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Each year, lots of people are travelling to Mongolia through the Transsiberian and Transmongolian railways. Legend train, travelling in transsiberian is a great experience: beauty of the landscape but most of all it's a real human adventure.
In order to fully enjoy your trip in Transsiberian, you will need to prepare in advance your trip.
Although it's relatively easy to travel on the Moscow - Ulaanbaatar section at the condition to stop in Irkutsk (only a weekly train is direct between Moscow and Beijing), there is every year availabities problem on the Beijing/Ulaanbaatar train.
We've enclosed the train timetable in order to help you to organize your trip in Mongolia. From March, the summer planning will be available. In summer time, a Beijing / Ulaanbaatar train is usually added on tuesdays and a Ulaanbaatar train is usually added on fridays.
Some information on Transsiberian
The restaurant carriages on the Russian and Chinese trains have decent food and drinks. Note that toilets are normally locked whenever you are in a station and for five minutes before and after. Showers are only available in the deluxe carriages. In 2nd and 1st class, there is a washroom and toilet at the end of each carriage which always get progressively filthy.
Generally you are only allowed to take 35kg of luggage, but for foreigners, this is rarely checked, except perhaps when departing Beijing. A lot of smuggling is done on this train, so never agree to carry anything across the border for
anyone else.
If you want to get off the Trans-Mongolian at Sukhbaatar, Darkhan or Sainshand, you will still have to pay the full fare to/from Ulaanbaatar. If you are not actually getting on the train in Ulaanbaatar, you should arrange for someone in Ulaanbaatar to tell the attendant that you will catch the train later, so your seat is not taken.
Tickets list the departure, not arrival, times. Get to the station at least 20 minutes before arrival to allow enough time to find the platform and struggle on board, especially for the Beijing - Moscow trains, which only stop in Ulaanbaatar for about 30 minutes.
Classes. With a few exceptions, all international trains have two or three classes. The names and standards of the classes depend on whether it is a Mongolian, Russian or Chinese train.
On the Russian (and Mongolian) trains, most travellers travel in 2nd class - printed on tickets and timetables as '1/4' and known as 'hard-sleeper', 'coupe' or kupeynyy in Russian. These are small, but perfectly comfortable, four-person compartments with four bunk-style beds and a fold-down table.
First class (printed as '2/4') is sometimes called a 'soft-sleeper', or myagkiy in Russian. It has softer beds but hardly any more space than a Russian 2nd class seat and is not worth the considerably higher fare charged. On Chinese trains it is nonsmoking which can be a godsend.
The real luxury (and expense) comes with Chinese deluxe class (printed as '1/2'): roomy, wood-paneled two-berth compartments with a sofa, and a shower cubicle shared with the adjacent compartment. The deluxe class on Russian trains, which is slightly cheaper than the Chinese deluxe, has two bunks but is not much different in size than the 2nd class and has no showers.
Customs & Immigration. There are major delays of three to six hours at both, the China-Mongolia and Russia-Mongolia borders. Often the trains cross the border during the middle of the night, when the alert Mongolian and Russian officials maintain the upper hand. The whole process is not difficult or a hassle - just annoying because they keep interrupting your sleep. Your passport will be taken for inspection and stamping.
During these stops, you can alight and wander around the station, which is just as well since the toilets on the train are locked during the whole inspection procedure.
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