Beijing

Days eighteen to twenty-one

April 24th - 27th

Total distance 8500 miles

Trip distance 6000 miles

This last section of the trip was spent doing several things on our Beijing to do list.

We found a super hotel, the Lu Song Yuan. It was highly recommended in the Lonely Planet guide, and rightly so. We had an excellent location on the edge of the old Hutongs area of Beijing. This was about 3 miles from the Forbidden city and Tiananmen square.

Our suite was pretty tiny though. A lot of clever stowage was required to get 12 pieces of luggage and five people stowed away. However it was a beautiful traditional chinese property complete with ornate decoration and multiple courtyards.

On the first full day we went to the Great Wall. We wanted to see why Richard Nixon said "It sure is a great wall" It was impressive, but it is not a well managed attraction with confusing signs and uncontrolled commercial development. Having said that when you are walking along those historic cobbles, climbing steeply, you are acutely aware of being in somewhere of enormous importance in the world. When you look North and imagine the Mongol Hordes bearing down on Beijing, you swear you can almost see them down there in the bushes and rocks, sneaking up, an advance party checking you out and reporting back.

Another day was spent at Tiananmen square and the Forbidden City. The main impression we all came away with was the huge size of these places. They are literally kilometers in length. The square is heavily policed, with some sinister looking characters lurking around. The authorities do not want another protest of the kind that alerted the world to China's lack of democracy and free speech. They are taking no chances. We had hoped to see Mao in his crystal coffin but he has a nap in the afternoons so it was not permitted.

The Forbidden city really is a full day. It is so vast, with interconnecting courtyards covering acres. On our visit we saw almost the only rain of the whole trip, so this curtailed our visit.

We found all three main tourist attractions to be impressive but not atall engaging. Perhaps we are spoiled with Western tourist attractions that are of very high quality.

One attraction we really enjoyed was a place called Prince Gong's garden. This is a beautiful house and classic oriental garden, complete with ponds, pagodas and plantings. Many thousand s of people were there and most of them wanted to take Imogen's picture - as usual she enjoyed the VIP treatment.. This has its advantages though. We were allowed into a private room where a Chinese tea ceremony was explained to us in detail.

Other days were spent shopping. Morag and the girls found an indoor market where there were hundreds of stalls selling all manner of things that they liked from Hello Kitty purses to a large gold piggy bank. Unfortunately this got smashed at Heathrow when Max's rucksack fell on the floor.

Some relaxing was done in the internet cafes and restaurants around the Hutongs. The area felt very safe, the children wandered up and down the streets, getting lots of friendly attention.

On the last full day we took a taxi up to see the Olympic site. The main stadium is nearly ready. It is an riot of steel girders that looks like a birds nest, albeit a beautiful one. The swimming centre is next door. This building looks like the surface of a bath covered in bubbles. It is all a bit out there.

Our final day was an early start for our flight to London. The end of this leg.

It was a really mixed day. We left two coats on the minibus that took us to the airport. We learnt something about the Chinese attitude that day. The woman who had organised the bus would not do anything atall to help. She said if we wanted our coats back we would have to pay a lot of money to the the driver to return. We had a heated exchange, and I wished her great luck with a business approach that consists of taking the cash and running - with no consideration for the customer or any future relationship! Subsequently I have found out that a significant part of Chinese culture is to take care of yourself first and foremost - a marked contrast to the warmth of Mongolians and the serious but kind Russians.

A good thing that happened was meeting some police at the airport who were having a graduation ceremony for their cadets. They asked us if we would mind presenting some awards to the cadets. So, bizzarely we ended up standing in a line and pinning a rosette to a grinning police cadet. We then had our photo taken with the Chief of Beijing Police. He was very nice indeed - with superb eyebrows and such a friendly manner that you would not mind being arrested by him.

