The Right Stop: Train Ride to Anak Ranch, Mongolia

Our next stop on our trip was on an adventure to a Mongolian ranch, literally in the middle of nowhere.  Our host there emailed me our destination, a 15-word long description of a place.  Most trains I’ve taken, there’s a set destination: Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Chiang Mai.  Not so, here.  It’s "so-and-so place in so-and-so district near so-and-so place"  I carefully copied it down and showed it to our guesthouse lady who attempted to translate it into Mongolian, but even she had trouble with it, writing down a couple question-marks after a few words.  This, for obvious reasons, worried me. 

We decided to walk to the train station to purchase our tickets.  It didn’t seem too far.  Besides, it’s the main train station, so it should be fairly obvious when we near it, right?  Wrong.  On both points.  The walk seemed twice as long due to the sudden bitterly cold change in temperature and the stiff wind that seemed to blow straight into our faces no matter which direction we faced.    At one point, we got lost, our map being of no help.  I cheered up when I saw a public map, but soon realized that the whole map was written in Mongolian and nowhere did I see any symbol that looked remotely train-like.  Rick, in desperation, pointed at the only English we saw on the whole map, "The Chelsea Football Fan Club".  Perfect.  An English-based soccer team fan club must have people who can speak some English, right?  We made our way to the building, finding it mostly empty except a small office to the side.  A girl sat typing away at a desk, looking up at us when I pushed the door in.  I said, "train?"  She shook her head, then pulled out a piece of scratch paper.  I drew a picture of a train on it.  She stared at it blankly.  I made "choo-choo-chugga-chugga" sounds.  She stared at me blankly.  I wrote "TRAIN" underneath it.  She brightened, "train!"  I nodded like a crazy person.  Soon, we were back on the right track, walking another half mile on dug-up unpaved roads.  I turned to Rick, "No way are we walking here with all our luggage.  We’re never going to make it."

On our walk there. Sorry, no other pictures since the walk was fairly miserable.

We came upon the main train station building only to find all the doors seemed to be locked.  It couldn’t be closed.  It was only 3 in the afternoon.  Rick pointed at a side-building where people streamed in and out.  Turned out this was the domestic train ticket counter.  We waited in line at one of the windows.  An old lady shoved her way to the front.  Then a couple women shoved in from the side.  A young woman became tired of waiting in front of us, and squeezed her way to the front of another window.  Ok, I guess waiting in lines wasn’t a common concept here.  I stayed in line, trying to bar people from tunneling their way in front of me, while Rick made his way to the counter and slowly pushed his way in from the side.  After fifteen minutes, we finally made it to the front.  I said, "Hello." The woman behind the counter shook her head and pointed to the next window down, so we methodically squeezed our way to the front of that window.  Thankfully, the woman sitting behind the window we were directed to knew some English so between a few English words, handing over our passports, some pointing at calendars, and me miming being asleep, we managed to book our sleeper train tickets despite people shoving wads of cash in front of our faces in hopes of receiving their own tickets first.  I glanced down at the tickets and said to Rick, "I sure hope these go to the right station," since the entire ticket was written in Mongolian except for our names. 

The day of our departure, we checked out of our guesthouse and hurried over to the taxi waiting for us I had booked through Help Taxi a couple days before.  We arrived minutes later and faced a solid 8-hour block of waiting before our train left at 9:10pm.  We played card games, read books, napped, snacked, and wrote in our journals so the time passed relatively quickly.  About an hour before our departure time, we walked outside not exactly sure where to go.  I went over to a nearby train and showed one of the train conductors our ticket.  She pointed and the time and shook her head, waving me away.  I went back to Rick and said, "Maybe our train isn’t here yet?"  We walked back into the station to wait another half hour.  When we walked back outside, there were still no signs of any other trains.  Rick, then took the train ticket and walked over to another conductor of the same nearby train.  She waved us over to the next train car.  We had been walking around the right train the entire time!

We walked inside trying in vain to see what the seat numbers are.  A helpful young woman pointed to the walls dividing each sleeper compartment from the other to show us the numbers were bolted there.  Then she looked at our ticket and we realized our compartment was right next to hers.  She then pointed to the seat, lifting up the top cover to show us where to stow our luggage.  Two older women shared our compartment, us with the two bottom bunks and them with the top bunks.  As we settled in, a woman pushed a shopping cart through the train selling snacks while another walked through with stacks of sealed & clean white pillows & sheets, also for sale.  A conductor collected our tickets, making sure we were in the right place. 

My bunk.  See the seat numbers there by my left shoulder?

The train took off exactly on time.  For a while, Rick and I chatted while the two older women shared a table showing each other pictures.  Around 10pm, they each grabbed a pillow, and undersheet, and a heavy blanket, climbing up into their bunks.   When Rick and I went to sleep, we discovered we were missing one undersheet & one pillow.  I took the remaining undersheet & balled up my jacket so Rick could have the remaining pillow.  The heavy blanket was rough & musty-smelling but warm, which I was quickly thankful for since the train became rather cold as night wore on and the outside air cooled the large windows near our heads. 

Our train car.  You can see someone sleeping up on the top bunk through the window.

I slept in half-hour snatches, worried we’d miss our stop.  I needn’t have worried.  Ten minutes before we reached our stop, the conductor came through waking us up and handing us our tickets back.  "Is this our stop?" I asked, but she didn’t say anything.  At the next stop, we hauled our luggage off the train, in the pitch-black lit only with a few lights from the small station 100 feet away.  "Is this our stop?" I asked again, so the conductor looked at our tickets again, nodded, and pointed towards the station.  Rick and I stood there, in the middle of nowhere, at 4 in the morning.  I looked at Rick, "I really hope this is the right stop." 

A thin young man walked up to us, "Anak Ranch?"  Thank God, it was the right stop!