China Travel Forum

[Evan]

I am interested in taking the Trans-Mongolian train from Beijing to Moscow in December. I am wondering if anyone has experience doing this trip in the winter. Did you enjoy it? Did you ride straight through or did you stop off in towns along the way and if you did, was the weather a problem? I don’t mind cold weather but I’m concerned that it will hamper the activities I can participate in. Thanks.

[kally]

on tracks connecting China and Mongolia and traversing the mysterious Gobi Desert. Continue aboard the historic Trans-Siberian railroad for the scenic journey between Lake Baikal and Moscow.
Join local travelers on regularly scheduled trains visiting Beijing, UlaanBaatar, Kara Korum, Ulan Ude, Lake Baikal, Listvyanka Village, Irkutsk and Moscow. This is a dramatic and variegated route that I covered and offers many opportunities to meet the diverse local people - Chinese, Mongol, Buryat and Russian. In Beijing we visit Tiananmen Square, walk the Great Wall and explore the maze-like Imperial Palace, known to Westerners as the Forbidden City.
Boarding the Trans-Mongolian, we roll northwest, passing remnants of the Great Wall.As we journey further into Mongolia, the cultivated fields of China give way to grasslands and then desert. We visit the museums of the capital, UlaanBaatar, and explore the steppe, where we sleep in traditional nomadic ger camps and sample Mongolian airag, fermented mare's milk. Crossing into Buryatia, Russia, we visit native villages between Ulan Ude and the Mongolian border.At Lake Baikal we board a boat and trace the shoreline, spending the night in a rustic Siberian lodge.
We continue for three days along the legendary rails, traveling from Irkutsk to Moscow, the political and economic center of Russia. Following a tour of Red Square, the Armory Museum and the Kremlin, we commemorate our journey with a celebratory toast.

[sam]

After teaching English for a year in China,I decided to make my return to the United States - slowly. In various conversations I'd heard mention of "the longest train journey in the world," and I was intrigued by this continent-crossing idea.I learned that The Trans-Siberian Railroad has been escorting passengers from the Orient to Europe and back for one hundred years - having celebrated it's centennial birthday earlier in 2002. Images and thoughts of traveling through Siberia, the Mongolian plains, and the magical city of Moscow, sparked my imagination. As my teaching contract expired, it inspired me to reserve a ticket aboard The Trans-Siberian.After a hurried breakfast, and a few pre-departure photos, the train rolled out of Beijing's central station at seven-thirty on a rainy Wednesday morning, heading north for Mongolia. The morning's departure would begin a journey of nearly 9,000 kilometers, crossing three countries and many more cultures, and unveiling a wealth of remarkable experiences. Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, and Novosibirsk - not necessarily household names, but these cities, sandwiched by forests of birch, proved to be fascinating stops along the route of this legendary railroad.
Near midnight on our first day of travel, we reached the Mongolian border. The stop here is longer than the usual ten to fifteen minute pause for passenger and provision on/offs. It's here that the train's wheels are changed. The Chinese and Russian trains run on a different gauge of track and require different sized wheels. All of the train's coaches are uncoupled and each is lifted with hydraulics, individually, as workers exchange the wheels below.
During this two- to three-hour process, the small Chinese border town comes alive. Awaiting the incoming train are beer and banana vendors, money changers, pay-phone operators, and numerous other merchants looking to profit from this late-night crowd of Russians, Mongolians, and a handful of Westerners. After some purchases - this is the last stop that accepts Chinese currency - we reboarded the train, now traveling in Mongolia.
The following morning we awoke, crossing the waving dunes of the Gobi Desert. Dust and sand filled the air outside and inside the train, despite the closed windows. Peering out through this haze, we could see the circular Mongolian houses called yurts.
Fifty hours after leaving Beijing, on the journey's third morning after a late-night Russian border crossing, the train slowed to a stop in the Eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk. This is where I'd be staying for two nights. Bidding dah sveedanyah to my compartment mates, I exited with apprehension (my first visit to the former Soviet Union), excitement and a Russian phrase book.I lived in this moving, four-bedroom apartment for nearly six days. The train just kept rolling along, at a pace of about thirty miles per hour.The last day of the trip was a Wednesday - an entire week after setting out,the time we take off the train came.
The train was heating up, our fruit and water supply running low, and craving stationary land, the last hours aboard were spent in excited anticipation - of our arrival.