Last Days - Kathmandu

Rainy Kathmandu is certainly a contrast from the Himalayan plains of Tibet. I'm just filling in time here, as I don't have enough time for a trek, and besides, the monsoon weather isn't inspiring. There are several temples and ancient sites to visit, many a combination of Hindu and Buddhist, and aside from that I'm enjoying the extensive cuisine on offer here. At the moment I'm sitting in the Himamlayan Java coffee with an extremely strong Americano in front of me.

It's hard to sum up Tibet in a few words. The things that struck me most were the importance to Tibetans of their particular version of Buddhism, and the political situation. The two are connected: resentment at China's occupation of Tibet (and with armed soldiers on guard at every street corner in Lhasa, it really feels like an occupation) gives the religion a great deal more significance, especially given that the exiled Dalai Lama is both religious leader and political head of state.

There's no doubt that China has invested a lot in the country and brought real benefits - roads, power, agricultural improvements - but without the approval of the people these things are just resented. And China isn't a country that does things by halves. In some ways the speed of development and the scale of what they have achieved is admirable, but in Tibet it seems crass and inappropriate, clashing with Tibetan values. Crossing the enormous distance between densely populated central China and Lhasa (across a vast area of high-altitude emptiness, another Chinese achievement, as this is the highest train line in the world) really emphasises that Tibet has more in common culturally with Nepal and India than with China.

Lhasa itself is a small city with a Tibetan old town and lots of sprawl that could be anywhere in China. The highlight for me was going inside the Potala Palace, above all else the iconic image of Tibet. Its 1,000 rooms are mostly empty, and it has been that way for much of its history. Our visits to the various temples and monasteries were opportunities to try and understand a little of the complexities of Tibetan Buddhism, thanks to our Tibetan guide. My travel companions (you have to go as part of a guided tour) were backpacking for much longer than me so were on a tighter budget, and one of them spoke Mandarin, all of which meant that we ate in local restaurants much more, and my food expenditure plummeted!

To get from Lhasa to the Nepal border we had a jeep, and stayed in a variety of towns en route, all very much on the tourist trail. There were some highlights in terms of monasteries but the main thing was the stunning scenery. On our visit to Everest Base Camp (on the Tibetan side - no sign of anyone attempting an ascent) we were lucky to get some clear views of Everest, and it was great to cross the Himalayas this way, seeing remote nomadic life in this inhospitable environment.

The scenery changed remarkably suddenly as we descended from the plateau, and we approached the border descending into a lush forested gorge. The border itself has to be one of the most dramatic: towns on both the Nepal and Chinese sides cling to the sides of this steep valley, each filled with trucks and other vehicles lined up on narrow switchback roads waiting to cross. The border is the river beneath which we crossed on foot having been released from China. To get down to it, we had to clamber over a huge pile of mud, carrying all our gear, as a landslide the previous night had blocked the road. This is not surprising as it hardly stopped raining the whole time we were in the area, another big contrast from the dry uplands.

So, with only a few days to go I'm happy to do a little sightseeing, contemplate the last three months and enjoy a few creature comforts while they are still a fraction of the price back home! Looking forward to seeing you all soon. Cheerio.

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Pandas, and cities old and new

I'm about to set off today for Lhasa, and a tour round Tibet. This is quite exciting, as to get into Tibet you have to book through a tour company with a planned itinerary. We are also going on the new train line across China, the highest in the world. I've met up with the two other people I'm travelling with - we were in email contact but now we've all met. As one of them says, it's like we are going on holiday!   Since the last blog post, I've been to Chengdu, which is a nice, modern, easy place to spend some time. Although it doesn't have historical things to look at, it was a real pleasure to be there, and there are interesting things round about, like the panda breeding centre. This is one of the few places in China where the pandas will actually breed, so they must be doing something right. They are unbelievably pampered animals and have everything done for them, including being fed special nutritional cakes, and having a special air conditioned room when it's too hot outside. It's not exactly wildlife in its natural environment, but it was interesting.   I also spent a couple of days on Emei Shan, which is a series of steep forested mountains with Buddhist temples on every peak. They are all joined up by miles and miles of stone steps, and the thing to do is to walk to the top and see the sunrise by the amazingly ornate Golden Temple at the top. Looking back afterwards at my guide book, it does mention the word "exhausting" although that hardly does it justice. Spending eight hours basically climbing a never-ending stone staircase in the tropical heat is incredibly hard work. I don't think I've ever sweated so much in my life. But it was atmospheric and something different. The temples offer basic dormitory accommodation, which means you can stay on the mountain a couple of days, and that is very nice.   (I keep writing "template" instead of "temple". You can take the girl out of the office, but you can't get the office out of the girl.)   After Chengdu I went to Xi'an, which is where the Terracotta Army is, and many other historical things, it being the ancient capital. The museums, and the stuff they have dug out of the ground, are fascinating, and they are finding more all the time. They really give an insight into China's very long and distinctive civilisation. However, Xi'an, the city as it is today, is a bit of a mess, with rebuilding going on everywhere and all very disorganised and difficult. It didn't help that it poured with rain the whole time I was there. It was worthwhile, though.   I'm currently in Xining, towards the north west of China, to get on the train for Tibet. Xining is quite a pleasant place, in a valley between two mountains, with loads of high rise buildings going up. The hostel is on the fifteenth floor, so some nice views. A good place to get ready to go on holiday!   After Tibet I'll be crossing the border into Nepal and making my way to Kathmandu, where I fly home from. More from there, if not from Lhasa.   Best wishes to everyone - home soon!!

