After a decent nights sleep, I spent most of the train journey to the Kazakh border being entertained by the chipper young Kazakh sharing my compartment, or being hypnotised by the window as one beautiful wilderness after another rolled by.
At some town an hour or so before the border we all had to get out and wait around for a while while they changed the wheel gauges. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to watch this process and just had to hang about in some station-like building.
This was not the place and our train did not look like this! It's just some old train at some half-built settlement near the border.
Leaving Kazakhstan this time was pretty much a formality, though it I made good use of my compartment companion's literacy in Russian to confirm on my departure card that I wasn't smuggling anything or suspiciously ill.
Looking back at the Kazakh border building having left Kazakhstan, but not yet entered China!
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