We’re outside the station now. I’m smoking, casting a surreptitious eye around the place but trying to look casual, while Carrie speaks to the station guard, showing him the map and the guidebook. He’s shaking his head and pointing to the patch of land that seems to be the car park. Several men stand waiting. All of them are smoking. None of them look particularly threatening, but you never know. I would suggest that we walk, but my quick flick through the guidebook earlier makes me think it might be too far with our rucksacks to carry.

I take a moment to check Sam’s Facebook, and see that he is ‘#hanging’. What a surprise. All he seems to do there is party. There’s a picture of him with one of the German lads, both of them grinning and holding massive beers. I enlarge the photo, trying to see if there are any girls in the background, but it’s dark and grainy – probably in one of those awful clubs. I put my phone back in my bag.

Looking at the mainly elderly gents hovering around their tatty cars, I think it’s unlikely that any will offer to carry our bags on their heads, like they did when I was in India. I told Carrie about this in the Hard Rock Cafe, and she snorted in an ‘I don’t believe you’ way, but the only places she’d been before Beijing were Vietnam and Thailand, and the culture there is not the same at all. The Indian bag-carriers are called ‘coolies’, and they are waiting at every train station. Between them and the men lugging around the huge pots of steaming chai and tiny earthenware cups, it’s a very different experience to this so far. Also, there are no monkeys scampering across the tracks here. So far, Mongolia is not particularly inspiring. A trickle of the younger passengers have set off on foot, while a few others have headed towards the taxis. There is a minor flurry of excitement and some rapid-fire conversation as the drivers decide between them who they will take, and probably, what inflated prices they can charge. Luckily Carrie has read the guidebook in more detail than I have and she won’t let us be ripped off.

I drop my cigarette and crush it underfoot. Carrie comes back at last. The station guard has recommended a taxi driver who she assures me will not overcharge or kill us, so I hitch my rucksack onto my back and follow her to the car. She hands over the address, written neatly on a piece of paper.

‘Let’s drop our bags at the hostel, then get out and explore the place,’ Carrie says. We pass flats, low, ramshackle houses, a couple of fancy-looking glass buildings.