Rivers, lakes and cute little towns

I'm in Yunnan province in south west China, in the northern mountains bordering the Himalayas. There are some Chinese ethnic minorities here, and some tradtional old towns, a bit touristified with lots of hanging lanterns and people in traditional costumes wandering about. But it's a beautiful area, and a nice bit cooler than elsewhere in China so far.

Dali is a square town with the remains of some walls and gates. Water is the over-riding theme in this area, and Dali is situated between a mountain range on the west and a lake on the east. Numerous small streams run down from mountain to lake, some through the town, and in places this has turned into a feature, with a stream running down the middle of the street and walkways on either side connected by little bridges. You can sit outside here to eat and drink, and it's very pleasant. Other parts of town are refreshingly normal with a produce market and shops selling ordinary household stuff as opposed to endless souvenirs.

I really liked my hostel in Dali: the staff were really friendly. You can join them for an evening meal, which is a great way of trying lots of dishes at once, and is very convivial.

I took a local bus one day to explore some of the villages. One of them was meant to have a harbour with boats across the lake. I walked all around this village and could not find a harbour anywhere. It took an hour to get to the lakeside. When I got back, the hostel manager swore blind there was a harbour. It's a mystery that'll never be solved. The most likely thing is that I was in a completely different village, or the wrong part of it. It's an example of the general state of confusion and uncertainty that accompanies a trip in a country where you can't speak the language or read any signs. And where there aren't any maps. The government and military have good quality maps but they are not available publicly. You just have to go with the flow and enjoy the scenery, even if it wasn't what was planned!

I've spent the last couple of days hiking in Tiger Leaping Gorge, where the Yangtse River passes through a deep narrow gorge and the scenery is dramatic. The hike felt very much like a walk in the Alps, with mainly westerners on the path and a lovely overnight hostel right in the mountains. The distinctiveness came from the dense fog that lifted throughout each morning and hung around the peaks, and the chocolate-coloured Yangtse River roaring its way through far below.

You have to buy a ticket to get into the gorge, which I don't mind, but do draw the line at being asked to pay again to take photographs at scenic spots. The rationale is that local people "maintain" these viewpoints, not the government, so the overall fee doesn't cover it. I can picture in a few years' time the whole route being a series of fee-paying sections, and indeed it's like that at the bottom of the gorge, where each route down requires a payment, and you pay again if you cross into the neighbouring area. This is really a stupid way of doing things, and illustrates the Chinese contradiction between top-down government control on the one hand, and a chaotic free-for-all on the other.

Back to Lijiang tonight, another scenic town but this time with winding cobbled streets and no wall. I'll try to get out to some of the villages again before I leave for the big city, Chengdu in the middle of the country, in a day or so.

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Photos - Beijing

A few highlights - on a cycle tour near the Forbidden City, the Great Wall looking unusually quiet, and another quiet museum I went to about astronomy, and how the Chinese had everything sorted out in terms of length of days and seasons etc way before anyone in Europe knew which way was up.

