Today we set off to Mount Emei (Emei Shan) 130km southwest of Chengdu. It didn’t start off too well (apart from the yummy BLT) we could not find the bus station, after an hour we finally found it!!!! So we boarded the bus, waited another 20 mins for it to fill up and then 2 hours later we were in Emei Shan. This place is one of the middle kingdom’s four famous Buddhist Mountains. Apparently the scenery is amazing here as well as the sunrise, we wouldn’t know though because all the time we were there it was misty!!!! On some rare occasions there is a phenomenon known as Buddha’s Aureole where rainbow rings produced by the refraction of water particles, attach themselves to a person’s shadow in a cloud bank below the summit. We didn’t ... read more

After an awful night’s sleep with a very loud family below us, the father texting all night with the volume up full and of course the hacking up phloem and their boy who none stop chatted to no one in particular with the most horrendous voice ever, we arrived in Xian. Off the train we got into a mass of people and onto a local bus with even more people and we headed into the city walls. We annoyingly got off one stop earlier than we were meant too but we finally found our hostel in good time, sweating buckets once again. Our hostel, Shuyuan Youth Hostel was really nice, it had gorgeous courtyards and a lovely bar and restaurant (including a pizza oven). We thought we’d be cheeky and to save money we booked 2 ... read more

“He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man” Mao Zedong So to prove that we are both man enough (G being an honorary chap for this occasion). We set out to see the Great Wall of China. We made the decision to travel 110km out of Beijing towards Jinshanling which is a quieter, less touristy section of the wall. Rather than go for a couple of hours during the day we decided to spend the night in Simatai. We planned to travel from Beijing to Simatai, hopefully get a bed for the evening, dump our stuff, then get a taxi to Jinshanling and walk back on the Great Wall. The original sections of the wall were built around 2000 years ago, by the Qin dynasty under Emperor Qin Shi Huang. His ... read more

So after a few days of pottering around UB, doing the last of the sightseeing; taking in the history museum, an amazing English fry up, Tony getting very drunk and being found on the sofa in the hostel in just his boxers, seeing the cultural show including Mongolian throat singers and contortionists, it was finally time to say a very sad goodbye to Mongolia and an exciting hello to China. Our train to Beijing was 3o hours, in our cabin were Ben and Sandi so all was good, in fact from what we saw we reckoned there wasn’t a single local on this train, it was full of tour groups, in particular what looked like saga tours, visions of them getting stuck while on the squat loos haunted us!!!! We settled in to our cabin nicely ... read more

“Before us lay Mongolia, a land of painted deserts dancing in mirage; of limitless grassy plains and nameless snow-capped peaks, of untracked forests and roaring streams! Mongolia, land of paradox and promise! The hills swept away in the far-flung, graceful lines of panorama so endless that we seemed to have reached the very summit of Earth.” Roy Chapman Andrews Off we got on our Gobi tour organised through UB guesthouse 450,000T each for 9 nights and 8 days inc food, accommodation, Jack, Van and Petrol. We set off in an old soviet people carrier; these are built like tanks and are designed to last. We set off from Ulaanbaatar, heading south on the last piece of tarmac road will not see for a while heading towards Baga Gazryn Chuluu. Only 3% of the Gobi is actually ... read more