Waiting our train like often...:
On our journey from Mongolia to Russia we found ourselves suddenly in the
middle of the "clothes smuggling process" with George. Everything started
already when waiting for the train. It did not happen often that a Mongolian
person spoke to us just like that. This man just came up to us when he saw
that we take the same train like himself. He introduced him-self as George
and spoke quite good English. We talked a little bit till the train arrived.
Somehow we ended up in the same cabin with him and another young woman (even
so our ticket stated another cabin but the Russian train attendant told us
to go there). The train departed and the man started to unpack his two bags.
He had trousers, t-shirts, shorts, beauty products, etc all from China...
Then he always disappeared with this stuff till finally he had just some
clothes left. First we thought he is selling his stuff in the train but
afterwards we knew that he is hiding the stuff somewhere to get over the
border without paying any taxes. He asked us to help him but we refused to
not have problems on the already difficult border crossing into Russia. He
did not take "No!" as an answer and tried several more times. "Diana, you
need to help me!" he was winding. Then he put his stuff on our beds or near
our bags and we were pushing the stuff back. It was a funny but strange
situation. Finally when he had no more options he decided to unpack all the
clothes from the plastic bags and to put them in his bag. When the border
control came he said he is travelling to Irkutsk as a tourist which was not
true because he told he is just going to the border town in Russia. But he
was lucky because the border control believed him.
The young woman was smuggling as-well with another older man. She seemed to
be in training ;-) as she was still nervous when she was controlled.
After observing George hiding his stuff from the departure on (19h20) and
then taking hours getting everything back we have to say it is a full time
job ;-). At 2am he finally left the train and asked Jeremie to help carry
some bags ;-). We realized as-well that the train attendants were helping
the smugglers too for a little tips, we suppose.
You can spot one of the smugglers climbing in train with his goods:
View of the Baikal lake for 3 hours:
