Beijing and Back

2004-08-10T09:30:00.000+01:00

Back in Northumberland

Well I am back here in Felton at my parents house. Arrived on time yesterday at North Shields Ferry Terminal and was metby my parents and Suzanne. Suzanne had bought a picnic for us to enjoy in the balmy British summer weather and so Sods law as soon as i arrived a huge thubnderstorm with torrential rain started! Instead we retreated to Coquet Vale and had an indoor picnic. Now we are about to set off on the final stage of the journey back up the A1 to Edinburgh. Nearly there now!

2004-08-08T08:10:00.000+01:00

Almost Home

Well I am in Gothenburg waiting for the ferry to leave this morning that will take me back to the UK. Yesterday the disaster that had been threatening all trip finally struck. Yes I left my hat behind in Stockholm at the interent cafe. I took it as a symbolic ending of the trip as I bought it the day before i left and wore it virtually every day, now its gone it seems a symbol of the trip ending (rather than just of me being an idiot) Of course the presence of a credit card in it created a slight panic but Suzanne sorted it all out for me by cancelling it. Hopefully no harm done. The X2000 train from Stockholm to Gothenburg was amazing, Extremely fast, tilting, Wirelass LAN, Enormous seats (2+1 like in UK First class but bigger) and all for £45 to travel across a whole country! Very enjoyable.
Just time for a quick update on what other people are up to. Pete and Betsy have made it back to the States and just emailed me to say they have taken another holiday! Obviously life at thome was too much like hard work. good news is the North Face jackets are genuine according to the boss himself. Also if you want to know how the boys are doing on their trip back... Charlie has already managed to hospitalise two of the passengers. Apparently they got severe dehydration on the Jinshanling - Simatai Great Wall walk! I think they recovered ok though and last I heard the boys were about to arrive in Xian and looking forward to their bacon sandwichs for breakfast. Also when i was in Beijing went out for a couple of meals with Claire and Barry, they seemed on good form and Barry is off back to Sydney while Claire enjoys herself in Japan.
If anyone else has any news email me and I will put it on the site!
Nearly home now!

2004-08-07T00:30:00.000+01:00

Swedish Meatballs

Well I have made it safely across the Baltic to the sunny city of Stockholm. I am just waiting for my train to Gothenburg now and taking advantage of an automatic staffless internet cafe in the railway station. Just buy a ticket from a machine and off you go! Perfect system. Spent yesterday visiting various museums including the naval museum, which had a big memorial to British Sailors who helped the Estonians in their war of independence in 1918-1920 and a memorial to the 1000 people who died when the Estonia ferry sank in 1993, the sister ship of the Regina Baltica that I was about to make the same crossing on. Hmm maybe not the best museum to visit before a ferry trip. Never mind I made it safely and am now only two days away from the UK.

2004-08-06T10:44:00.000+01:00

An impressive Organ and the biggest Horn I've ever seen.