Fantasy Landscapes in the South

I'm about to leave Guanxi province in Southern China, after a few days in Yangshuo, near to Guilin. This is a big tourist area, attracting 50 million visitors a year, most of them Chinese. It's geared up for people who are staying anything up to a week, with loads of things to look at and do, including bamboo rafting (check), caves/mud baths/spa (check), cycling (check), cookery classes, Tai Chi classes, kayaking, climbing, hiking, a light show spectacular (check), and loads of clubs and bars. So that probably explains why I'm feeling quite tired, even though I was expecting these few days to be a chill-out, with just the scenery to enjoy.   The mud bath spa was an accident. I thought I was buying a ticket to Moon Hill, a mountain with a hole at the top you can look through at the fantastic karst peak landscape. But in fact I had a ticket for some underground caves. Not wanting to waste my money, I went for it, even though it involved entering the cave wearing nothing but swimwear and a hard hat with no real clue what was going to happen. In the end it was quite good fun, with me and another solo traveller (Chinese) being the only two in our group willing to immerse ourselves in the mud bath. There are photographs to prove it. After that you get cleaned up and soak in an underground spa for a while. All rather unexpected.   Eventually I made it to Moon Hill, which provided the best view of this unique landscape. What they call the karst peaks are perhaps like how a child would draw a mountain - straight up, round on top, stright down the other side. Covered in thick forest, they stretch away as far as the eye can see, layer on layer of them, the spaces between them filled with rice paddies and winding rivers. It really is like something out of a fairytale. You only get this view by climbing right to the top of the peak, by means of the path clearly marked "no entry". It was a very well-used path.   Cycling here is good, as the land between the peaks is flat and there are numerous small roads. However, the road I took was pretty much jammed up with enormous tourist buses parking and blocking the way. It's almost frightening to see how much domestic tourism has expanded here, and to consider how much more potential for growth there is.   The light show was choreographed by the person who did the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. It took place on a lagoon surrounded by floodlit peaks, and had a cast of 600. Very spectacular, even without being able to follow the sory. At one point, a long row of dancers holding hands formed a chain across the lagoon on floating pontoons. The chain got longer and longer and double-backed on itself, until there must have been a couple of hundred people. They were all wearing costumes lit with strips of small white lights, which was all you could see. Suddenly all the costume lights went out and stage was in darkness. Then only some of the dancers' lights came on, then off. Different dancers were lit up then disappeared again. I would love to know how that was done. Then all the lights went off and yellow floodlights came on, so that you could see the dancers properly. The effect was as if they had all disappeared and been replaced with a different set of dancers. Amazing.   Off to Kunming now, in Yunnan province in the south west to visit some old minority towns in the mountains and maybe do some hiking. Best wishes to all!

Huang Shan - in praise of the vertical

I travelled quite a long way east to get to Huang Shan National Park, while most people I know headed straight down to Xi'an (where the terracotta army is). I'd heard mixed things - a couple of Chinese people on the train said that they were basically just some mountains, and I'd be better off going somewhere closer instead. And when I got to the hostel, the Italian girl sharing my dorm had just spent a day there and hadn't liked it because of the crowds, although she did mention that the scenery was nice. So I wasn't sure if it would be worth the journey.

I thought it was amazing. The national park is not visible from outside and was quite a way from the hostel town, so there was no preview. The weather was overcast with some mist, which is normal for this time of year, and swirling mist is all part of the experience. I decided to walk up instead of taking the cable car, so came to the first good viewpoint after an hour or so of steps. When the mist cleared, it was spectacular. Huge rocks loom up on all sides, with trees growing out of every crevice. It's really like a fantasy world, and indeed is meant to be the inspiration for all those scroll paintings that China is famous for.

It's the steepness and verticality that's so breathtaking. A lot of it wouldn't be accessible if it weren't for the paths, which are basically staircases built into the rocks. You can see them stretching into the distance, winding around the peaks, most of them full of people looking like colourful colonies of ants crawling over huge boulders.

It was crowded, of course, on a Sunday in August. Apparently every Chinese person has an ambition to come here (apart from those two I met on the train, it seems) and no wonder. I think it's as impressive as any other natural wonder I've seen. I didn't walk the length of the park, but I walked from bottom to top - the entrance to the highest point - and back again. It was chaos at the top where the cable car delivers to, but the crowds lessen (slightly) as you move away. And it's good-natured chaos as ever. Chinese people are just used to being in large noisy groups, and don't understand that westerners find it difficult.

So after reviewing all my photos I now have a free day in the small town of Tunxi to rest my aching legs. It has a charming old town full of shops selling calligraphy, artwork, local dried funghi and some kind of sweet that you make by bashing something with a very large hammer. I am sitting in a huge restaurant with wooden floors, tables, chairs and screens, and white teapots and crockery on every table. You have to go to the counter where all the food is on display and write down the numbers of what you want on a little clipboard. It's all very pleasant.

I'll be getting on a train to Guilin this evening, where it's meant to be very scenic again. More from there!

