Day 12 -14 (April 16-18) Trans-Siberian We boarded our train late afternoon and were soon travelling through birch forest and snow. Every now and then little villages would appear and then they are gone. We stop at larger stations, the closer we get to Moscow the larger the towns, including some impressive bridges over the passing rivers. Irkutsk to Vladimir is 4,943 kilometres and taking almost 74 hours. The journey was surprisingly quick with reading, games of cards and yahtzee, stops at stations where we could get off for 20 minutes. We were careful to make [View Full Entry]

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Day 10 -11 (April 14-15) We head off in a private bus without staying in Irkutsk and go straight to our guest house in Listvyanka. Breakfast was waiting, wonderful sweet cottage cheese things, pancakes, bread and cheese and meets, porridge and juice and coffee. Fantastic food, and a ideal place to stay. It is not too cold only -2. with our warm gear on we head out for a walk in the surrounding hills. A circuit involving some steep and slippery parts up and down brings us back a spot overlooking the township where we can see the frozen lake - [View Full Entry]

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Day 8-9 (April 12-13) We are ready to begin our next part of the train journey boarding our train around 8 pm. We’d been advised that it would be the most local train of the trip, only to find we have a new carriage (complete with TV not yet working though). Again there was a measure of smuggling going on. We were asked if we’d like to hide some tea towels and dish brushes (our leader translates) but we declined. A woman was putting on layers and layers of underwear. These travellers were only going as far as the first town [View Full Entry]

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Day 6-7 (April 10-11) We set out after breakfast with first stop at a supermarket to shop for a few supplies before heading out to the local Ger camp where we would spend the night. Our local guide was very passionate about his country and freely answered any questions including those about unrest after the general election earlier in the year due to possible falsifying of results. Mongolia is a very poor country these days and has been hit hard by the global crisis. Our guide was previously a Urologist but young doctors are not paid or treated well and so [View Full Entry]

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Day 4-5 (April 8-9) An early morning start to catch the first train in the Trans-Mongolian/Trans-Siberian journey. The Chinese train left at 7:30 for a 30 hour journey to Ulaan Baatar. The train was quite modern and comfortable and came with simple meals included. It was amusing to listen to a discussion from a person who travelled the train often and complained that there was no meat included for lunch (Mongolia being a mainly meat eating country). He managed to get meat balls for himself and another table of travellers (we were happy with our tomato and egg dish) and felt [View Full Entry]

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Day 23 (April 4) Next day was a 2 hour plus private bus ride to the Great wall at Mutianyu. Another perfect Beijing day complete with blue skies. We chose to climb the steps from the carpark to reach the wall. The steps were steep and not so easy a walk but you do feel that you have to earn the right to be there. Then there was more climbing up on the wall itself as it follows the crests of the hills. It is hard to take in that you are actually on such an historic place. I walked as [View Full Entry]

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Day 20-22 (April 1-3) The overnight train journey to Beijing was comfortable in our 4 berth soft sleeper. We were split up a fair bit as the trip to Beijing is popular. We shared the cabin with two Chinese ladies who didn’t speak any English, however when our leader came to make sure we were up the following morning they had great fun repeating the phrase “wakey-wakey” to us. Beijing is such a different city to all the others we had seen in China. There are great wide streets everywhere giving the city an expansive feel. It appears very clean (not [View Full Entry]

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Day 17-19 (March 30- April 1) We took a fast train to Shanghai which was only an hour and a half. Lunch was a hotpot meal in water not oil. Our orientation walk took us to a mall area which had many European shops. We continued on to the famous Shanghai Bund, however, many of it’s buildings were being renovated in anticipation of the 2010 Expo so the street was not at it’s best. We crossed river via an underground cable car that went through a light show to keep us amused. The other side of the river was less hectic [View Full Entry]

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Day 15-16 (March 28-29) The following day we took a flight to Hangzhou. The weather was still wet but we headed out anyway. First stop of course was lunch - noodle soup, dumplings and peach juice. We waited for a boat to take us across the lake watching some squirrels play around a tree. Reaching a small island in the middle of the lake we saw another of the currency sites. It was 3 lanterns set in the water - 3 moon mirror pools. There were some interesting legends involving theft of light and recapturing the light from the moon as [View Full Entry]

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Day 12-14 (March 25-27) We left our cruise boat with luggage as we were to be picked up from the tour of the gorge. It was an overcast day but not raining. We saw the size of the engineering that went into the dam as well as the garden surrounding. A clearer day would have been more impressive but we were glad to have had the good weather for the gorge trip. We made our way to Wuhan which was a 4 hour journey to airport on a mini bus built for people with no legs (Wuhan airport was apparently a [View Full Entry]

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