But first things first. I had a great time in Moscow wandering round Red Square on Wednesday and have to say that in my opinion Lenin's Mausoleum is a lot nicer than Mao's one. Understated and elegant it is just the sort of place any communist despot would be glad to be buried in. So I was in a relaxed mood as an overpriced taxi ride in a souped up Lada dropped me at Leningradski station to await my train to Talinn. The first shock was the station bar which even by UK Ralway buffet prices seemed to be evercharging at $6(3pounds50) for a pint of beer! The night went a bit better then until reaching the Russian border at 3am, firstly the passport control people arrived, stamped my passport and left again, all was well, Then the customs man turned up. Employing the classic British holidaymaker tactic of thinking that if he shouted really loudly in Russian i would understand his instuctions he became increasingly frustrated by my lack of understanding him. I did all the right things smile politely open bags etc but he got more and more pissed off and culminated in him ripping my new (not a cheap rip off at all) North Face bag even more than it was already. As I went through my bag o Souvenirs showing him all the things I had bought in the ex soviet countries we had travelled through he appeared increasingly irate that i had bought nothing much in Russia, whether this was from nationalistic pride or the lack of opportunity to confiscate it I couldn't work out. Eventually he found a small wooden elephant that looks like its worth almost exactly what i paid for it $3, unfortunately the price tag on it said 80,000! This was seized on as being a rare and expensive piece of art that i should pay export duties on (this is all surmised from his facial expression) and my explanation that the price was in Turkmenistan Manat (rate 25,000 manat=$1) did not seem to make him any happier. Eventually he presented me with a customs form and asked me to fill in how much currency i had. When i put down 42 Estonian Kroon (about $3) and 10$ he became very angry indicating this was not enough money. At this point i realised where the discussion was going which was I pay or I stay. Unfortunately i was telling the truth on the form so did not have enough of the green passport vouchers to buy my way across the border. I apologised to the nice man and offered him my token $10 but he shouted some more Russian which the kindly estonian Babushka translated for me to "Nyet Eeski" or get off the train now. So i put on my boots and started packing up my bags (as i had not been allowed to repack after the earlier search) to get off the train. As i was packing though the train started to move and we were crossing the river bridge that led into Estonia! I realised of course that the instruction to get off the train had been his final bluff to get me to reveal my secret stash of dollars and it would probably have worked if I had had any on me, Never the less I had called his bluff and made it safely into Estonia none the poorer. As the Estonian border guard glanced at the Passport he smiled and said in English "Welcome to the European Union" never been a more relieving site. The Babushka then berated the Estonian customs man who wanted to check out my broken bag telling him in no uncertain terms it was the Russian customs who had caused the problem and he smiled apologetically and left my bags unsearched!
So as i arrived in Tallin with no map, no hotel booking and two very heavy bags, my feelings were a mixture of relief and exhaustion. 40 minutes wandering got me a hotel, another 30 minutes got me a ferry ticket on to Sweden and an hour on the internet confirmed my train ticket across Sweden and booked me a hotel for Saturday night in Gothenburg. Thus organised I wandered around the heart of old Talinn which is an exceptionally beautiful and well preserved medieval city. Then the highlight of the day (Finally returning to the subject of the title) which was discovering that I had arrived in town in the middle of the 18th Talinn Organ Festival! I snapped up a ticket for last nights performance of a number of works I had never heard of plus part of Dvorak's New World symphony which i had heard of. interestingly it promised accompanient by a horn solist. You can imagine my surprise on getting to the concert hall, a converted church, when it turned out the horn soloist was in fact a master of the Swiss Alpenhorn and it turned out to be a great concert partly because the Alphorn is one of only a few instruments that can really compete with a concert organ for depth and sheer volume of noise. You could at times feel the whole church vibrating.
Anyway I'm off for Lunch now and then its on the ferry tonight to cross the Baltic to Stockholm.

Omsk Tomsk and Tobermory

2004-08-03T15:00:00.000+01:00

Well 7680km later and here I am in Moscow. The Post title is only slightly misleading as the railway bypasses Tomsk by about 70km, We went through Omsk at about 2am so i was asleep and i don't plan on going straight to Tobermory when i get home but it was still exciting to pass the sort of places that would normally remain in the realm of an old copy of the Times Atlas of the World. (PS do Americans have the Wombles? If not they may be confused at this point). The Trans Siberian railway was great fun and an entertaining way to pass a week if you are bored but the thing you notice is the way small events become important. The twice daily (for me at least some people just ate pot noodle) trip to the dining car became a highlight and when halfway through the trip it was moved from 4 to 8 carriages walk away it actually increased the amount of entertainment a trip there could provide. In each country there was a different dining car. In China the food was free! but terrible. In Mongolia the dining car was exquisitely furnished and had a wide menu but the only food actually available was Beef Stroganof. In Russia the staff were surly the exchange rate terrible and the food repetitive (Choice of Stroganov, Escalope, Beef Steak, Soup for 4 days) but the Vodka and Russian Champagne added immensely to the experience.

Trip Highlights were definitely Lake Baikal which is beautiful and Novisibirsk, the only city in Siberia where you can buy Irn Bru!

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And Back

2004-07-27T16:51:00.000+01:00

Well the journey home starts in 7 hours time. At 6am tomorrow morning it is off to the station to catch the trans mongolian home. I have been enjoying Beijings expat bars to the full watching NZ beat SA in the rugby and England beat WI in the cricket as well as consuming lots of overpriced Lager. The nice people at Monkeybusiness who arranged the Train section of the trip for me supply you with details of all the best bars as well as some drinking vouchers to get you started. Heres to sixdays and five nights on the train

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It sure is a Great Wall

2004-07-25T18:08:00.000+01:00

As Richard Nixon once said and you have to agree with him. I am now back in Beijing after my jaunt to North Korea but on the way back I stopped to look at Shanhaiguan where the great wall reaches its Eastern end in the sea. It is also several thousand (exact answers on a postcard) from Jiayoguan the western end we passed through several weeks ago so it provided a nice sense of completion. Despite it being foggy and 6.30 in the evening i went for my first dip in the Pacific Ocean and greatly amused the locals. The wall itself is very atmospheric although largely reconstructed and the point it enters the sea dramatic with big breakers crashing onto it.

