Russia/Mongolia/China Trip Day 20: Gobi Desert and Mongolian-Chinese border

We got on the train in the morning to say goodbye to Ulaanbaatar and Mongolia. Thankfully it was early enough that the streets were relatively empty and we didn’t have to worry about traffic. The beginning of the train ride was gorgeous, riding through Gobi Desert and seeing it stretch out in front of us for miles and miles. There were times when we didn’t see proof of human existence over the whole horizon and it was really cool to be in such a vast expanse of nothing.




After another long day on the train we arrived at the Mongolian-Chinese border at 7pm. The Mongolian customs officers got on, took our passports, and then got off. We then waiting an hour or so. While we were waiting we were moved around a bit, reordering several cars and putting on a new engine. Eventually the Mongolians got back on and gave us our passports and Chinese agents got on to give us Chinese entry and exit cards. We then drove to the Chinese border and sat some more. After the Chinese officers got on and took our passports again we were driven into a large shed to change the wheels of the train. The Chinese were afraid of a Russian invasion into China and so they built their train tracks with a different gauge to the Russian trains so as to make it more difficult to travel into China by rail. This however makes it difficult for passengers and well and we had to change the wheels of the entire train. It was actually pretty cool to witness. One by one they separated each of the train cars until we were all disconnected. They then jacked each car up several feet. Once the cars were raised they rolled the old wheels out from underneath all the cars. They then rolled the new wheels in. Inside the shed one side of the tracks had 2 tracks, one in the Russian size and one in the Chinese size. Once the wheels were back underneath the train they lowered the cars, connected them up again, and we were ready to go. Of course we couldn’t leave yet because customs still wasn’t done with us but eventually they gave us the passports back and we got on our way. All in all, this border crossing took from 7pm to 1am, a lovely 6 hours total.