From Irkutsk, we took an excursion to Olkhon Island, on Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world. It is not only deep, but also enormous! The island itself is beautiful with not a lot there, just a fairly small town where we stayed at Nikitas guesthouse which was warm and cosy, and we were treated to home cooked Russian meals, fish being the staple. Nikitas guesthouse also had a banya (sauna) which was a real treat, especially after brisk walking in the snow. We took a jeep trip up to the northern most point of the Island where we could [View Full Entry]

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Leaving a very cold Ulan Bator platform behind, we boarded a 36 hour train to Irkutsk in the heart of Siberia, Russia. After a nights' sleep on the train, we arrived at the Mongolian border at 06.30 & the immigration process began again. This time we did not have to leave the train, but it was frustrating because we were stationary for so long. After a small train ride across the border, Russian immigration then took just as long, and we did not leave the Russian border until 16.30 - ten hours of border crossing! After another nights sleep on the [View Full Entry]

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Three Brits, two Finns and a Mongolian! We all took an old Russian van that was prone to breaking down, thousands of kilometeres into the Gobi desert on a week long trip. Each night we would sleep in a ger - a tent like circular framed hut with a fire and chimney inside. Depending on the quality of the ger it would be either cold, very cold or absolutely freezing! Fire fuel varied from wood, to Sheep poo, camel poo, horse poo (noticably better than camel and sheep poo just in case you ever need to know), or upscale to coal [View Full Entry]

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The capital city of Mongolia....is....cold, and.....not all that interesting! We spent a day and a half wandering around, and saw all it had to offer. It's very small and sights are limited. The Natural history museum was a taxidermists dream, just full of animals from all across Mongolia as well as a few dinosaur remains! After that, we decided to skip the history museum. The local monastery was the most interesting part, containing a 26.5metre high statue of buddha with many many worshippers turning the prayer wheels in constant motion. Monks walked round in orange robes and warm stird [View Full Entry]

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At 07.45 we boarded a 30 hour train to Ulan Bator! This was going to be the longest journey I had ever done...so far! The three of us had a comfortable four berth cabin to ourselves, with the bottom two beds acting a a sofa during the day. It was quite cold in the early hours, until the sun began to warm up the cabin. It was fairly roomy and would suffice for the next day and a half, aside from the industrial style toilet which allowed everything to fall straight onto the tracks, still it's better than a hole in [View Full Entry]

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After a 25 hour train ride I was back in Beijing once again. We left Hung Hom station in Hong Kong at 15.15 on 23rd October, and arrived at 16.05 on the 24th October. Ben and I had now met up with our friend Nikki who is joining us on our trans-Siberian adventure. I spent the majority of the journey horizontal on my top bunk reading and sleeping. There is not much else to do aside from a few card games and a trip to the dining cart! It went by fairly quickly. Day One Once through immigration, we crawled through [View Full Entry]

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Pit stop Hong Kong! I was very excited to arrive into Hung Hom station and be back in Hong Kong...only to be disappointed that the toilet was still a hole in the floor - I thought I was done with them having left the mainland! Ben and I had to stop in Hong Kong in order to get a Russian visa....and it was also a good excuse to stop by and catch up with all our friends and enjoy our favourite things in Hong Kong once again! I had a lovely stay in Sai Kung with friends and fully indulged in [View Full Entry]

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Once in Kunming, similar to Hekou, it seemed that no one cared we were there! We could see no obvious way of getting into the centre of town and the people I asked in the station didn seem to know much either! Instead we followed our trusty guide book and searched outside on the main roads for a bus 64. Luckily we saw one drive by, our eyes following it, and we waited at the same bus stop for the next one. Next mission was finding the hostel which happened to be hidden down a quiet street of course! It was [View Full Entry]

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We took the winding road down from Sapa to Lao Cai, enjoying the splendid views on the way. Lao Cai is just a border town, and we got taken straight to the immigration building. First we exited Vietnam, with my now regular panic that someone will stamp a blank page of my passport and I won't have room for the visas I need soon...the passport is almost full, and I need it to get home! We then walked across no mans land towards Hekou in China. Already I had a chance to practice my Chinese with the man crossing at the [View Full Entry]

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The long journey to Sapa started very early in the morning...04.45 to be precise. We had to get up and walk to the station for the 06.10 train. A ten hour train meant that the majority of our day was spent sitting watching Northern Vietnam go by. The train arrived at Lao Cai, from which we took a bus to Sapa... which broke down, but luckily the wait for a replacement wasn too long. Annoyingly the locals paid 30,000 Dong and we were pressured into paying 40,000. 3 days spent in Sapa were very pleasant, it being a fairly quiet town, [View Full Entry]

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