Day 14:

Just about finished this 27 hour train journey. Except, with the time zone change, I think it is more like 28 hours.

Not so much to report his time. Second class is much nicer than third. Each carriage sleeps about 36, within nine closed-off compartments of four bunks each. One each of these second-class journeys, I have been lucky enough to share my compartment with only one person.

Oh... I'm now in Siberia. Chita is close to where (politically, anyways) the Far East ends and Siberia begins. In both regions, there have been lots of prety sights from outside my carriage window. I particularly like the old shack/log cabin communities that cluster around the tracks every few hundred kilometres. They seem to me part American-west ghost town and part Soviet pipe dream.

So, if all goes according to plan, I should be in Mongolia in three days. There's a place in UlaanBaatar that serves the most wonderful chips. I can't wait.