We crossed the border from Turkey to Bulgaria on foot and in a cloud of mosquitos. Very exciting, despite having a blood sucker stuck to every bit of visible skin. The border guards were fairly surprised to see us weaving our way through the long line of articulated lorries but let us in anyway and all was well until we realised that we were all alone in Bulgaria in the dark without a map and nowhere near any kind of civilisation. Luckily the friendly border guard took pity on us and phoned a 'taxi' to take us to the nearest station. [View Full Entry]

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Photos for now, text to follow... [View Full Entry]

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Photos for now, text to follow... [View Full Entry]

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Photos for now, text to follow... [View Full Entry]

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Photos for now, text to follow... [View Full Entry]

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Beijing is amazing!!! Our room in the Red Lantern is one of the nicest I have ever stayed in - all red silk, dark wood and crisp white sheets. Sunlight shining through the coloured window panes spreads hazy red and yellow pools across the bed and floor and our door opens onto an open courtyard filled with leafy trees hung with red lanterns. Perfect! There's even a little pond filled with fat goldfish and a miniature wooden bridge to cross it. After about 5 minutes in the city Nico is straight on the internet changing our flights home to give us [View Full Entry]

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The absolute best thing about travelling by train is the fabulous people that you meet. From Ulanbaatar to Beijing we are delighted to find that we are sharing with a Mongolian family - lovely, friendly (and french-speaking!) mum and her 2 gorgeous, smart kids - on their way to met their father who is working in Beijing. We have hours of fun playing with matrushka dolls with Anuka, age 4 and discussing football with Altai, who is 12 and speaks good conversational English - amazing - but unfortunately has something against the French team (crisis avoided by dripfeeding sulking and outraged [View Full Entry]

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After a few days bouncing round Mongolia in a suspension-free minibus our legs are itching for some exercise so we take another minibus (in fact, the same one, but only for an hour and with sworn promises that the road is pothole-free) to Terlj national park for some roaming in the hills. It looks a tiny bit more touristy by Mongolian standards than other places we have visited - if you can count one bloke with an overdressed camel on the roadside and a couple of ger holiday camps as touristy - but the mountains look fab and we can't wait [View Full Entry]

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Dear Ru, hope you have a brilliant birthday - we are going out on the town in Mongolia tonight so will be celebrating for you too!! Check out your birthday photos... Love from your fabulous sister xxxx [View Full Entry]

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I love the smell of mutton in the morning. The pungent odour of aged, boiling sheep rolls in through our open bedroom window as I roll out of bed and into the minibus for our 3 day trip into the wide-open spaces of Mongolia. Delighted to see that our travelling companions are the very lovely Daphne and Bernd from Holland who we met briefly yesterday running around like mad things on a frantic food hunt. They are in great form and the journey starts off well with plenty of laughs and mutton war stories. After 30 or so minutes we find [View Full Entry]

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