Moscow to Beijing... A tale of trains.

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Right, firtly apologies for the extreme lack of posts since Moscow but we've had a little trouble finding internet...! So I guess I'll take off where we left in Moscow. Well, we made it to the Red Square on my birthday and saw St Basil's cathedral which was everything to be expected... except a little small... Still pretty big in terms of ordinary sized houses, but not cathedrals. Glad we saw it because now we feel no need to ever travel to Moscow again! Not that we didn't like the place you understand - it was no Minsk - but as far as places we hold dear to our hearts - unfortunately this is not one of them. As they say it is the people that make the place, and scowling, muttering old ladies ain't our cup of tea - but that shouldn't put people off the hassle, money and precious time spent just obtaining the visa of course!

So on Hannah's 25th birthday at 11:35pm we boarded the train after first having met our traveling companions, who'd be with us for 16 days. Eduardo, a designer for Loreal, Carita, a policewoman and Alex, a editor of books/publisher. You can probably tell by now that I Ben have just taken the keyboard- as I type rather slowly, so please be patient.I might add that Moscow was a little scary- possibly because of the location of our hotel, which we later found out was renowned for muggings. Would have blended in wonderfully with a leather jacket and tight jeans, but alas my bright red fleece wasn't great cammo, so I just had to resort to looking mean. Quite easy to achieve after a few days of Hannah's jokes.

Ok, Hannah back at the helm, so no more digs..at me obviously - I'm sure I'll find plenty of things to dig at... like Minsk... Right, so what on earth does one do with 4nights and 3days on the train was the next question that came to our mind. Apparently not much - and yet that is the blissful thing about train life - you can't feel like maybe you should be doing something else... because there's nowhere else to go! We spent the time sleeping, playing cards, sleeping, playing chess, sleeping, eating, sleeping, meeting Russian's who like drinking... oh and some sleeping! But time passed much quicker then you may think and before we knew it we arrived at our first stop - Irkutsk and we were destined for Listvanyanka - a sleepy village situated next to Lake Baikal. The Lake has a thousand statistics behind it... biggest, deepest, widest, weirdest fish, most populated etc etc fresh water lake in the world... and big it definitely is - on a clear day you can just see the mountains on the other shore - at the narrow part of the lake.. and these were 80miles away....!

It was a great village and the lake was truly stunning. We walked with our guide up to a viewpoint which made me realise how immensely unfit I am, but was well worth it when we got to the top and found a bottle of water and a snickers... oh and the view was nice too. We spent 3 days here and ate some really good home-cooked food, including fresh fish and a lot of potato dishes! We spent our days wandering around the lake and one evening had beers with some friendly Australians who were also mad enough to travel the length of Russia by train! On the 3rd day we headed to Irkutsk - unfortunately neither of us were feeling too well so we spent the day in a hotel lobby, waiting for our group to return... it was not a good day!

So we made it to the train late in the evening and boarded for another 36hours on a train - this time there were a lot of foreigners which was nice, but also 2long border stops - the Russian one had caused both Ben and myself a fair bit of lost sleep due to our passports not being stamped and our migration card having ran out 10 days previously... and yet they did not even question us - not even raise an eyebrow at our stupidity (well not to our face anyway....!) and so we made it to Mongolia. The land of blue skies and laughter. I don't think we could appreciate how nice it would be to hear people laugh after the generally stony reception received in Russia, but it was like music. Beautiful er... laugh-like music. I think the difference is here people were happy with their lives - and as soon as you see the vast stunning countryside that surrounds them, you kind of understand why.

The food here was... interesting. I think I'll leave it at that and go on to tell you a little of what we did. Firstly we walked for 4 hours to see a 40metre high statue of Chenggis Khan - which was pretty immense - but on the way we passed a herd of camels (I will include some pictures for Mr Baldock!) and by the statue a small pack of dogs with 4 puppies - which were so cute even the little voice reminding me of rabies shut up for a while, our guide picked 2 up so we figured they must be ok... and it's a week later and still alive, the mouth foaming is just something that makes us special.

We also learnt some archery and a few games using (dead!) sheep's anklebones, which were suprisingly good fun considering we were throwing around bones! In the evening the temperature got down to minus 10degrees, so we had to keep the fire burning in our ger, which was extremely toasty at night, but in the morning after being asleep for a bit the fire tended to go out and getting up was not loads of fun!

The next day we went for a 2hour horse ride - first time Ben has ever been on a horse, and first time for a while for me but the horses were quite small and pretty tame and never went faster than trotting... except when I tried to dismount accidentally hitting the horses back and making it bolt and my fly to the ground - at least I can say I fell from a horse on the Mongolian steppe and I only slightly injured my back!

