Russia/Mongolia/China Trip Day 16: Crossing the Russian-Mongolian Border

While none of the days spent on the train have been enjoyable this day was by far the worst of the lot for one reason: the border crossing between Russia and Mongolia. This border crossing process was the least efficiently executed government run operation I have ever seen, and that is saying something. Here’s basically what went down. We got to the Russian border town at 1:45pm. We knew that the process of the border crossing itself wasn’t scheduled until 5pm because many of the cars were being removed and the train was being rearranged so we got off the train to wander around the sleepy little town. There was nothing to see in town (apart from the fact that the circus was there that evening, scheduled for 6pm so we missed it) but Addie, Mike, Col France and I climbed up the hill overlooking the town and discovered a town ceremony on top. The graves dated from several weeks ago to as early as the 1950s (from what we could find) and were in various states of repair/disrepair.

At 4:30 we got back on the train and at 5 the officials got onboard. Let me mention that the train compartment was probably 28-30 degrees Celsius and the windows barely opened, leaving us to just bake in the small compartment. They first came through and checked our passports, looking for the Russian entrance stamps, visas, and registration forms. They then came through again to “search” the compartments. I put search in quotations because they literally took 6 seconds in our car. All they did was lift up both the bottom seats to look what was underneath and then moved on. How it possibly took as long as it did to go through 2 train cars (because by the time they had disconnected all the cars there were only 2 that were continuing to Mongolia) is beyond me but at 8:45 we finally started moving again, going from the Russian border town about 10km to the Mongolian border town. This short journey took an inexplicable 45 minutes (I can almost run 10km in that much time!) during which we filled out the Mongolian entry paperwork. They took our passports again but we ran into an issue with the cadets and Col France and the difference between the tourist passports with the Chinese visa and the official passports with the Russian visas. Furthermore, Col France’s passport ripped, therefore invalidating it and causing a panic because he now had an invalid passport. Basically a lot of unnecessary drama and fuss that we didn't really want to deal with in our current mental states. After the Mongolian officials checked the passports we sat on the train for another hour or so before being cleared to get off the train while they again messed around with the cars, adding some more carriages. We got off to stretch our legs and say hello to Mongolia. Finally, after another hour we got back on the train and pulled out of the station and into Mongolia. All in all this process took over 9 hours to cross from Russia into Mongolia. Not a fun way to spend your vacation at all...

Station of the Mongolian border town