Urumqi, from outside the Backpackers, overlooking the park, with the mountains in the distance. If you look closely you should be able to see some of the myriad of kites
Urumqi May 20th 2009 I was pleasantly surprised that the train journey only took about 40 hours, rather than the 44 I was expecting. This time I had a “hard sleeper” with a middle bunk - in the hard sleeper compartments they cram the bunks in three deep. So the train ride from Beijing to Urumqi was much more comfortable than the one from Guilin to Beijing had been. Still the beds were very small (almost exact ... read more
Asia » China » Xinjiang » Urumqi For centuries China stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. A... ... read more
UPDATE (April 2013)
This site was the blog I kept for my long-term travels, mainly through Asia, in 2009-2010. I'm not maintaining it any more. I've done numerous trips since then but haven't kept them on this blog. I did run my own blog for a year but unfortunately lost that data.
END UPDATE
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Having always dreamed about travel, previously mainly done it as three-week or four-week sort... full info