It was not my first experience with the great wall in the last few days. We also visited it at a palce called Mutianyu where the wall itself is in classic wooded hills and looks just as you would imagine it although it is overshadowed by the extreme excitement of the 1500m long toboggan run featuring a 100 foot high bridge amongst other delights, It was so good we went straight up the chairlift to do it again and forgot all about the wall. Perhaps this was because we had already walked an extremely hilly 10km section of the wall from Jinshanling to Simatai that morning which had excellent scenery and featured some more genuine unrestored sections. However when you reach the dodgy looking ticket salesmen half way along who demand money for out of date tickets and boast 1 uniform and 2 name badges between three of them my advice is... JUST PAY THEM. I have the bruises on my arm from being nipped and punched by the "Official ticket collectors" Who tell you to F off and then offer to sell you the tickets on "3 for 2" We checked the veracity of their credentials when we got down the bottom and were assured they were genuine and there is no choice but to pay. However it has to be said the whole episode left a nasty taste in the mouth even by the usual Chinese "screw foreigners for every penny you can" attitude.

And Finally it is one year today to the date i get married (25 July 2005 put it in your diaries now). I have really enjoyed blogging to you all from across the world and it has become quite a habit, my plan however was always to "retire" the site to be kind of a record of what happened on the trip, although i may put occasional updates on of what the ex passengers are up to (so you all need to email me things i can post)

Greetings From North Korea!

2004-07-22T05:00:00.000+01:00

Well not quite but I amin Dandong on the North Korean border and have just been on a boat trip in North Korean territorial waters to within 5m of the shore. Also visited the Museum to commemorate aiding Korea against US Aggression. It is a fantastic museum with lots of detail and relics of the war although as may be expected from the name it is somewhat one sided! The UK involvement is only alluded to as "Running dogs of the corrupt US Administration" So very little changes there then! All in all it was worth the 14 hour overnight train trip to get here. Tonight we are heading back to the provincial capital Shenyang.

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20790km and back.

2004-07-20T12:03:00.000+01:00

Well we have arrived in Beijing after three and a half months and 20790km of Driving. Five of us Claire, Allan myself and the drivers Ben and Charlie have made the whole trip. it has been quite a journey and we have seen a hell of a lot. Yesterday as we arrived in Beijing we drove the truck through Tian'anmen Square and it really sunk in just what it was we had achieved. We were the first foreign vehicle to cross the Torugart Pass into China, The first trip Dragoman has run in China and the first ever group to arrive in Beijing in their own transport. Today we visited the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City with our new local guide Michael, he couldn't quite believe how long we had travelled for or how far we had come! Tonight we are off for a group meal to celebrate the achievement before we gear up for the next leg of the journey. Danielle and I have booked train tickets to Dandong and we leave tomorrow afternoon. Will update you on where it is and why we are there when we get there.

Now I'm off to get extremely drunk!

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Semi Naked men with Iron Bars

2004-07-17T16:30:00.000+01:00

Well I always thought the only place I would see men stripped to their waists hitting each other with Iron Bars was at a professional wrestling event but yesterday we got the live show. We could of done without it however as we had 563km of driving to do which in the end took us 14 hours! The bars were being wielded by some angry truckers who chased another trucker and threw rocks at him before setting about him with the bars. We never really worked out what caused the fight but the lorries of the fighting truckers blocked the road for around an hour until the police turned up and arrested them all. The victim seemed to escape with just bruising but it was all fairly scary.

Today we have been in Chengde visiting the palaces of the Manchu emperors and a variety of bizarre temples built to mimic Tibetan monasteries to make visiting dignitaries like the 6th Panchen Lama feel at home. Sadly for him after his visit he died of Smallpox (or poison) before making it back to Tibet. Tomorrow we head off for the great wall for a 10km walk before heading into Beijing! on Monday. Starting to feel like we are nearly there.

