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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

Degrubenc
2005-12-09 14:08:59

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the compartment. I was once again suffocating amongst enough cigarettes to kill all of Mongolia, including the yaks.

The Mongolians came on board, inspected thoroughly each carriage but, for some strange reason, forgot to check mine. The chief customs officer insisted on doing it himself. He came in, looked in my bag and left, pretending not to notice the new red and white decoration of the compartment. After endless paperwork and an attempted scam to try to sell us insurrance which they said was compulsory but which turned out to be absolutely not, everyone left.

The chief officer returned 10 minutes later, with two other officers, they came into my compartment, seemed to be taken a bit aback at seeing me, grinning at him stupidly and striking the pose of the Malboro man with my Cambodian Straw Hat. He was reluctant to come in while I was there but there was little he could do to throw me out. I helped him by pretending that I was most intrested in a book about Gengis Khan and could not possibly take my eyes off it. They sat down with the two truck drivers (who had conveniently brought a couple of bottles of mongolian liquor with them) and they started joyfully drinking away toast after toast. They offered me some but I politely declined. I noticed that, as they left, they each took a large plastic bag filled to the brim with cigarettes. The CO had two bags and also received a see-through plastic container with some notes in it. Rarely have I seen such blatant corruption.

The day fell into night and, as we made our way into Mongolia, I was given the chance to see one of the most incredible sunsets of my life, over the dry and arid mountains of Mongolia.

The night was spent yet again sleeplessly, as Short and Fat and Long and Thin kept drinking with the controller gigly girl to toast their success. There was also an endless convoy of people knocking at the door to reclaim what they had given to Short and Fat at the beginning of the journey (minus a small percentage, of course). He kept good accounts of it all. The trap door was opened and everything was again stored in the compartment to the point where the cigarettes from the floor would reach as high as my bunk. During the night, Short and Fat dissapeared, as well as most of the merchandise. I expect another truck was waiting for him somewhere along the way. Long and Thin also had a couple of helpers at the platform of Ulan Bataar to help him unload the cigarettes. I noticed that something seemed to trouble him during the night: he was restless, breathed heavily and kept twitching. I don't know if it was guilt or the loss of the boss or some illness related to the heavy drinking. I was not sorry one bit to see him worried. Sadistic, I know, but such is life.