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Ancient Walls and Kung Fu

I'm in the city of Pingyao (Shanxi province, south west of Beijing), which is a Unesco World Heritage site and a beautifully preserved walled town. It became a commerce and finance centre during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the wealthy merchants built themselves some nice pads and a wall around the outside. Many of the pads are now museums and I think I've visited around 15 of them. It's great to see things that relate to daily lives, and the buildings really are beautiful, often made up of several courtyards and gardens, with rooms displaying fantastic artwork, wooden carved furniture, lacquerware screens, embroidered tapestries, scrolls and calligraphy, paintings and vases. There's a mass of information, too, although most of it is only in Chinese, a good thing as it would really be information overload otherwise.

Some of the banks set up branches across China, and had a well developed messaging system for carrying out transactions. They also had bodyguards to escort the gold and silver, and bodyguard companies developed, based on the reputations of their staff, all kung fu masters. There are courtyards for practising, with many fearsome weapons on show. The goods were transported in special cases with the flags of the bodyguard company on display. I do wonder if they might have had less trouble if they had been a bit less conspicuous!

Pingyao has a tourist trade, but it's much quieter here than the hotspots of Beijing. (I spent all day at the Forbidden City just before leaving. It was worth it but quite exhausting.) Most tourists are Chinese but lots of couples and a few families, not so many large groups, although every now and then a courtyard will suddenly be swamped with 25 people all wearing identical yellow caps. There are some westerners around but not many, so you do get stared at a bit (that happened in Beijing also). I've been asked to pose in photos with people a few times. One girl was so excited about being in a photo with me that she jumped up and down on the spot. Another family wanted a picture of me and their two-year-old boy, but he wasn't having any of it, so we had to give up. Talking of photography, this is a great place for it and I've seen some flash gear around. I've finally got my monopod out of the backpack and am having some success with indoor shots and narrow aperture shots in daylight. It's not much use at night though. Sorry, some camera geekiness there. I'm having trouble collapsing it back now that I've extended it, so whether it will go back into the backpack when I leave tomorrow is another matter.

I have a private room here, which is great as it's an old-style room with a kang (bed on a brick base) and traditional furniture, off a beautiful wooden courtyard. It does mean you don't get talking to other people like you do in a dorm. But I was pleased to bump into German Chris on my first night, who did the same Mongolia tour as me. He was staying at the hostel across the street! And this morning I bumped into Patrick, who I also met in Mongolia. I'm meeting him and his girlfried Julie tonight for dinner. Maybe between us we can sort out my monopod - I might take it along just in case.

Next stop Huang Shan national park. Till then take care.
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Avoiding the crowds in Beijing

Beijing certainly takes some getting used to: the heat, the crowds, the language, the directness of the people. I think the key with all big cities is to seek out the things you'll like and ignore the rest. I'm not a big fan of the pushy selling tactics and bargaining, so after making a few (probably unwise) purchases on the first day, have avoided markets and the like. My favourite things so far:

A guided tour of some of the hutongs (narrow alleyways of old Beijing) by bicycle. This was a great way to whizz around some of the nice old areas which haven't changed much over the years and where daily life for many Beijingers is very much on view.

The Great Wall. I took a tour which went to a section further away, and was glad I did. Of course there were plenty of people, but not crammed in, and every now and then there was a stretch of the wall to be seen with no people on it. Really beautiful.

Beihai Park. This smallish park just outside the Forbidden City is mainly a big lake, and it was a real treat to walk around it on Friday evening and see loads of locals getting away from the hustle and bustle. The heat is draining, but it makes these waterside oases of calm so important.

The Beijing museum of Urban Planning. Not a very exciting sounding name but a really interesting place with loads of 3D, model and film exhibits showing the historical development of the city and what the plan is for the next 10 years. It probably gives a better feeling of the scale of the Foribidden City than the place itself (which I'm planning to visit after the weekend). And the other great thing is that there were hardly any people there!

Not-so-great things: my sore feet, trying to book train tickets for the rest of the trip, failing to communicate entirely, even so far as ordering a cup of tea, very slow internet. But on the whole it's going well. Tomorrow: first sleeper train to the small walled town of Pingyao. Looking forward to it (I think...)


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Techno Travel

This trip has really demonstrated to me the prevalence of mobile technology. The first people I met in the Moscow hostel were a British couple waiting for some visas to come through. She was tapping away at a laptop and he at his smartphone. They explained that their choice of hostel was partly as they knew this once had reliable Wifi.

