getting there

To get to camp from the capital city (Ulaanbaatar), we took the train from the train station.  This may have been the Trans-Siberian railway.  I am not sure. There was much discussion on whether or not it was, and I never received a final answer.  At any rate, you will go to Russia or China if you stay on it long enough.

I had never ridden a train before.  I did not know what to expect, but I think I had pictured something like seats.  This is what I ended up on:

(On the second ride we had more passengers, so I shared one of these shelves with another person.)  Below me was a bench seating four more people.  Above me was space for all our luggage.  Across from me and kitty-corner was the same stack of benches/shelving.  So, each cubicle could hold eighteen passengers.  Each car had several of these cubicles.  It looks like this:

At the front of the car was a wood-burning stove.  The door to the stove was open, and it felt extremely hot.

After three and a half hours on the train, we got off at a little town called something like "tunkh."