dougsabum

11-19 November Boy, the compartment sure seems big without two Italians, eight Mongolians, 27 packages, snacks and drinks. With Sarah and Dalila missing the train, I have an entire four-person compartment all to myself for the five-day journey. So, I stow my gear, make some tea and start watching Mongolia pass by. We travel through the evening and in the middle of the night cross into Russia, which will be last country on my trip. The train is quite empty, with about half of my car full; and all the time I sojourn into the dining car I never see more than two other people there. As far as I can tell I am the only one on the train who is not either Mongolian or Russian. There were not many attempts to meet the neighbors, ... read more

24 October - 6 November Beijing - the big city that has the whole world's attention, now and throughout history. We settled into a hostel tucked away on one of the narrow alleys that are known as hutongs. These alleys are fantastic, with stores, teashops, restaurants, schools, police stations, markets and everything else set up along the narrow lanes. The hutongs are arranged as a maze of east-west thoroughfares and are almost as old as Beijing itself, being implemented as defensive measure against calvary swooping in from the north. One common phrase from historical hutong life is "I'm so happy I don't even know where north is". I could spend a week just walking up and down these streets. But, bigger and better things beckon. First, we made the first of three trips to the Forbidden ... read more

15-18 October After a few days in Kathmandu for sightseeing and travel arrangements, we hopped on an Air China flight from Kathmandu to Chengdu, China. I was in Chengdu briefly last year on my mad dash to Yangshuo before the holiday madness of Golden Week and didn't have the chance to see much of anything, so it was nice to see some of the sights in this city.A nice thing about finding people that you like to travel with and have the same interests and travel pace is that it is easy to do very little, take all day to do it, and have a really good time. I have enjoyed travelling by myself, as it allows complete freedom, but it's just not as much fun to walk to a Buddhist temple, sit in a teagarden ... read more

21-30 September One day it's the holiest place in Buddhism and the next the holiest place in Hinduism. And what a change - from a quiet peaceful park with a temple to a raucous city with shouting, singing, smiling pilgrims. And a change from two goofy Vietnamese monks to goofy Italian girls. Varanasi bills itself as the oldest living city in the world and, although all of the really old structures have long since been destroyed it does boast some formidable antiquity. I had been reading a book titled "The Historical Buddha" in advance of visiting the pilgrimage sites and when Buddha visited Varanasi 2550 years ago it was already a thriving center of what was to coalesce into modern Hinduism. Interestingly, Buddha spent very very little time in this important city because, as a spiritual ... read more

25 August - 5 September When I returned from Pangong Lake I found a wonderful surpise at my guesthouse in the form of two lovely women from Torino, Italy - Dalila and Sarah. What began with an impromptu English lesson grew into spending more and more time together until at the end of the two weeks we would easily spend 12-14 hours together enjoying Leh and the surrounding area. I don't know if I have ever felt so comfortable so quickly with any other people as with these two, and every moment was pure fun. Un bacio grande a voi due per tutti i sorrisi. Indeed, all the time in Ladakh was pure magic, between the small community of meditatrs, the Italianas, the joyful Ladakhi people, and the beautiful sights. In the middle of this time ... read more