I hadn't really thought about this, and was planning to leave my Blackberry at home to avoid racking up a huge bill. But what you have to do, the man explained, is to switch off the mobile data function and connect using the wireless function, wherever there is a wireless network. This is basically free, and you can send and receive emails and do some limited browsing of the web for nothing using your own device.

I've done this a lot. For example, I'm writing this on a train in the middle of Mongolia, and when I get to somewhere in Beijing that has WiFi, probably the hostel, it will automatically be uploaded to the blog via email.

Someone asked me before I left if I was taking a laptop. It seemed like a silly idea to me to take a computer backpacking. But I would say about half the people I've met are travelling with a laptop, usually a nice small one of some kind. All they need is WiFi and they have all the functionality they would have at home - for nothing. Most people have some kind of smartphone if not a laptop. Typically all the sockets in the dorms will be full overnight with devices charging up. I feel less worried about theft when I can see that everyone else has better gear than I do.

To think that when I first went abroad, we used to write letters home and put them in the post. When I told my student friend in Omsk, Alexandra, that I was planning to send some postcards, she looked horrified and said "That's gonna take, like, a MONTH!" (I sent them anyway). On our Gobi trip the Dutch couple had to return early because of an eye accident (he's okay now). Within an hour of arriving back at the hostel after the trip, most of the group had already found each other on Facebook, exchanged emails and stories, and arranged to meet up for dinner.

Internet cafes start to seem like more trouble than they are worth when you can simply get a wireless router and everyone will visit your cafe to use their own devices. You can take advantage of open wireless networks also. In Listvyanka, some British students were staying at the same hostel as me. We ended up in the same place for dinner, and on the way back one of them detected a WiFi network in a hotel we were walking past. Within seconds he was having a face-to-face conversation with his girlfriend back home - for free using Skype. I'm probably behind the times, but I think that's pretty amazing.

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Nine days around Mongolia: Impressions

The first impression was of emptiness. Mongolia is huge and has a population of under three million so much of it looks untouched. We were driving past fascinating rock formations, mountain ranges, lakes and constantly varying types of vegetation all the time. Maybe California looked like this before the settlers got there. The natural environment is all there is, so you can really see it. The Gobi Desert used to be a sea, and it did really feel like we were driving along the bottom of a huge dried-up lake.

Next impression: variety. We saw grassland, thinly-vegetated flatlands, red-rocked semi-desert, sand dunes, mountains, gorges and stream-filled lush valleys. From the intense dry heat of the south we drove into the mountains and found ourselves in cloud, where, after almost a day of continuous rain, it really started to feel like Wales. We had the stove on in our mountain ger, while in the desert the heat radiated up from the ground and we were leaving doors and flaps open to cool things down.

Next is lack of infrastructure. For the whole trip except a day and a half we were on dry tracks, not paved roads. The road from Ulan Bator to the Gobi's main town in the south is not paved: there is no road as such. Driving through the mountains was just like trying to off-road a jeep directly through a valley: we were fording rivers frequently, and the bridges that did exist looked pretty rickety.

I was expecting the gers in remote areas to be very basic. But I was surprised that the Gobi town, Dalanzagdad, didn't have any plumbing system at all. Most of the town consisted of fenced compounds each containing two or three gers, a dog and a latrine. Plenty of space was required between the latrine and the living quarters, so the compounds were quite big. There was electricity from overhead pylons, but apart from some downtown buildings (including the public showers that we visited) no running water or sewerage. The whole thing had the feel of a shanty town where people might have just come in from the desert and set up camp. It all looked very closed: if you looked down a street you just saw a dirt track and fences running continuously down each side. Very little in the way or signs and landmarks made navigation very difficult.

Having said that, we found by accident that we were in Dalanzagdad for the annual Nadaam festival, and this was a lovely colourful affair. The whole town was there for the opening ceremony and parade, many in traditional Mongolian dress, and everyone in really good spirits. We saw the three Mongolian traditional sports - wrestling, archery and horse racing, the skills that enabled Genghis Khan to conquer most of the continent. There was a big music concert in the evening featuring some famous Mongolian singers. People came to watch from miles away, some arriving on horseback. That's a great way to ensure you get a good view. And all that in a town with no plumbing. Pretty good stuff.

Finally, the people. I was with two Dutch people (they're everywhere!) two Finns and a German, and it was fun. We would be given a ger to ourselves next to the host family's ger, and we usually had a chance to say hello although conversation was limited! Our sturdy little van which got us through some incredibly bumpy journeys was looked after by our driver Tsomo, who gave it a clean inside and out every night to battle the dust. It appeared that he had to change three of the tyres in the first two days, something that didn't seem out of the ordinary. He and our cook, Zula (not the right spelling) slept in the van each night while we had the luxury of the tent. Zula conjured up a hot filling meal every lunchtime as we parked by the wayside in the middle of nowhere. And she did a lot more than cook, acting as a guide a lot of the time also.

