Who needs an alarm when you have a machine gun!!

The fun all starts when you camp too close to a border....

At 3am Grant was woken by a tap-tap-tap outside his tent, on opening his tent he found a girl in military trousers sat outside his tent, after a bit of broken conversation she eventually left - innocent enough.

At 5am we hear a diesel vehicle driving through camp, then some voices - Mongul and English, then we discover the Mongolian Military are examining each tent - armed with a machine gun ! I'm still not entirely sure what went on, but can only assume that the Mongolian military were looking for the girl !

Anyway, with everyone well and truely awake, we had an early breakfast, and made for the border. Arriving at 7am, we discovered a huge queue of mini-buses, so we took our place behind. At 8am, the border opened and we jumped/'were ushered' to the front of the queue, and into Mongolian border control - after a 'round-the-houses' visit to various desks/windows/people we were all stamped, and ready to enter no-mans land.

At this point I became aware of several huge-bodied people all with small heads and arms!! Two such ladies were busily fastening each others bursting corsets - how odd! It quickly became apparanet after chatting to others in the group who had witnessed the pre-border dressing, that these people were wearing multiple layers of clothes (i.e. 5 or 6 pairs of jeans, with other pairs of jeans sellotaped around their waist. The same multi-layering applied to their upper body. The conclusion, was that they were 'smuggling' chinese clothes into Russia !! It all seemed a fairly accepted process - as the people would hardly have won prizes for concealment.

So, with all the stamps in place on our slips of paper, just one hurdle remained - the final check that all the correct stamps had been correctly collected. At this point we were asked for 200 Roubles - for what, we don't know. Scott (at the front of the queue) used Italian and Afrikanse to communicate (ignoring English), and there was a standoff over a good 5 minutes, until he quickly had the brain wave, to assume the potential contribution to the border guard christmas party fund, was for insurance, so he flashed his Mongolian Insurance document to the border guard. At this stage, I think the border guard gave up with the money extortion, and let us on our way..

So, through a very short no-mans land, and to the Russian border control - this chap left his sense of humour behind this morning, and closed the gates as we arrived ! So, we sat at the gate for several minutes until he returned, and let 4 of us through the gate, and sent the rest back to Mongolia, to wait to be summoned into Russian border control at his command.

Once through to Russian passport and customs control, the process was realtively quick - a mere couple of hours, and soon we were into the local town of Kyakhta.

With everyone safely through, we rode through town - a heavily militarised town; marching solidiers, army barracks, and plenty of soldiers milling around the place. Quickly through town, we had scenic ride through pine forests, and silver birch woods to Ulan-Ude, passing the odd scenic lake enroute;