The last event was the flight back to Heathrow. This was not a great experience because the spoilt Price family who normally always travel in First Class and Club were plonked in Economy for eleven hours. This would not have been so bad if we had not been sitting behind some rough diamonds who drank a great deal of booze and spent some of the flight swearing and trying to pick fights with certain people. A French man who, perhaps typically, took care of himself by reclining his chair straight away and refused to budge, got a great deal of abuse from them. This was sad because he had children with him. In the end the First Officer came and gave them a warning, as they had upset people on a previous flight too.

Having said that, none of this detracted from an epic experience that broadened our horizons, opened up our minds and made us feel in awe of the variety and beauty of our world.

As I write this blog, only now, as I remember all the things we did, does the scale of it come home to me;

Our driveway to Beijing,

Overland

Three children 10, 8 and 5 years old.

8500 miles.

Fifteen countries.

Major world ideologies.

Huge variations in climate.

Diverse people.

All types of terrain.

The mind blowing experience of the first 1/3rd of our trip around the planet is still hitting me - in quiet moments a person or a place comes back to me.

We all want to carry on now. So much more to see. A classroom without walls and a world just out there.

No limits other than those we set on ourselves....

Ulan Bator to Beijing

Days sixteen and seventeen

April 22nd - 23rd

Total Miles 8500

Trip miles 6000

This was the last leg of our train journey.  We were sad to leave Ulan Bator, boarding our train in the ever present bright sunshine, dazzling our eyes, even at eight in the morning.

This train was a pleasant surprise.  Unlike the previous ones it was a chinese train.  This train was modern and quite clean.  There were many plenty of staff on board - most of them had a cheery disposition too.  The restaurant car was an riot of bamboo panelling.  It actually had quite a few of the items on the menu.  The day was spent maintaining the train routine - relax, school work, then a DVD.

That day was spent passing through the Gobi desert - wow.  More back of beyond travel.  It became quite hot and very sandy.  The carriages of the train were caked in sand, the windows taking on a yellow tinge.  It became fairly hot, but not excessively. There was not a soul to be seen.  The only stops were at small desert towns called Choir and Sainshand.  These were dusty, dry and uninspiring.  Their only link to the outside world being the Trans Siberian.

That night contained the now familiar ritual of knocks on our doors, showing passports and filling out forms.  There was one big difference however.  The width of the train track in Mongolia and Russia is different from that in China.  As a result on passing the border, our bogies had to be changed.  Our train entered a huge building, with bright lights and immaculate cleanliness.  Very  quickly workers started tapping and banging away at the wheels beneath our feet.  To our amazement we noticed that the other carriages of our train were now opposite us on adjacent tracks.  Not only that, but slowly and carefully our entire carriage with passengers and all was being lifted up!  We got to about two metres off the ground.  Swiftly new wheels were placed in position and we were lowered to the ground.  Some complicated shunting and we were joined up again and on a way.  To change the wheels on hundreds of tons of train took just a couple of hours.  

After a reasonable night's sleep we awoke to the sight of the mountains to the north of Beijing.  We spent an excellent morning on arguably the most scenic part of the trip threading our way through this beautiful region.  Many tunnels, rivers and glimpses of the Great Wall formed oriental vistas before our eyes - a fitting showdown to an epic journey.

Just after lunch our train pulled into Beijing station.  The children could barely contain their excitement.  In fact they were probably going a little train crazy.

We stepped out onto the chaotic platform in Beijing, amazed at the fact that we had actually travelled overland from our driveway to Beijing, in two stages, every mile on the surface.  Beijing was a shock after sleepy Ulan Bator.  It was clean, modern and very highly populated.

We took a minibus to our hotel.  We were staying at the Lu Song Yuan. This was a very ornate hotel built in in the old quarter of Beijing - the fascinating back streets called the Hutongs.  The area is being modernised but retains the old feel with few cars and lots of street life.  Chinese laundries and grocery shops are being replaced by internet cafes and cool bars.