I would say that Mongolia's the most different place I've been. As well as its vast open spaces and natural beauty, it has a culture that's really unique, and has retained its identity despite being sandwiched between the two giants, Russia and China. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who can get by without a flushing loo.
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Mongolia - UB

Ulaan Baator gets a bad press in the backpacker guide books, but I don't find it too bad. The food is great - proper Western cheesecake, coffee, burgers, pizza, and most other things you could want at bargain prices. It's compact and easy to get around. There are some interesting museums. I went to the International Intellectual Museum yesterday, a unique place showcasing Mongolians' skill with wooden puzzles. One man in particular has developed hundreds of them, and it was he who set up the museum. A man of many talents, he is also a painter and many of his paintings are in the museum, including portraits of its sponsors. There's a rather idiosyncratic collection of other objects, including dolls, face masks (one of Michael Jackson) childrens' toys and chess sets of all shapes and sizes from around the world. The Mongolians think that chess may have originated in Mongolia, and are keen participants in the International Puzzle Party, an annual convention of puzzlers and gamers. Some of this has had practical applications, for example in assembling a ger (Mongolian word for yurt). My favourite puzzle had two pieces of bone on a piece of string. Traditionally, a bride had to solve the puzzle on her wedding day to prove she had sufficient intelligence, or the wedding was off. Talk about a stressful situation.

Pickpockets are a problem, and there are constant warnings and disclaimers about personal property everywhere. I caught someone trying to open the zip on my bag as I was waiting to cross the road (and that's another challenge!) I was so annoyed I slapped him in the face. He just stood there and laughed.
A strange encounter, hopefully not to be repeated.

UB is a real centre for travellers, as this is where you land if you want to explore Mongolia. Get into a small group to fill a jeep or van, and off you go. There is hardly any infrastructure - roads, let alone public transport - so doing your own thing would be next to impossible. My hostel sees a constant turnover of guests from early morning to late evening, usually picked up from the train station and shipped off on a hostel-organised tour straight away to make space for more guests. Our group of six all arrived on the same day at 6am and set off on a tour the following morning. As we were waiting to leave, one of the group returned to his dorm to get something he'd forgotten. There was already someone asleep in his recently-vacated bed. This frenetic activity only happens for the summer months when it's possible to drive the unmade roads.

I've spoken to loads of people doing or just done the same trip as me, and have picked up loads of info and ideas for China. I'll be getting on the early morning train to Beijing tomorrow, so time only for the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum and one more piece of cheesecake.

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Gobi Desert Photos

I'm back in Ulan Bator after nine days travelling around Mongolia. Some pictures above. More on the trip later!

Photos: Omsk, Lake Baikal

From the bottom up (as they loaded in that order for some reason): me in Omsk, view of Siberia scenery from the train, Listvyanka old and new, a small part of Lake Baikal.

Photos: Suzdal etc

Suzdal, Yekaterinburg, train station stop with train attendant and traders on the platform

Two and a half thousand kilometres: Omsk to Baikal

After a wet day in Omsk, the weather improved and I could have a proper look around with help from Alexandra, a language student studying in Krakow I met on the train from Warsaw. The city doesn't really have sights as such, but it's a big place and has some nice open spaces. I found out later that the Estonian I met who also stopped in Omsk found the weather so grim he went to the cinema. Most films here are dubbed, so he picked something where it didn't matter if you couldn't understand the words - the latest Transformers film!

From there to Irkutsk was 40 hours on the train, the longest stretch with two overnights. It was pretty comfortable and I chatted to a PR manager from Perm on her way to a holiday on a boat at Krasnoyarsk. That sounded like a nice east Siberian city with a river and mountains on all sides, and I was sorry I wasn't stopping there. Next time!

It was a good journey with the landscape gradually becoming hilly and the route more winding. Wooden Siberian houses with brightly painted window frames look like the cottages out of fairy stories.

Arriving in Irkutsk in the morning, I thought this seemed a really pleasant city with tree-lined streets and wooden houses here and there. It's where a lot of intellectual Russian exiles ended up, and does have a cosmopolitan feel with a few reminders that it's not far from Mongolia and the Far East.

