Mongolia to Russia

When I bought my ticket for Irkutsk it cost about $40. I didn't pay much attention to this, I was happy that it cost about the same as I had been expecting. What I should have questioned was the time I was going to be on the train. Again I had glanced at the map and seen that Ulaan Baatar and Irkutsk weren't that far apart but that the train trip was scheduled to take 37 hours. For some reason I didn't connect the two. All I can put it down to is that both in Japan and Vietnam the time taken to get somewhere in no way relates to the distance travelled. I got on the train at 21.10 Mongolian time and I was so happy that Anna and I had a compartment to ourselves I didn't think about how long I would be spending in it, or out of it as it turned out. I pretty much went striaght to bed and slept through the night. I woke a little before 7am the next morning and we stopped shortly afterwards. This was the Mongolian border and we would be here for five hours. The toilets on the train were locked and we had to go in the station and pay for the privilege. Train station toilets are never good at the best of times and this place was no exception. I have no idea what takes so long, I eventually put it down to bad scheduling. I had taken the daily local train from UB, so most of the passengers are Mongolian and aren't going across the border into Russia. When the train gets to the Mongolian border most of these people get off and the rest of the train, except the one carriage with mainly Westerners in it, turns around and goes back to UB. When I travelled there were about 6 - 8 Mongolians going across the border so they get stuffed into the compartments on the one carriage with the Westerners. Anna and I had to share our compartment, going across the border with two very shady Mongolian women.
These women were carrying goods across with them, one of them sat in our compartment counting a wad of money. At first when I had seen her I was afraid that she would rob me, but after seeing how much cash she was carrying I considered robbing her instead. I don't remember seeing the Mongolian customs or immigration people and after the five hours were up they attached a locomotive to our carriage and we were off. I was so glad to be moving. Unfortunately it only lasted an hour and we came to a halt in a Russian station. At this point the conductor came and asked Anna to move bunks, she said no, that she was staying in her assigned seat. The conductor accepted it and went away. Both Anna and I made sure our stuff was no where near the other side of the compartment, we wanted it quite clear that we did not know these women and had absolutely nothing to do with them. After the carriage had been sat for awhile the Russian immigration and customs people come on the train. The immigration people are generally easy to deal with, they just take your passport and go off with it to some office. The customs people do most of their business on the train. The customs women were seriously interested in one of our compartment companions, questioning her in the compartment, going through her bag and then hauling her off somewhere, not once but twice. When all the formalities are completed we were finally let off the train and allowed to go and pay to go to the toilet! Luckily it wasn't a nice day so the carriage wasn't like an oven,but I was glad to be out of the carriage and just be able to sit on the platform. Once they were allowed off the train I think our two ladies and their other friends starting doing business, what business that might be I have no idea! I was glad when a train arrived from the other direction, I was hoping that this might be the same as on the Mongolian side of the border. The train would stop and then change direction and go back the way it came,that's exactly what it did. Then another train arrived from the Mongolian side, there was a lot of shunting and toing and froing but our carriage was finally hooked up to the train that had arrived from the Russian side of the boarder. And our companions? Well they got on the train going back to Mongolia. They had spent the past part of ten hours going through Mongolian and Russian border controls to turn around and go through it all again. I guess it's worth it. The train finally left the border station around 5pm.
Anna and I sat down to a dinner of instant noodles that we had bought at the station and congratulated ourselves on having our carriage back to ourselves. Once again I found that we weren't able to move to the other part of the train. We were confined to our one carriage, just as well that we had bought food. Otherwise it would have been another miserable train journey with no food.Despite the inactive day I was very happy to go to sleep, I would be in Irkutsk the next day and I couldn't wait, especially as I didn't have to get up early. The train was due to arrive at 10.30. This was dispelled the next morning by our conductor banging on our door at about 06.30. Anna and I had locked our compartment door so she wasn't able to get in and by the time I got up to open it she was gone. I looked down the corridor and people were obviously stirring and some of them were folding up their bed linen. I didn't know what was going on, it wasn't even 7am yet. I asked one of our neighbours, apparently we would be in Irkutsk in an hour. I woke up Anna and we started to get ourselves together. I wasn't complaining about the early arrival but I didn't like the rude awakening!
The train rolled into Irkutsk about 08.30 and I was glad to see the back of it, the Mongolian - Russian border crossing had been a nightmare. I was looking forward to a few days travelling without any border crossings. Although now I would be faced with a different problem, once I arrived into Moscow I would have to think about getting the Belarusian transit visa to get home. Great!