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We had a very pleasant 2 weeks or so staying with Cath and then Alice's aunt and uncle in Melbourne and managed to get all our visas sorted in time to fly on 17th May to Shanghai.
China
We were met at Shanghai airport by a distant relation of Alice's, Ali, who has been living and working in Shanghai with his partner Sabrina and tiny wee baby Rylie for 2 years or so.
We had braced ourselves for the worst in China, expecting to find a country like India but bigger, but the whole place was a pleasant suprise. Everything is clean and well organised, the driving is rubbish but head and shoulders better than most Asian driving. Public transport is cheap and efficient; and the Chinese people, although taciturn and reclusive compared to the Indians, were kind and helpful, frequently approaching us unprompted to offer us help when we were looking dazed and confused, staring at a train departure board entirely in Chinese lettering. Our only real issue was self imposed, vegetarians are few and far between in China and people with even a passing knowledge of English are rarer still so ordering food was difficult. Memorably our
first meal, tired and hungry in Xian, I did my best to order a vegetarian meal in a restaurant, carefully repeating the word Ali had taught me 'cha-su-der', and instead got a plate of meat. Nothing else, just meat. Unidentifiable meat at that.
To return us to the time-line. Ali picked us up at the airport and took us under his wing. He showed us the highlights of Shanghai, which weren't a great deal. Ali and Sabrina were fantastic hosts, but Shanghai is not a tourist town and there was little to do besides shop in the fake markets. Ali did take us to some great restaurants, however, and to a fantastic bar where we had a great evening. So we left Shanghai after 2 nights having enjoyed ourselves but looking forward to seeing real China.
We managed our first of many trains, to Xian (promounced 'Chian'😉, without issue, they're a lot like Indian trains but cleaner, better organised, prompt and without a carriage full of people watching your every move. Xian itself is promoted as Chinese history, but like everywhere else in China the present takes president giving it more of a flat international flavour than you
might hope. Having said that, we did visit both the world famous Terracotta Warriors and the less famous Jingsu warriors. Both were created by completely mad emperor's obsessed with continuing their position after death. The terracotta are all unique and lifesize, whereas the Jingdu and uniform and about one fifth life size, but complete with robes and chariots, tiny pigs, tiny goats and very tiny chickens. As i said, completely mad.
From Xian we took another overnight train to Beijing where we continued our history lessons. Spending time in the Forbidden city and Summer palace (both built my the ruling Mongolian emperors, only slighlt less insane than their Chinese predecessors) and of course going to the great wall.
You've probably been aware of the Terracotta warriors and Great Wall all your life and it's difficult for things like that to live up to so much expectation however, eithout expectation, they did. The scale, majesty and attention to detail that China was, and is, capable of its breath-taking. The other breath-taking thing is the air. It's pollution on a scale neither of us have ever seen before; even far from cities the horizon is hazy and undefined and in
the forbidden city, in the centre of Beijing, the view of the pagodas over the lake half a mile away is almost totally lost. We both enjoyed our time in China much more than we expected to and would love to return one day, we only went because it was the beginning of the mightly trans-siberian and gerded our loins (if people still do that?) for the worst but really enjoyed our time there.
Trans-Siberian
We left on the Wednesday morning for Ulaan Baator (UB), Mongolia, getting in lunch time the next day. We mentally prepared ourselves to be bored/cramped/tired but had a great time. Our carriage was full of other backpackers doing more or less the same thing as us and we spent a lot of time chatting with people, taking photos out the window and watching the very pretty north Chinese scenery stream by. The border was a long drawn out process but by more luck than judgement we stayed on the train as the carriage was lifted and the wheels swaped underneath us, something neither of us have ever seen before.
We arrived in UB only 15 minutes late and were whisked straight off
to our hostel which had gers (Mongolian yourts) on the roof over looking the city. UB itself is nothing to write home about, much more the developing country i was expecting China to be, with terrible roads, murderous traffic and crumbeling Soviet architecture. Therefore we headed as quickly as possible to the Gobi desert.
We'd organised to go on a trip with a company who drive you out to the middle of nowhere to stay with herders and experience their unique lifestyle and an incredible part of the world. We visited 7 families over 5 days, sometimes staying for just a couple hours sometimes much more. It was not without it's issues, their English was no better than our Mongolian and once we'd gone through the sayings from our phrase book we were often left listening to the clock tick. Fortunately there was always some form of distraction, whether it be small children to entertain or teenage boys to play volleyball with. Yes, volleyball and Sushi are for some reason big in the Gobi desert. The old matriarchs showed us how to make camel and horse hair ropes, how to turn lamb's wool into felt for cushions and one
lady had built a tiny 1 quater scale ger, complete down to paited cupboards and tiny working stove, so we could see how a ger was put together.
We traveled around by horse, treking, camel and horse cart. It was a wonderful experience, but after 6 days of sust and camels we were ready for a shower, so we returned to UB smelly and dirty but having enjoyed ourselves a great deal. We were also ready for a change of diet, as a vegetarian for 8 years, 6 days of mutton and noodles did me no good whatsoever; i ate without complaint, but was very happy to go to one of UB's few vegetarian restaurants on our return.
Since then we've been pottering around UB, getting ready for our next train leg, sending postcards and buying souveniers. The Mongolians were opressed fairly terribly by the Russians, but since with fall of the USSR there's been a resurgance of Bhuddism and reverence for the great 'Chingis Khan' who adorns everything from tourist tat to giant statues to vodka bottles; so we've been taking in a little culture and brushing up on out knowledge.
Next stop id Russia on
Tuesday, then we're home in less than 4 weeks. Wish us luck
C & A
ps there will be many more photos but you'll have to wait until we've got home and i've had time to edit them
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