I wasn't stopping though so made my way across town via a two-and-a-half hour stop in an internet cafe (slow connection). Waiting for the bus to Listvyanka I met three British lads, two of them medical students, who were staying at the same hostel as me. They were having a whale of a time, but I'm glad I never found myself in the same carriage as them!

Listvyanka is the biggest settlement on Lake Baikal (see Ten Facts about Lake Baikal for population sparcity). It's a traditional village of wood houses, dirt tracks and fenced plots for vegetable growing, with the addition of a waterside strip in fast development with huge gaudy hotels and tourist complexes. Most of the tourism was geared up for Russians with only a few foreigners in town. Having said that, my hostel was invaded the second night by a party of Czechs who had just finished a tour of Baikal.

The hostel was a strange place. It looked like an ordinary house which had been converted into a hostel by amateur DIYers using anything that was lying around at the time. My room (I was enjoying a room to myself, a rare treat) used to be the kitchen. The mattress consisted of two bedding rolls just like the ones you get on the train. Still, everything worked after a fashion and the cool nights were a relief - the first time so far I needed a fleece.

I spent much of the three days there walking along the edge of the lake, taking photos trying to capture its size and strange thick liquidity. I was also indebted to the British students for telling me where the best and cheapest kebabs were to be found!

I made my way up to a viewpoint, where I bumped into a British woman who lives in Beijing (teaching horse riding at the International School). I also visited the Baikal museum where, after making a bit of a fuss about having to pay more as a foreigner then finding the displays were only labelled in Russian, I got my own mini guided tour from an English speaking guide. It's a fascinating place.

Then back to Irkutsk for a few hours to explore some of the monuments, the regional museum, an odd Soviet-style pancake cafe and a very western cafe bar serving club sandwiches. At 9pm the temperature display at the station read 29 degrees, explaining why I'd been feeling a little worn out!

Now on the train heading for the Russian-Mongolian border. Unlike the other trains, this one is full of tourists with English the main language heard. I'm sharing a carriage with three Belgian boys from somewhere near Bruges. It's good to compare notes with fellow travellers. More from Mongolia later!

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Ten facts about Lake Baikal

1. It's the deepest freshwater lake in the world (over 1,600m), and the biggest in terms of volume with 20% of the world's fresh water supply.
2. The surface temperature reaches 12 degrees Centigrade in summer. In winter, it freezes hard enough to drive across it. But the core of the lake remains a steady 4 degrees all year round.
3. People used to think that there was hardly any life in the lake, but in fact there is a large variety of different species because the water is highly oxygenated. 80% of these cannot be found anywhere else. The main barrier to exploring the lake has been its immense depth.
4. The lake is 80km wide at its widest point, and over 600km long.
5. Lake Baikal pushes the seasons back by around a month. In its immediate area, summer doesn't arrive until August while November is warmer than in nearby Irkutsk.
6. Lake Baikal is on a Tectonic fault line - that's how the lake was formed. There are frequent low-resonance earthquakes in the area.
7. The water from the lake is meant to be safe to drink because bacteria are eaten by some fish, crabs and sponges. I didn't see anyone doing it though!
8. If everyone who lived alongside Lake Baikal joined hands in a line, it would stretch for 200km, around a tenth of the circumference of the lake. If the same were done for Lake Michigan, the line would go around the lake eight times.
9. When the Trans Siberian train line was first built, it was considered too difficult to build a line around the edge of the lake, so passengers used a ferry to cross the lake and got back on the train on the other side. The Circumbaikal railway was built in the end, but these days it doesn't form part of the route and is only used by tourists.
10. Lake Baikal has the second highest visibility of any lake or sea: you can see down to about 40m. Only the Sargasso Sea has better visibility, where you can see down to about 60m.


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Yekaterinburg in the rain

Having some trouble accessing my emails which is a bit of a problem, as I don't know how to let people know I've updated the blog without that! Wherever there is a wireless network, I am receiving emails on my Blackberry, but it's not so easy to send to an address book that way. I am sure I'll figure something out!

I wasn't counting on having problems with compatibility - thought it was the world wide web! but maybe not so worldwide.

Anyway, the first few days have gone well. London to Cologne was fine, well, better since I was for some reason sitting in Standard Premier on the Eurostar which meant I got a "light meal". Wish I'd known that before I'd eaten my M&S egg sandwich. The train from Cologne to Warsaw was very late so I didn't get to look round Warsaw, but it was a miserable day anyway.

I shared a tiny compartment with two other women from Warsaw to Moscow. One of them lives in Omsk, where I'm stopping off later, so hopefully I can meet up with her, if I can remember where I wrote down her phone number.

