered a huge building, with bright lights and immaculate cleanliness.  Very  quickly workers started tapping and banging away at the wheels beneath our feet.  To our amazement we noticed that the other carriages of our train were now opposite us on adjacent tracks.  Not only that, but slowly and carefully our entire carriage with passengers and all was being lifted up!  We got to about two metres off the ground.  Swiftly new wheels were placed in position and we were lowered to the ground.  Some complicated shunting and we were joined up again and on a way.  To change the wheels on hundreds of tons of train took just a couple of hours.  

After a reasonable night's sleep we awoke to the sight of the mountains to the north of Beijing.  We spent an excellent morning on arguably the most scenic part of the trip threading our way through this beautiful region.  Many tunnels, rivers and glimpses of the Great Wall formed oriental vistas before our eyes - a fitting showdown to an epic journey.

Just after lunch our train pulled into Beijing station.  The children could barely contain their excitement.  In fact they were probably going a little train crazy.

We stepped out onto the chaotic platform in Beijing, amazed at the fact that we had actually travelled overland from our driveway to Beijing, in two stages, every mile on the surface.  Beijing was a shock after sleepy Ulan Bator.  It was clean, modern and very highly populated.

We took a minibus to our hotel.  We were staying at the Lu Song Yuan. This was a very ornate hotel built in in the old quarter of Beijing - the fascinating back streets called the Hutongs.  The area is being modernised but retains the old feel with few cars and lots of street life.  Chinese laundries and grocery shops are being replaced by internet cafes and cool bars.

That evening we wandered around, loving the plentiful supplies of food, entertainment and KFC!  We rounded off a rich day with a boat ride around the lake at Quinhai Park.  This is a large lake lined with trendy bars and restaurants.  At night the place is lit up like a christmas tree.  Each bar istrying to outdo its neighbours with more comfortable sofas, louder music or bigger plasma televisions.  The Children were blown away by it all.