Thursday 10 July 2008

5 days on a train

From Trans Mongolian Railway

I imagine that the usual reaction to being incarcerated in a small room with two other people for an extended period of time is not one of excitement. Nonetheless Magnus, George and myself were giddy as schoolgirls when we stepped aboard the No. 4 train from Moscow to Beijing (via Ulaanbaator). We stowed our belongings away into the various hatches, nets and cubby holes available and decided to 'explore' the train.

Our compartment was spacious and clean enough and was only mildly falling apart. Magnus and I managed to spend our time there with no injuries whatsoever.

George on the other hand was not so lucky.

Upon waking up on day 2, George decided to yawn and stretch much in the fashion of a baboon (more on that later). In doing so he managed to drive his hand through the metal blades of the compartment's fan and slice into 2 of his fingers. Although the fan made its way through one of the nails George wasn't too seriously injured and has now more or less fully healed. He did decide, however, to sleep with his feet facing the fan for the rest of the trip.

From Trans Mongolian Railway

However much the ferociously dangerous fan sucked, the compartment had one awesome thing going for it. The abundance of training possibilities it presented:

2 handles over the door at 45 degree angles for wide grip pull ups.
2 fold out, miniature step ladders for dips and attaching bands.
2 perfectly spaced bottom bunks for doing super deep push ups.
6 other hooks for attaching bands at various angles to perform pretty much any exercise imaginable.

The only problem with using the bands is that you generally have to veer into the higher rep ranges when using them. My love for lifting heavy things finally overpowered me on day 3 when I put Magnus on my back and attempted to squat him whilst on a moving train with a vicious, finger loving ventilation system looming over us.
I attempted one rep.
Magnus was displeased with the attempt.
I went back to the bands.

One particularly enjoyable part of our training sessions was the fact that the conductor was convinced we were going to break the compartment to pieces by the sheer force of our rippling, herculanean torsos. This meant that we had to shut the door every time we trained, thereby eliminating all airflow from the open window in the aisle way facing us. The heat got pretty unbearable with 3 of us in a 7'x6'x10' compartment but at least we didn't have the smell of raw chicken entrails being thrown out of the window by the conductor to bother us while we worked out. Seriously, the dude was disgusting. He did this on a regular basis.

As well as our, now fairly routine, bands, dips and chins workouts we all had a go at the 50 burpees challenge in the space between our carriage and the next.

Magnus: 3:16
Me: 2:35
George: 2:30

Our hands and feet got so disgustingly filthy that we decided we might as well try doing these on the platform, at one of the train's regular stops, the next time.

From Trans Mongolian Railway

Our hands and feet still got absolutely putrefact but seeing the looks on the other passengers faces as we jumped around whilst panting and sweating profusely made it worthwhile. Our outdoor attempt took place after George's 'incident' so only Magnus and I got involved:

Magnus: 3:05
Me: 2:19

Just enough time left after to buy some lardy, mashed potato pasties from the local vendors before getting back on the train. A real man's post workout meal.

One surprising aspect of the journey was seeing how different from our expectations Siberia was. When thinking of this region of the world people tend to conjure up images of frozen tundra, gulags and black bears. While this may be the case in the Northernmost reaches, the Siberia we saw from the train was an incredibly green place, filled with trees and shrubs and lakes. This of course only applies to the few parts that weren't filled with people. Most of the time we would see settlement after settlement, millions of people live in Siberia. Some places were comprised of little more than tin roofed shacks, not even separated by rudimentary paths, looking more like glorified allotments than villages. Elsewhere enormous cities, larger than Manchester, would punctuate the landscape with their skyscrapers, shopping malls, cooling towers and outdoor lcd advertisement screens.

From Trans Mongolian Railway

At around 7pm on day 4 we made what we thought would be a 2 hour stop at the Russian border with Mongolia. We thought wrong. Our passports were taken from us almost immediately for inspection and were duly returned to us an hour later. We then waited, for no apparent reason, for another 3 hours before making the 5 minute journey across the border in order to begin Mongolian border formalities.

We got to sleep at around 2am.

We were woken abruptly by chicken carcass man at 6am who insisted we get ready to disembark the train.

Looking out of the window was a pretty incredible experience. The landscape looked like something out of a video game. Green rolling hills as far as the eye could see, wild ponies running around in packs and a landscape interrupted only by the occasional 'Ger' - Mongolian tents, owned by almost all Mongolians (even those living in cities will pitch one up in front of their regular house and live in it intermittently). Crystalline streams the only visible divisions across the open plains.

We had arrived in Mongolia.

From Trans Mongolian Railway

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