That evening we wandered around, loving the plentiful supplies of food, entertainment and KFC!  We rounded off a rich day with a boat ride around the lake at Quinhai Park.  This is a large lake lined with trendy bars and restaurants.  At night the place is lit up like a christmas tree.  Each bar istrying to outdo its neighbours with more comfortable sofas, louder music or bigger plasma televisions.  The Children were blown away by it all. 

In Mongolia

Days twelve to fifteen

April 18th - 21st

Total Miles 7000

Trip Miles 4500

This phase of the trip included a day of rest.  The Family enjoyed a day wandering around Ulan Bator, the compact capital of Mongolia.  The city is about the size of Portsmouth and is the capital of a country the size of Western Europe.  The rest of the country consists of every type of terrain possible, except jungle.  There are almost no roads in Mongolia.  The artery of the country is the Trans-Siberian train line.  The largest town we saw was about the size of Haslemere.  What all of this adds up to is the world lowest population density.  Outside the city you see very few people atall.

Wandering around Ulan Bator we enjoyed the warm sunshine, dry air and cheap shops! Russian faces had been replaced by a more Asian looking people - some were even smiling.  We very much enjoyed the plentiful cafes and reasonable shopping.  After Russia Mongolia felt free and easy.  Plenty of capitalism was present!  We had a humbling visit to the Gandan Monastery to see the power of Buddhist faith in action.  It is a beautiful and peaceful place. Particularly memorable was the sight of a 100 feet tall golden Buddha inside a temple.  The Family were awe-inspired by the sight of it.  We were very privileged to be allowed to see the Monks making a picture from multi-coloured sands.  It was about two metres across and an intricate pattern.  To watch the love and care with which they worked was to witness a level of commitment rarely seen in any aspect of life.  We wandered through a classroom where there was only one pupil - a boy of five or six who was repeating Buddhist chants lead by a monk.  He looked so serene and wise.  After a while he got bored and started laughing and giggling at us - proving he was a real boy after all.  Gandan is an enigmatic place that stirs your soul and makes you wonder if there might be something in it all.  A mass in latin at the Duomo in Milan was the last time I was so moved and full of wonder.

A local tour company called Nomad travel arranged for us to be taken on a three day trip into the countryside.  We were met by our driver, Bald and our guide, TJ.  TJ spoke excellent English.  We spent an excellent day with her in the museums in Ulan Bator. She explained all the exhibits and really bought the country alive for the children. 

Just as a dust storm hit the city we headed off in the bus to the Khustai national park.  Khustai was 100Km west of Ulan Bator.  as we left the city, the road became a dirt track and very rough going.  We had about 1 1/2 hours of holding onto the seat in front as Bald skillfully navigated across the semi desert following  power lines to navigate.  The scenery was by now classic Steppe, rolling hills, no trees, a semi desert environment.  Finally, we got to our camp, feeling pretty well vibrated.

The camp was in a slap bang in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by rolling steppe.  Horses and cattle wandered at will through the compound.  Just as we arrived a group of horses came galloping in from the steppe for their supper, a stirring sight that reminded me of countless cowboy movies.  A ranger amused us by asking how many of us were riding tomorrow so they knew how many horses to catch!

The accommodation was in the form of gers - portable round houses that nomads still live in to this day. Our ger was very comfortable with four beds around the edge and a central table and wood burning stove.  At 6.00 a.m. someone would come and light our stove.  Quickly the ger became very hot indeed, two hours later it was cool again.  The middle day at the camp was spent on a drive where we spotted the Prewalski horse - a wild horse that was re-introduced into the park recently and is thriving now.  

We also drove out into the middle of a salt pan and looked at some Turkic graves. It was pretty hot out there and flat for many miles - I felt strangely alone, wandering what would happen if we broke down.  In the evening we rode horses over the hills - a beautiful hour that left us all wanting more.

