Train #4 takes us from Ulan Bator to Beijing. It passes through hundreds of km of Gobi which varies from scrub to sand with not much in between. It's starting to get warmer at the station stops now. It takes 13 hours to reach the Mongolian border. We spend 7 hours at the border partaking of Mongolian and Chinese bureaucracy and having the wheels on each carriage changed for ones which are 3 inches narrower. This involves backing the whole train into a massive shed, splitting all the carriages and then lifting them all on hydraulic jacks while the wheels are trundled off to be replaced by Chinese ones. Finally, the train is noisily reassembled and after another hour sitting at Erlyan station, we depart for Beijing. Now we can get some sleep... Except that now we are joined in our cabin by two rather drunk Chinese men who barge in, turning all the lights on before collapsing on their beds - they could do synchronised snoring for China.
We wake up later that morning to find we are still trundling through Gobi-like scenery and that some windows have been left open. The whole train is beginning to fill up with sand! We try out the newly attached Chinese dining car. We're after some breakfast but all we can get is lunch plus sand. Still, the food is fresh and tasty and no mutton fat in sight. The train approaches Beijing via the Great Wall a Badaling and we get some great views leaning out of the windows although we do get to breath in half the desert too. As we descend to the Beijing plateau, the sand is replaced by industry and suburban sprawl - all covered in a thick layer of dust. The approach to Beijing station is not impressive (like the approaches to many cities by rail).
Finally, 12 days after leaving Moscow and 7865km later, we pull into Beijing's main station, very dirty and rather tired. All we have to do now is find the hotel - not a trivial exercise. Russia Experience had only given us the hotel name in Pinyin (the accepted way of writing Chinese using western script) and it was misspelled. A rep who arrived to meet the others on our train had not heard of the place. A couple of taxi drivers shook their heads. A third assured us it was about 10km away but that he would take us there for $7 US. This seemed reasonable as we'd been told to expect about $5. Sitting in the taxi, it soon became apparent we weren't going anywhere far. The hotel turned out to be about a mile away!
Russia Experience have taken us this far pretty successfully. Now we say goodbye to our travelling companions; Brendan and Debra, Penny and Barbara, Damian, Rob and Barney - good luck guys!
Now we begin our exploration of China...