Sophie's travels 2011-2012: 11/2/2012 Border crossing from Russia to Mongolia TRANS SIBERIAN RAILWAY

We had a leisurely wake up and breakfast before enduring the never ending border crossing between Russia and Mongolia… We saw some amazing snow covered hills with a clear blue sky and the snow was sparkling in the sun – beautiful. We waited 6 hours at the Russian border (the toilets where closed for this duration), our passports were checked numerous times, our bags and cabins were searched, sniffer dogs came on and everything was very serious. Eventually we crossed over the border to Mongolia where the same happened again but much for efficiently (only took 2 hours!). The Mongolian police and customs officers were much friendlier, even made a joke of our Russian vodka shot glasses sitting on the table! A few members of the group had a bit of a scare at the Mongolian border station where they got off the train to get some supplies then the train was moved to change tracks and add carriages – they thought they were being left behind! There was a slight miss communication with the carriage lady who told us there was a 2 hour time difference so we got to bed at what we thought was 12 and arrived into Ulaanbaatar at 6am so set our alarms for 5am to get packed up. At 5am we got up and got everything sorted, handed in our sheets, got our bags out into the corridor by what we thought was 6am then she told us it was only 4am and there was still 2 hours til we arrived!! NOT COOL!