On the third day we headed back to Ulan Bator. Stopping off to see some Nomads in their gers. We were privileged to meet these people, living as their ancestors have for thousands of years.  They were very hospitable, offering us tea and cakes.  TJ interpreted as we learnt about their lives and tried on their ceremonial clothes.  We met their twin boys, a couple of shy five-year olds called Universe and Saturn. These were wonderful names for boys that are bought up under ten thousand acres of sky.

The following day we reluctantly left that fascinating country behind...

Irkutsk to Ulan Bator

April 16th - 17th 2008

Total Miles 7000

Trip Miles 4500

The train to Ulan Bator was a bit of a shock.  We left a chilly minus 6 degrees in Irkutsk and boarded another Russian train.  Now Julian likes a bit of luxury and this did not fit the bill.  The train was very old, not that clean, and the toilets...  The Provodnitsas had come in from Moscow and looked like it.  Nevertheless we managed.  The pine forest scenery and the lake helped.  The shanty towns we saw were at a new level of poverty in this remote corner of the world.

As night fell we approached the Russian/Mongolian border.  Many interruptions to our sleep occurred as various customs, immigration and train officials visited us.  Julian did a bewildering transaction with some shady characters at two a.m. - we exchanged Russian Roubles for Mongolian Togrog - at some exchange rate or other.

We entered Mongolia around dawn.  The darkness had taken away pine trees and replaced them with rolling Mongolian steppe.  No trees, barren and ten thousand acres of sky.  The climate became very dry and dusty. Mongolia sits in the middle of a weather system called the Siberian High.  This is an incredibly stable mass of air that gives hot summers and cold winters.  People told us that minus thirty to plus forty degrees were normal.

We checked into our hotel - The Continental -  a splendid little place.  The mock Rococo dining room with a slap up breakfast was a genuine shock after the train.  We felt like royalty as we sat down and were served fried eggs, orange juice and tea with milk.  There is absolutely nothing like being deprived of something and then appreciating it anew.  The kids went Bananas - additives in the cereal.

Irkutsk and Lake Baikal

April 13th - 15th 2008

Days Seven to Nine

Total Miles 6300

Trip Miles 3800

The Baikal pulled into Irkutsk early in the morning - bang on time. The day was bright, sunny and chilly. Dour Moscow faces were replaced by slightly less dour looking Siberian faces.

We were now seven hours ahead of UK time and really feeling it!

Our hotel was the former Soviet Intourist property of the town. It had been modernised into a presentable place. After some sleep we staggered out into the daylight for a look around. Irkutsk was a pleasant place with a combination of wooden houses and grand Baroque properties. We saw a lot of young people hanging around and drinking, though. Irkutsk had a frontier town feel about it, sometimes those sort of places seem idyllic, unless you live there.

That evening the Family enjoyed a visit to the Moscow state circus. Our British sensibilities were shocked to see Bears riding on the back of Buffaloes in the ring - amazing - and tragic for the animals. A performance with some girls dressed as Aeroflot stewardesses in tiny skirts made Julian's day, however!

The next day Max and Julian left the girls in the hotel and wandered off into a blizzard to catch a bus to Lake Baikal - 70Km away. The statistics of the lake are staggering. My personal favourites are: It contains 20% of the world's fresh water! It contains more water than all the North American great lakes combined! It will become another ocean, aeons from now, as tectonic forces eventually tear the continent in two.

An interesting day was spent at the lake. Max and I especially enjoyed the journey there in a blizzard. We peered out at the astounding sight of the wide river Angara opening out into the lake, and then becoming a wall of ice, as the lake itself began. Much freezing fun was had jumping up and down on the rock solid ice at the frozen beach in Lystvianka, the main lake resort. Max fell heavily for the Baikal seal - a beautiful animal that originally game from the Artic and ended up trapped in the lake. We saw a couple of them at an aquarium. Max described them as having a body like a balloon and a Dog's face.

The lake is probably the thing that Max and I talk most about. I have never really seen anything like it, Max certainly hasn't. The sight of a solid lump of ice stretching off into the distance for hundreds of Kilometers was nature at its most humbling.

