5.1. How to travel to Mongolia?
Description
This article is from the Mongolia FAQ, by Oliver Corff with numerous contributions by others.
5.1. How to travel to Mongolia?
The principal ways to Mongolia are by train and by air. The capital
of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, is connected via the Transmongolian Railway
to China and Buryatia. In Ulan Ude, capital of Buryatia, the
Transsiberian Railway (leading from Moscow to the Russian Far East,
Khabaravosk, Nakhodka etc.) connects to the Transmongolian Railway.
Trains from Moscow to Beijing run once a week in each direction and
take about five days for the whole trip. There are also `local
trains' between Irkutsk (Ärxüü) and Ulaanbaatar which take about 24
hours one way. Similar local trains run between Ulaanbaatar and
Beijing. Since the Transmongolian Railway sports only one track this
is a bottleneck for railway traffic which results in these one
train/week schedules. Prices for train tickets vary between USD 200
and USD 500. It is not possible to state any exact amount because
prices fluctuate, the currency exchange rates vary daily and pricing
policies create different price tags depending on where the tickets
are purchased. The second feasible way to enter Mongolia is by air.
Air transport is available between Buyant Uxaa (the international
airport of Ulaanbaatar) and Beijing as well as Irkutsk, the latter
with a weekly connect flight to Moscow (or should I say, it's a weekly
flight to Moscow with a stop-over in Irkutsk?). These lines are served
throughout the whole year. In summer, there are additional flights to
Huhhot (Inner Mongolia) and Japan, the latter being served on a
somewhat irregular basis. Past experience has shown that these links
were just chartered flights without a genuine ``schedule'' in the
sense of the word. There are about four to six international passenger
flights per week connecting Ulaanbaatar and the rest of the world.
Links to other Central Asian regions are under consideration or
offered on a seasonal basis such as a flight between Almaty /
Kazakhstan and Mongolia. A new route has recently been opened between
Buyant Uxaa and Seoul, Korea (spring 1996). The latest developments
(fall 1996) include an air link between Buyant Uxaa / Ulaanbaatar and
Germany, Berlin Schoenefeld (code SXF - important because there are
two other public airports in Berlin: Tegel (TXL) and Tempelhof (THF)).
The flights are scheduled on a weekly basis (Sunday: OM135 goes to
Berlin, OM136 returns to Ulaanbaatar). There is a stop-over in
Shcheremetyevo/Moscow and occasionally a fuel refill in Nowosibirsk.
Prices for the return ticket start from appr. USD 700.-- (in winter)
when bought in Berlin.
Only the prices on the Ulaanbaatar / Beijing route are fairly
constant: around USD 200.-- for a one-way ticket. For almost all
other destinations there are wildly varying ticket prices depending on
where the ticket is bought and whether the client is entitled to
special reductions (like being an official student at the Mongolian
National University).
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