HELLO, I’m Adit, 25 years old, solo traveler from Indonesia. My current position, on Irkutsk, Russia. I’m a backpacker which is I’m traveling with tight budget and always survive with free accommodation, free food, and sometimes free transportation such as hitchhike.

So far I already traveled for 9 countries since August 2017 until now, and mostly I did it by overland. I start my trip from South to the North, here’s my route and my transportation :

• Indonesia to Singapore by plane
• Singapore to Malaysia by bus
• Malaysia to Ho Chi Minh by plane
• Ho Chi Minh to Cambodia by bus
• Cambodia to Thailand by bus
• Thailand to Laos by bus
• Laos to Hanoi by bus
• Hanoi to China by bus and train
• China to Mongolia by bus and train
• Mongolia to Russia by bus

I just want to share some stories about my journey from China to Mongolia, here’s some topic that I will share :

I. Processing Russian Visa in Beijing
II. Processing Mongolian Visa in Beijing
III. Overland from China to Mongolia via Zamyn-Üüd Border
IV. Processing Russian Visa in Ulaanbaatar
V. The Northern Part of Mongolia
VI. Surprised at the end of my journey in Mongolia

I hope it will be useful.
Here’s my story,

Part I, Processing Russian Visa in Beijing
I almost gave up when I’m in China, there were only 2 options between, I got a job, working for 2 years, saving more money, buying the winter stuff and continue my journey to Russia or If I didn’t get a job, I’ll get back to my country.

Why I need to get a job in China, and why I should work at least 2 years in China? I did some research before on the internet, about how to get Russian Visa in China, most of them said, It’s hard to get Russian Visa in China, another said, at least you should working for 2 years to get residence permit then you can be easily to get Russian Visa.

That’s my first reason why almost give up. Another reason is the weather, during the winter Russia has extreme cold weather around -40°C until -70°C, I don’t have any good winter stuff. I’ve been searched before about the price for winter stuff, and it’s pretty expensive for me.

There were 2 coincidences that happened to me while I’m in China. At the time I just want to try to take some money on ICBC ATM, I just want to check “How much fee that I should pay If I did withdrawal on that ATM, then I clicked it, suddenly I got the money without notification.

I was thinking, what? There’s no fee to take the money on this ATM? and the money that I took before it’s too much for me, I don’t know what I am going to do with that money. I was thinking maybe that coincidence was a sign for me to buy the flight ticket to Indonesia.

On weekend, I visited Tianjin eye, I saw there were some souvenir shops, and It’s pretty unique for me. I bought 4 mini characters when I’m in Tianjin, 1 “squash” that’s one of Plant vs Zombie Character, 1 “Chopper” that’s One Piece character, 1 Totoro, and 1 “Eeyore” that’s one of Winnie The Pooh Character.

Yup, those things convinced me that I thought I will go back to Indonesia. But, it’s totally not. Those coincidences took me to another way, not going back to Indonesia but to Mongolia and Russia.

Here’s where the stories began, one day I did some conversation with one of my friend from Russia, we never meet before, I just know about her when both of us taught English in Hai Phong, Northern Vietnam, but we were in the different English course. I knew her from one of my friend in my English course, they introduce her on Facebook Messenger. We talked about my Russian Visa.