The government restrictions imposed on Tibet has made the journey a pain in the arse and expensive. The government has imposed a permit system thus making travelling to Tibet illegal without a permit, on top of this they stipulate that you have to go on a private tour which is expensive. After finding all this out plus the fact that you can’t go off and do your own stuff, you are herded thought racing from one check point to the other, we decided to abandon our Tibetan adventure till another time. Instead we decided to travel from Chengdu through western Sichuan [View Full Entry]

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Today we set off to Mount Emei (Emei Shan) 130km southwest of Chengdu. It didn’t start off too well (apart from the yummy BLT) we could not find the bus station, after an hour we finally found it!!!! So we boarded the bus, waited another 20 mins for it to fill up and then 2 hours later we were in Emei Shan. This place is one of the middle kingdom’s four famous Buddhist Mountains. Apparently the scenery is amazing here as well as the sunrise, we wouldn’t know though because all the time we were there it was misty!!!! On some [View Full Entry]

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Well, what can we say about Chengdu? Not much really, we arrived at our hostel Sims Cozy Hostel 80yn for a double shared bathroom, not much to say about this hostel apart from the good food and DVD players in your room, so you can have a good old DVD session. Once settled in and showered we then spent all day trying to sort out our onward trip to Tibet but that’s another story to be put in another section of our blog. The next day, after an amazing BLT we set off to venture, we finally found the Wenshu Temple [View Full Entry]

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After an awful night’s sleep with a very loud family below us, the father texting all night with the volume up full and of course the hacking up phloem and their boy who none stop chatted to no one in particular with the most horrendous voice ever, we arrived in Xian. Off the train we got into a mass of people and onto a local bus with even more people and we headed into the city walls. We annoyingly got off one stop earlier than we were meant too but we finally found our hostel in good time, sweating buckets once [View Full Entry]

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After a wonderful few days in Beijing it was time to head further east to Shanghai, so we boarded the very plush express sleeper train with TVs and complimentary water and headed as far east as we will get for a long time. After 9 hours of the smoothest train ride ever, we arrived in Shanghai and made our way to our hostel, Mingtown Hiker Youth Hostel, 220yn a night for a double en-suite (no window but very nice). We arrived sweating buckets so before venturing out we had our first decent shower in 3 days and chilled out in the [View Full Entry]

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“He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man” Mao Zedong So to prove that we are both man enough (G being an honorary chap for this occasion). We set out to see the Great Wall of China. We made the decision to travel 110km out of Beijing towards Jinshanling which is a quieter, less touristy section of the wall. Rather than go for a couple of hours during the day we decided to spend the night in Simatai. We planned to travel from Beijing to Simatai, hopefully get a bed for the evening, dump our stuff, [View Full Entry]

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China is the World’s oldest continuous civilisation!!! We arrive in Beijing rail station and are hit by two sensory overloads; first is the heat, humidity hits you like a cheap shot straight in face, second is the sheer amount of people - there is a sea of people, heads walking in numerous directions. After a quick trip to the ATM we head to the subway, now Beijing Subway is pretty easy to navigate, once you find the entrance that is…. It is also very cheap too, 2 Yuan per journey - where ever you go! We finally find it after walking [View Full Entry]

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So after a few days of pottering around UB, doing the last of the sightseeing; taking in the history museum, an amazing English fry up, Tony getting very drunk and being found on the sofa in the hostel in just his boxers, seeing the cultural show including Mongolian throat singers and contortionists, it was finally time to say a very sad goodbye to Mongolia and an exciting hello to China. Our train to Beijing was 3o hours, in our cabin were Ben and Sandi so all was good, in fact from what we saw we reckoned there wasn’t a single local [View Full Entry]

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Time for our next trip organised through the UB Guesthouse, 426,000T each, this included food, travel, accommodation and the wonderful Jack and the added bonus of his 13 year old boy aka Mini Jack. We set off early back up the road we had only just come back on to Karakorum, as we were just there the other day we did nothing and waited with anticipation for the next drive to our next stop Tsetserleg. It wasn't a great drive, Jack told us the scenery didn't get interesting for a few days so we spent our time getting to know our [View Full Entry]

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“Before us lay Mongolia, a land of painted deserts dancing in mirage; of limitless grassy plains and nameless snow-capped peaks, of untracked forests and roaring streams! Mongolia, land of paradox and promise! The hills swept away in the far-flung, graceful lines of panorama so endless that we seemed to have reached the very summit of Earth.” Roy Chapman Andrews Off we got on our Gobi tour organised through UB guesthouse 450,000T each for 9 nights and 8 days inc food, accommodation, Jack, Van and Petrol. We set off in an old soviet people carrier; these are built [View Full Entry]

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