Wednesday, 22 May

Beijing to Erenhot

We were up and out the door before 6 am, ready for our rehearsed walk to the station as Beijing woke up. We got to the forecourt flagpole rendezvous with time to spare, and found our anxious but efficient young Chinese minder, courtesy of Monkey Business. Including us, he was putting six tourists on the Trans-Mongolian Express today. There was quite a crowd gathering in the big expanse of the forecourt, with the Chinese-Socialist-Realist twin clock towers of Beijing Station rearing above us. The excitement of people about to depart on a very long train journey was palpable all around us.

The Trans-Mongolian Express goes all the way to Moscow, but we would be going only to Irkutsk in Siberia on this train, 2680 kilometres, in 55 hours. Tickets finally in hand, our guide ushered us through security into the big spacious station.

In its day Beijing station was the largest in China; it must have been very impressive when it was built by a desperately poor nation in 1959. Up to a waiting area in one of the upstairs galleries; then we had plenty of time to kill and an opportunity for breakfast. There were a few Chinese fast-food joints and I found a really good breakfast of wonton soup with seaweed, and a youtiao fried bread stick, the same as a Vietnamese quẩy. This was followed, I’m sorry to say, by a KFC cappuccino which lived down to expectations. The station filled up with people as the day got going, but it was never as busy as the frantic monster-stations in Nanning and Guangzhou. The big blue departure board had only five departures in the next three hours on it. Soon we were on our way down the escalator to our next long green train, Train K3 to Moscow. Each carriage had a plaque on it in Russian Cyrillic, Chinese characters, and Mongolian Cyrillic, announcing Beijing-Ulaanbaatar-Moscow.

Once, eleven years previously, I had been at the same station and I saw one lonely carriage with this plaque on it. Back then it seemed impossibly exotic, and I wondered if I would ever get into a carriage like that.

Now here we were, it was happening, and it was hugely exciting. The whole business of boarding was very easy and stress-free compared with most of our experience so far. What a luxury to have a two-berth cabin to ourselves again. Two bunks, one above the other, lying transversely across one side of the cabin, and one comfortable seat next to the window, facing the bottom bunk, on the other side. Dark wood-veneer panelling, plush red velvet curtains and trimmings, and carpet on the floor. In an odd arrangement, we shared a bathroom with our neighbours. A basin and handheld shower, no toilet, situated betwee