From WSJ.com: OPC President David A. Andelman takes on Genghis Khan’s land, with a journey on one of the world’s most storied train lines
The Trans-Mongolian Railway leaves in the dead of night.
It departs from an ornate station in Irkutsk, Russia, where wooden houses built by exiled 19th-century intellectuals mingle with blocky Soviet-era buildings. It winds past Russia’s vast Lake Baikal, traverses the Mongolian grasslands that Genghis Khan rode his horsemen across on the way to Europe and rattles through the Gobi Desert into China, pulling into Beijing 1,820 miles later.
It is one of the most storied train rides in the world, a journey through raw landscapes and historic realms. For decades, I’d longed to experience it for myself.