Bumpy Life on the Iron Rooster

The inside of our cabin


The inside of the four-person berth


Russia is pretty


Don't you think?





Oh you take the good, you take the bad, you take it all and then you have... Life on the Tran-Siberian. I woke up this morning and realized that I have spent the last seven nights on the train. Some aspects of the train ride were unbelievable. Some landscape were so gorgeous I couldn't remove my head from the window. But other parts... not so good. But I'll get into that in a minute.

WE'RE IN MONGOLIA!! We rolled in this morning to the capital city of UlaanBaatar (UB). For those of you playing along at home, I'm on day 7 of the poopy pants. I have not even tried to eat anything in the last couple of days. Nothing.

But anyway, I think I left off at Irkutsk last time. What a gorgeous place. I could have stayed there a couple more days. But we found a train to UB and decided we had seen enough of Russia. The train ride to Mongolia was suppose to take 40 hours. We arrived at our compartment and Amanda and I decided that we couldn't take two more restless nights listening to Ben's earth-shaking snoring. I can sleep through a lot, but Ben's got some baritone that is quite difficult to take. It's also a pretty small space for 4 people (there was already a Mongolian woman named Haly in the 4 berth compartment). So we were elated to find a couple empty compartments. We talked Ben into moving there - raving about the freedom and open air (quite frankly, I would have loved to have the space myself). So Ben moved a couple compartments down from us. Amanda and I ended up spending most of the night in his compartment anyway. We realized we were no longer on the Russian trains - filled with dirty, wild drunk Russians - we saw our first set of tourists. Anyway, Amanda and I decided to head back to our bunks around 3am - leaving Ben a.k.a "the self-proclaimed Snore-a-saurus" to himself.

Four hours later... the train had pulled into Ulan Ude and Ben was asked to move to a different compartment. No problem. Except the fact that when he got re situated, he realized that he had been robbed during the night. Someone took his digital camera, I-pod, Gameboy and alarm clock. The entire train was in a panic. But so many people had gotten on and off the trains that there wasn't anyway to find his stuff.

A couple hours later... I woke up ill (again). This time there was blood, I was in a cold sweat and apparently pale. We were at the Russian border and we were told we needed to get out of the train and wait for five hours in order to proceed. This is not a city. There's no fancy A/C rooms I can go hang out at... this was a really, really tough day for me. Five hours turned into 6 and then 7 and then 8. Remember I still had not eaten anything since Wednesday. However, during this waiting period I found out that there were two different doctors on the train. The first doctor came to my train compartment with a translator. She was a tibetian healer. She grabbed my left wrist, and then my right. I thought she was taking my pulse. She turned to the translator and told her that I had "very bad intestines." She felt the back of my knees and told me to keep the area from my waist to my knees very very warm because I have many air bubbles in my body which are preventing my organs to receive enough oxygen. This fragmented diagnosis went on for several minutes until she pulled out hundreds of little packets of herbs - Eastern remedies. She scolded me for taking "chemistry Western" Immodium - which obvioiusly wasn't helping. I gave her the last of my Russian rubles and took three dozen of her herbal treatments.

Amanda had been talking to a medical student outside and she returned to the room with some re-hydration powder (I had not even been able to drink anything in days).

We mangaged to pick up a couple of guys at the border crossing in Russia. One shirtless man with a cracked hand, chugging a beer at all times. And a college-aged kid who managed to smuggle a cat and 15 turtles into our berth. Apparently his brother owns a "zoo store" in UB. I asked no questions. I was just pleased that we only had to wait an hour at the Mongolian Customs control, and after customs, our berth cleared out, animals and all.

So now we're in Mongolia. I got some antibiotics this afternoon - I hope they will help. It's been a rough couple of days and I'm excited to feel myself again. Our plan is to spend a few days in UB (there is a huge Nadaam festival on the 10th and 11th. Then Amanda and I want to head out to a ger in the countryside for a couple of nights, and then... China.

But I need to feel better before I can commit to any of that. I'm running out of time... more soon.

Me and my new Mongolian boyfriend:


Amanda and Haly in our berth


Final view of Russia


Ben in his berth


MONGOLIA!