On the way home I paid homage to Uri Gargarin. A native of Irkutsk, he was the first Human in space. He risked his life for a mission that was completely untried, and ended up being the first ever man to leave the planet. His statue was near the hotel. The photo above was taken by an elegant lady in perhaps her sixties who was standing with a boy about Max's age and looking intently at the statue. In our minds we decided that she was Uri's Widow and perhaps the boy was his Grandson. Poor Russian ensured we will never know. My spider sense said to me that she was not just a passer by.

The next morning we were up at 4.00 am (local) to catch our train to Ulan Bator, on the worst train we have ever been on....

On The Trans-Siberian

Days Three to Six

April 9th - 12th 2008

Total miles 6300

Trip miles 3800

Three excellent days were spent on board the Baikal crossing Russia. As far as the Urals the scenery was mostly beech trees and quite a lot of snow. This was punctuated by small communities of wooden houses with dirt roads. The poverty was very evident with many people scratching out an existence from collapsing shacks with a small vegetable patch in the garden. After the Urals the scenery became beech trees and quite a lot of snow. The poverty of rural Russian Federation life was all too clear. As we moved further from Moscow the train progressively ran out of provisions. Most of the menu requested in the dining car was met with a firm "Nyet" from Oxana - our dour but friendly waitress. Most of our food was bought from the platform, or from our own stores. It got a little desperate towards the end!

None of that detracted from the amazing experience of watching thousands of miles pass the window of our first class cabins as we relaxed in comfort. We splashed out on the cabins and we all appreciated the space, service and comfort.

The kids went to Train School every morning, learning about Russia from our cabin on my Encyclopedia Brittanica on my laptop. This is not meant to sound too worthy, but it really was a great experience - learning at perhaps its best. In a classroom without walls.

Morag enjoyed this relaxing phase of the trip. Our Provodnitsas were lovely and kept us supplied with tea all day. Evenings were spent either watching movies on the laptop or playing card games.

Julian was accosted twice by Vladimir - a Russian alcoholic who had a kind heart. He introduced himself by tearing off a strips of an enormous dried fish and insisting I ate them, washed down with strong Vodka. On the second evening he sat down with two girls - uninvited - and ordered Russian champagne. He tried to get it added to my bill. Oxana was having none of it!

In Moscow

Day Three

April 8th 2008

Total Miles 3300

Trip Miles 800

This morning at 0800 we arrived at Leningradski train station, Moscow.

During the night our passports and visas had been politely checked by fairly fearsome looking Russian border guards and customs officials. We slept fairly well, the rhythmic clatter of the wheels lulling me to sleep and keeping Morag awake. She informed me the next morning that she doesn't sleep well on trains! This worried us both as we had many thousands of miles yet to travel. The kids seemed fine as ever - they travel well. After a breakfast of Chocolate Wheetos they went bananas - additives! That was pretty funny to watch in four square metres of train carriage. Strangely I didn't think so at the time.

We wandered off the train - having fun deciphering Russian signs - written in the cyrillic alphabet and Russian of course.

We arrived at the Hostel Asia for a day stop, as our train left that night. After a long wait for rooms we got into the lift to head upstairs. The car moved initially and then ground to a halt! Much shouting into the speaker ensued - only muffled Russian assurances came back. Initially the girls were upset but soon we resigned ourselves to our fate. After what felt forever the car started to inch upwards. After about an hour the door was pulled open by strong hands and were were pulled up onto the first floor. As we exited the shaft we were amazed to see an old lady standing on the roof of the lift sticking screwdrivers into the doors to keep them open. Max said she looked like she was trained.

The rest of the day was spent around Red Square, St Basil's and the State Department store - a kind of Russian Harrods on Red Square called Gum.

That evening we boarded our train for Irkutsk - the Trans Siberian Train called The Baikal.

Moscow was very old the taxi had no seat beat  the lift broke down and all the people were unhappy