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I left Irkoutsk on the evening of Friday, the 1st of July, for once making it at the train station in ample time. I very much liked Irkoutsk for its charm, old wooden houses and grand stone buildings.
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The only reservation I would have about it is that the mosquitoes are the size of Mig 29's and do just about as much damage.<br/><br/>
Trans Mongolian
Degrubenc2005-12-09 14:08:59
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along the corridor, looked repeatedly and at woringly increasing speed at my ticket and at the numbers on the door so many times that I felt like pointing out that, however entertaining this was proving to be, I was also rather keen on sleep. She said something or the other to the pair and Long and Thin duly cleared my bed. It seemed that Short and Fat was in
charge of the operations. After all, he wore the badly fitting suit with the labels still showing on the sleeves.
I installed myself on my bed as well as I could and prepared for the journey, while keeping an alert eye on the goings in and out of my compartment. I estimate that there must have been at least 5000 packets in my compartment plus another 3000 under the train, which was only accessed underneath the corridor by a tiny trap, and another 5000 packets in one of the toilets which, as such, became kaput as the controller pointed out when I tried to use it. It is locked and broken, no one can go in. What was even more bizarre is that the other Mongolian passengers brought to Short and Fat their own stock of cigarettes which he duly noted down on paper and placed in our compartment...
When the train left, I could barely see out of the window for the wall of cigarettes with which I was faced.
I thought the controller women of my Trans-Mongolian carriage took quite a liking to me, as she brought me a cup of tea before we even started the journey. Turns out that,
with the cup of tea, she was bringing her own personal stock of cigarettes to give to Short and Fat and asking me to move to another carriage. I refused as I was anticipating quite a lot of fun out of seeing how they would manage at the borders, trying to hide 15000 packs of cigarettes. Short and Fat gave me a carton of cigarettes and waved me away. I politely returned the carton and played annoying toursit pointing at my ticket and pointing at my bunk. He grumbled and mumbled but
...
See photographs from:
Mongolia Gallery
