Of course we had to go and visit it when in Beijing. We even thought of doing it when in Datong but the part of Great Wall over there is not apparently very impressive. The initial plan was to go twice to different parts of the wall to have a better feel of the place. One of the seven ancient wonders of the world, right? The choice of places where you can visit Great Wall of China is quite big and it could be a little bit confusing what to do. Tours usually get to go to the Badaling section of the Wall and they even take you to the Ming Tombs on the way so kind of understand the package deal people take. So where is the catch? We thought that everybody would try to ... read more

Datong - Ancient Land of Buddhism The border crossing from Mongolia was in fact more interesting than the Russian-Chinese one. We had a lot of time and we could choose whichever option we liked. Obviously the most convenient way was to take the last leg of the Trans-Mongolian and go directly to Beijing but somehow we changed our mind after few weeks in UB. Maybe because there was almost nobody doing that or just maybe because we have heard about some nice places to visit in Inner Mongolia or Northern China. I should probably mention the enormous price difference between the train to the border and the Trans-Mongolian. I could say it is the advantage of this option that every backpacker finds very appealing ;-) The second decision was to go to Hohhot but after reading ... read more

We spent more than we had to in UB due to my silly eye infection caused by cold wind presumably. But one thing we had to do for sure when in town was a visit to a ger camp. There is plenty of excursions available to choose from and you can be confused about what to do and where to go. If not the cold weather we would have probably gone to many more places actually. Unfortunately the temperatures went way below the typical level for November and we had no suitable clothing for Gobi or Northern region trips. We could visit nearby Terelj National Park though, situated only 80km from UB. We checked few agencies including our guesthouse and we were surprised to see that even winter season pricing was not that low ;-( 40$ ... read more

Next morning we headed to the bus stop and we found a group of people already waiting for the same minibus. We looked at each other and decide to wait anyway. We did not like the idea of waiting for the next one for 3h in freezing weather. The driver allowed us in but later on started to ask something about the phone. Good we had a Russian speaking Cyril with us but we still had no idea what he was on about. Apparently this bus is for bookings only so we were asked to leave very quickly. Shame that no one at Nikita's mentioned it to us. The driver obviously felt bed or just wanted more earnings, as he asked people to squeeze in and we managed to get place. Cyril was not very happy ... read more

We arrived in Novosibirsk late in the evening and we went to our hostel that we booked prior to leaving Moscow. The size of the city we could observe from the train really surprised us. How on earth such a big city can exist in the middle of nowhere? We became very curious of what is the main industry of this place for it to be so big. We could not find anybody from CS in this town and there were only 3 hostels available so we did not have to think long. Cheapest would do. We had a plan to drop our bags and go back to the city centre to have some dinner. In the hostel we met a nice French guy – Cyril - and we were asked by the administrator if we ... read more