The Mongol Rally Guys

Having nothing better to do than sleep for the time being I decided to explore what would be my surroundings for the next three days and nights. I walked the narrow hall and found car after car looking exactly like the one I was in. I went on for about six cars or so before deciding to turn back–there obviously wasn’t much to see here. A few cars before I hit my own I heard some English voices and peeked in a berth while passing to see four white faces. “Ahh–nice to hear some English!” I remarked, sticking my head inside for a second. “It was actually Dutch, but no biggie” replied one of the guys in the room. They invited me inside and we introduced ourselves before breaking out a bottle of vodka. Turns out they were from the Netherlands and Belgium and had met up in Moscow when boarding the train. We had a nice chat before fatigue got the better of me and I retired to my cabin.

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The flight on Air Astana to Novosibirsk was pretty uneventful. I arrived in the early afternoon, very tired, and set about on my first mission: finding a bus to take me to the train station. Unfortunately, I didn’t have many Russian rubles on me, I had no idea where the bus stop was, and the train station was quite a long ways away. I stepped out of the terminal and was immediately ‘attacked’ by multiple cabbies asking where I was going and if I needed a taxi. I refused all of them and lugged my bags towards the nearest bus. No luck–it wasn’t the one I was looking for.

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