Moscow was rainy when I got there, but I found the hostel okay, and it was a nice one. I met an English couple who had big plans to travel the world in a landrover, but it sounds like they fell out with the driver in some remote part of Russia and had to change their plans! They had been staying in the hostel a week waiting for visas to come through.

I've been to Moscow quite recently before, so apart from a journey on the metro to pick up my train tickets from the agent, I didn't stay. I got a bus to Suzdal, which is a lovely town not far from Vladimir, which is where the Trans-Siberian passes through. I thought I would be getting a train to Suzdal via Vladimir, but it turns out there weren't any. That means I've missed out a leg of the Trans-Siberian, but never mind.

Spent a really nice evening and day in Suzdal, mainly just looking at churches and wandering around along the river - it was a really hot day (glad not to be in Moscow!). In the afternoon, got myself to Vladimir station via a very rickety and very full local bus, and got on the train to Yekaterinburg.

I have to say I was really impressed with the train. The Warsaw to Moscow train wasn't that good - very cramped and airless and not many facilities. But the train from Vladimir was great - lots of space in the compartment, air conditioning, a "providnitsa" (attendant) who kept everything clean and looked after us, bedding and towels, and the samovar for making cups of tea and coffee whenever. I went to look at the restaurant car but didn't use it this time. I think that's the first time I've been in a restaurant car!

There were a couple of English speaking people and a few Russians getting off and on, so had a few monosyllabic conversations. Had a good night's sleep, and a few snoozes during the day when the scenery became monotonous. But it was very pretty, as we passed through the Urals which are lovely forested mountains with lots of rivers. I also saw the white obelisk which marks the boundary between Europe and Asia.

I arrived in Yekaterinburg at about 9pm last night (after losing 2 hours on the journey). Had no idea how to get to the hotel and the taxi drivers were going to charge 500 roubles (over a tenner) - seemed a lot for about a kilometre! So I went back to the railway information point and she told me which bus to get (for 18 roubles). And the driver handily told me where to get off. It's initially quite intimidating when all the signs are in Russian, but the guide book has all the Russian and English names, and a guide to the Cyrillic, so it's all decipherable.

The hotel is very strange. The lobby is very nice, and when I went up to my floor it looked very nice also, carpeted, etc. But when I went into the far corridor where my room was, it was much more sorry looking. I will take a photo of it and post it when I get myself a bit more together! The guide book did say that it was an insight in Soviet style tourism, and it was just about the cheapest room they had, so I was prepared. Also, the toilet is at the end of the corridor and the shower is on a different floor altogether! It was closed last night so I had to wait till this morning. All very interesting. The one good thing is that I don't have to check out until 9pm which makes things a lot more convenient.

I'm enjoying wandering around Yekaterinburg. There are a lot of open spaces, park areas, a nice waterside walk, and museums, although these won't be worth going in unless they have English. I certainly feel quite unusual being a foreign tourist here. I've met a few other travellers so far but certainly the Trans-Sib isn't over-run with them.

It's quite cool and rainy at the moment, which is quite a relief after the heat (although I've just heard a clap of thunder so maybe not so good!). I'll be leaving here this evening and arriving in Omsk tomorrow morning, where I have a homestay booked.

I will try to sort out email to let you know this is here! In the meantime, lots of love to family members, and to everyone else cheerio!

Tracey

About to leave!

The departure date is three days away, and I'm getting everything ready to put all my stuff into storage and take off for three months across Europe and Asia. The plan so far:

July 3rd - leave London for Warsaw
July 4th - 5th - Warsaw to Moscow
July 6th - Moscow
July 7th - Suzdal
July 8th - first long-distance train journey, to Yekaterinburg
July 9th - 10th - Yekaterinburg to Omsk
July 11th - 13th - Omsk to Irkutsk, for a few days beside Lake Baikal
July 16th - 18th - Irkutsk to Ulan Bator, Mongolia, for hopefully a trek into the mountains, desert or both
July 30th - 31st - Ulan Bator to Beijing

After that, things are a bit fluid but I'm planning to visit Wutain Shai and Pingyao for the temples, buddhas and old towns, and also Xi'an for the warriors. Even Paul Theroux was impressed with them, so they must be worth seeing! After that, the vague plan is to get to Xining, on the edge of cultural Tibet, and do some exploring there before going on to Lhasa round about the beginning of September. The flight home is from Kathmandu on September 24th.

I'll aim to post whenever I get to an internet cafe or similar, probably every few days unless I'm up a mountain somewhere.

Bye for now

Tracey