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2004-07-11T15:36:00.000+01:00

What you can buy in China for the price of a cheap hotel room

Owing to my having grossly overspent on buying everyone fabulous souvenirs I have found myself slightly above my budget for this point in the trip. I started looking for ways to savemoney and luckily Danielle the American girl who lives in Taiwan was in a similar state of mind about saving cash. So starting here in Yinchuan we have been on a quest to stay in cheaper hotel rooms than the rest of the passengers though preferably in the same hotel. This has been achieved by taking rooms without bathrooms so we paid 70 Yuan per room per night (About 9US$) instead of the 170 Yuan (21US$) that the rest paid. Over the two nights we were here we saved 100 (12US$) Yuan each. Unfortunately my good intentions were slightly thwarted by a trip to the DVD shop today where i spent 96 Yuan of my savings. However this did get me all three Matrix films, all three Indiana Jones Films, Young Adam, Battle Royale, The World is not Enough, Die Another Say, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban and the Terminal which I think hasn't yet been released in UK Cinemas. All these films are of course completely genuine although slightly disturbingly the Harry Potter DVD says on the back it has been rated R for Strong Sexual content and stars Cameron Diaz? Maybe I missed something in the reviews?
On the travelling front we have of course started a new trip segment. Margaret and Else "The Grannies" have left and will be back in the UK now and probably reading this so I will try to be honest when I say that the trip really isn't the same without them. They had been with us all the way since the UK and really added to the atmosphere of the truck. Apart from anything else (sic) without Else here there is nothing to restrain Charlie from talking about wanking before 9pm. Mike and Rene also left us in Xian but Danielle and Michael the "Irish IT geek" (who emailed me today after reading the site to say he loves being called this) who were both meant to leave in Xian extended to Beijing at the last minute. Pete and Betsy were also going to leave in Xian but made up their minds a few weeks ago to come along. Along with three newcomers, Adrian, Bettine and Lara the truck is still quite busy, more info on those three later. Sites wise we have had an interesting few days, seeing a mountain top Daoist temple complex at Kongtong Shan, Zip lining across the yellow river at Shapotou and visiting more Buddhist Pagodas than you can shake a stick at. Tomorrow we head into the inner Mongolian grasslands to see Genghis Khans Mausoleum.

The different dance scenes of Xian

2004-07-06T15:14:00.000+01:00

Well in untypical overland style we have been in the Holiday Inn in the center of Xian for the last 4 nights and are just getting used to the luxury before we go back on the road camping. Xian is an amazing city, today we visited the temple containing the Buddhas only surviving fingerbone and yesterday we visited China's best known tourist site, the Terracotta Warriors. The highlight yesterday though was two wildly differing cultural dance shows. The first put on for tourists was the combined Dumpling Banquet and Tang Dynasty dance extravaganza. It was slick professional and highly entertaining including one piece from a man making Duck Noises (better than it sounds) and a pan pipe solo. Afterwards we went on to a much more interesting show at one of Xians premier gay night spots. The drag queens there were well dressed and it has to be saud Chinese men make good women and it looked like being a hit. Sadly the routines lacked polish and choreography and ended uplike a bad student revue. A particular highlight was the 15 minute comedy drag slot in chinese which was baffling to say the least. It was interesting to see the scene flourishing though in a country where homosexuality is still technically illegal. The best bit of the eveing for me was the preponderance of British sportswear in the crowd. A rowdy Chinese man in the front row was wearing an England football away strip and the DJ had a Welsh Rugby Shirt on!

Finally congratulations to Susan and Dave who got married yesterday and whose wedding i missed by being out here. Guess your wedding probably didn't involve drag queens but I hope you had a great time!

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2 Days in Tibet

2004-06-30T11:48:00.000+01:00

You can imagine my surprise this afternoon when I checked the Dragoman website and discovered that the front page of it links straight to here. Whether anyone will be foolish enough to click through and read this is another matter but if you have then hello and welcome to my site. I left the UK on April 7th and am now 12 weeks in to the 14 week total trip to Beijing. I am then going back to the UK overland via the trans Siberian Express to Moscow.

Since I last posted Michael's birthday party went very well, we tricked him into going into his room to find Kaz a fellow passenger lying suggestively on his bed in only a towel. His relief at discovering she was not a professional we had hired was short lived when after dinner he was taken down to the local "hairdressers" for a massage in the new multicoloured leggings we had given him. It was only with much insistence on a simple massage that he was able to escape with his virtue intact! Next day we went to the premier Buddhist Cave art site in China at Mogao. The caves themselves are remarkably well preserved but the collection of 12000 manuscripts and paintings is now in the British Museum and the Louvre after Western adventurers Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot bought them from a local monk in the early 20th Century at knock down prices. Obviously the Chinese are somewhat unhappy about this state of affairs and want the documents returned. The caves though still contain excellent frescoes and some amuzing 30m high Buddha statues.

