My wife Roselind and I spend 24 days traveling on the Trans Mongolia Express from Beijing China all the way to St Petersberg. Along the way, we made three stops namely at Ulanbatar, Irkutsk and Moscow. We enjoyed the trip very much and would like to share some tips with other travelers who maybe planing similar trips.

A. Food on the train is expensive. Bring food, drinks and snacks to consume on the train or you can buy food when the train made stops at stations.

B. Bring a plastic bag which you can used to keep the rubbish in the train compartment.

C. The train provides hot water only so you must bring a container to store hot water. You also need to bring cool water.

D. The train time table is displayed along the corridor. Familiarize yourself with the time-table so that you will know at what time the train will arrive and depart from a station. This is good to know because the train make stops at various stations along the way and you need to know how much time you can spend at a particular station.

E. When at a busy train station, keep your luggage with you at all times. When I was at the Beijing Central Railway, I put down my luggage and approached a porter to ask a question. Suddenly a huge crowd came in the opposite, I turned around and realized I can’t see my luggage. I was relived that after the crowd dispersed after a minute or so that my bag was still there.

F. Bring your own toilet paper. The two or three rolls of toilet paper are used up quite fast and these are not being replaced.

G. If you tend to worry about your luggage being stolen while on the train, you can bring a chain to securely lock your luggage. Roselind and I did not chain our luggage and we did not encounter any problem.

H. Bathrooms are only provided in the first class. Therefore other passengers need to bring something which you can used to take a sponge bath.

I. The train schedule in Russia are all set in Moscow time. This means that you need to convert the Moscow time to local time to know when you need to board the train. For example, when we board the train from Irkutsk to Moscow, the time on the ticket is given as 23.30 which is Moscow time but we actually boarded the train at 03.30 which is the local time at Irkutsk.

J. You need to bear in mind that carriage number changes as either more carriages are added or taken off during a stop. In order to board the correct carriage after a stop (especially after a long stop), you must learn to recognize the train attendant.

K. For the Chinese train, you have a plug point in your compartment (second class) and you can easily charge your hand phone or computer at your own convenience. For the Mongolian and Russian trains, plug points are not in the compartment but along the corridor which you need to share with other passengers in the train.

L. Please make sure that you bring the right adapter.

M. If you can afford it, I would advise you to buy second class tickets. For second class, there are four beds in a compartment and you have a door which you can locked at night. There is also a bit of air-conditioning in second class. For third class, everything is open as there is no door and there are six beds with four beds one side and two beds on the other side. Besides the lack of privacy, it is also very hot and stuffy in the third class.

I hope that you will find these tips useful.

!steemitworldmap lat 40.842236 long 116.485305 From Beijing d3scr

!steemitworldmap lat 59.915083 long 30.297564 To St Petersberg d3scr

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