In the afternoon we walked to a real nomad's camp, the guy again was happy and said he loved his life (though his dream was to drive a fast car down an American highway!) He had over 300 animals and moved with the seasons - so 4 times a year he had to pack up his 4 gers (with his two sons) and take his animals to a new camp.

The following day we went to the capital city Ulan Bator, which after being in the countryside was not much to write home about - it was a pretty busy city with some interesting points, such as an Amnesty International demonstration with real Mongolian hip-hop (oh yeah!) and balloons and paninis (mmmmm). But we didn't really have time to fully explore the city, so possibly if we had a few days it might have grown on us more... but if we had a few days more I think we probably would have spent them in the gers!

So after an evening meal of snickers and fruit juice we slept as early in the morning we needed to wake up for.... can you guess.... ANOTHER TRAIN JOURNEY!!! WOOOOHOOOO! Actually, train life is quite enjoyable, and Alex (from our group) had taught me backgammon, gin rummy and chasing demons (maybe?!) so I feel like my time had been well spent! This train was a mere 30hours - an almost laughable amount of time HA! The restaurant cart unfortunately overcharged all tourists by a huge amount - but as we didn't know any locals we settled for what we could afford - a beer and snickers (that's right that's two nights in a row a snickers has been our main meal, who says you can't eat well when traveling!)

So after another two border crossings we were in China. At about 2pm we arrived at the final stop on the trans-Mongolian route, Beijing. We made it. We finally made it. And it could have just taken 11 hours had we flown................

Beijing is a brilliant city - the people are unbelievably friendly, the city is not currently too polluted (probably due to the Olympics) and the scenery everywhere is beautiful. Oh... I should probably also mention that the food after being in Russia and Mongolia is the best thing ever. Our first night here we found a small restaurant in a hutong that was packed with locals and a few foreigners and had a feast - after the last 2 nights we deserve it. Crispy roast duck with pancakes etc, lamb, beef, chicken, aubergine, lotus roots, shredded cucumber, 2types of rice and loads of other stuff I can't remember along with a beer each and it only came to just over 10pounds per person (we shared with the 3other people in our group)... afterwards we felt fat but very happy.

Early the next morning (6:15am) we were up and went to the temple of heaven grounds with Alex - the temple and other buildings were interesting but it was the people in the park who caught our attention. Everywhere people were exercising in various ways - some just by waking backwards, various aerobics and tai chi were being performed, but we joined people who were playing badminton but with hard, wooden bats and people who were playing a kind of hacky sac but with feathers - we bought one for 40p and attempted to look like we knew what we were doing, but as the only westerners around there were a few people watching and laughing at us as our legs were flailing about desperately trying to keep this thing in the air... I would recommend it though!

We then went to a restaurant by a lake and had another filling and excellent lunch before taking it fairly easy for the rest of the day and saying goodbye to Alex who was heading to Shanghai.

The next morning we were up at 5:50am. This is definitely not a holiday. But it was worth it as we went to the great wall and the bit we were going to was a 3hour drive - far from the tourist trap of Badaling - we hiked 10km between Jinshaling and Simatai. It took just over 4hours which included time to walk up to the section (an extra couple of kms) and also walk at the end to the bus (another couple). You can't really describe the Great Wall in words or pictures - but great is one word I would use - and the blue sky that has been following us around on this trip certainly helped our moods (and our tans!) and although incredibly tiring at points it was the most rewarding thing I think I've ever done.

(I promise this is coming to the end now - I will never leave so long before blogs again!!)

Yesterday (see, almost there!) we went to the Summer Palace, the lake is huge and really nice to walk around and some of the buildings were interesting - but we are starting to find that more of the cool Chinese buildings in Beijing all look pretty similar and once you've seen one or two, you probably don't need to see the rest of the 50000... especially when they're packed with tourists! It did actually rain a bit - but not heavily and right at the end of the day, so still pretty lucky weather wise!

Today (hooray, I need a Chinese banquet after writing this!), we went to another park filled with exercising locals - and some masters of diablo - one of who tried (and mostly failed!) to teach me, but he was amazing at it and he seemed more then happy to show off for a while, and we were more than happy to watch!

We then walked around and did some shopping... I say did some shopping, that was the intention but we didn't really find anything, except some tasty kebabs, so after several hours of wandering we returned. And I started writing this. That was like hours ago, so I'm off to enjoy dinner!!

'til next time!

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Photos

A Mongolian mouse
You have to want to see it... they ain't big!