Trans-Siberian Railway

This is a photograph of the waiter in the Mongolian dining car on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Beijing to Moscow.  As the train left the Chinese border all the cars were put on new wheels or bogies because the Mongolian and the Russian tracks are a different dimension from the Chinese.  The Chinese dining car from Beijing was cut loose and the Mongolian dining car was added.  And now we were eating beef and onion soup and roasted lamb.  Our waiter dealt only in Mongolian currency which he stored in suitcases in his cabin, along with the hundreds of cigarettes he smoked in the galley.  I  got to know him quite well  as our train slowly climbed through the Gobi Desert and the plains of Ulaanbaatar on our way through Siberia.