We are also in historical China proper now. At Jiayuguan we visited the Ming dynasty Fort that marks the Western extremity of the Great Wall. Although it has been largely reconstructed it is still an atmospheric location and you can imagine how Chinese exiles might have felt as they were sent off into the Western desert. We then visited the largest Sleeping Buddha in China at Zhangye which was not on the Drago Itinerary but we persuaded Charlie it was worth the stop. It was 34m long and located in a most unlikely back street of a busy city. The only question remains, why was he sleeping?

After that two long days drive got us to the town of Liujaxia a bit of a nowhere town that had very little experience of foreign tourists as we were avidly stared at everywhere we went. The reason for being there was the boat trip up the Yellow River to see the Bingling Si Caves. Because of low water levels only the smaller speedboats could get up to the caves and all 15 of us packed in to a tiny boat and set off at over 30 knots up the river. The Caves themselves were probably less impressive than the ones we saw at Mogoa But less touristy and very enjoyable especially the 20m high Future Buddha that dominates the complex. At the caves there is also the earliest example of Chinese writing anywhere in the world but you had to pay $38 per person to see it so we gave it a miss.

Today we have been in Xiahe which is a Tibetan town high on the Tibetan plateau at over 3000m but located in the Gansu province of China rather than Tibet proper. It is home of the third most important monk in Tibet the Jiemuyang who is considered above all except the Dalai and Panchen Lamas. It is a fantastic town full of Monks in their colourful robes riding around in motor rickshaws and the monastery itself has some extremely impressive paintings and buddha statues as well as a bizarre room full of Yak butter sculptures of Buddhist scenes. I ahve been able to add to my list of weird animals that I have eaten today though by enjoying a Yak Burger, I have'nt managed to bring myself to try the Yak Tea yet though. We have another early start tomorrow to try and get to Xian a day early so we have more time to see the Terracotta Warriors. On the way we will visit Majii Shan which is................... another Buddhist Cave art Site, maybe you can have too much of a good thing.

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$10 to look at a sand dune!

2004-06-23T12:01:00.000+01:00

We arrived in the Town of Dunhuang in Gansu Province last night a day earlier than intended. This involved us driving for 11 hours yesterday across fairly desolate scrubland and desert. The reasons for this are twofold, Firstly the truck has been having some problems with overheating so Ben wanted to get the radiator looked at ASAP, Secondly and more importantly as far as we were concerned the fridge has been out of action for a week or so so we are reliant on getting fresh ice for the ice box. The ice had run out and we were unable to get anymore so if we hadnt driven to a town we would have had to drink warm beers!

The previous day we had visited the ancient ruins of Gaocheng and seen mummified bodies at Astana. These were bona fide intteresting archaeological sites but we also went to an alleged tourist attraction "Grape Valley" that consisted of a row of tourist shops that we paid $5 to go and shop in and be ripped off at. In view of this underwhelming experience we had learnt better when we cycled out of Dunhuang this morning to look at the famous Whistling Sand Dunes which are an impressive 300m high. They are indeed impressive to look at but the authorities have decreed them a money making opportunity and erected a fence and gate allowing them to charge people $10 to go and stand on a sand dune! This is very expensive in chinese terms, bear in mind that in the hotel bar we are staying in this could purchase you 23 Litres of Beer! We tried to negotiate a better price but it is fixed by the state so we beat a hasty retreat and went instead to watch a 360 degree panoramic film of the dunes instead for a dollar. Much better value and worth it for the enthusiatic chinese commentary which we didnt understand at all. Tonight we are celebrating as Michael the Irish IT geek is turning 26. We have an elaborate birthday surprise involving gratuitous nudity planned for him so hopefully everyone will have a good time.

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Western Sino Stom

2004-06-21T23:31:00.000+01:00

Well I have crossed the Taklaman desert safely. It translates as "The go into and don't come out desert" so it was a relief. The first day passed without incident and we had intended to camp for 5 nights in a row. However when we woke up on the second morning everything including inside the tents was full of sand as the wind had got up and we were stuck in a sandstorm with 10m visibility. We had to drive a lot slower than intended and decided to call it a day at Hotan and stay in a hotel rather than camp in the dust. It was a nice sort of place famous across China for the quality of its Jade but not somewhere you would want to be stuck in. We then set out across the middle of the desert and eventually the winds died down a bit so we could camp fairly comfortably although right by the side of the road as there was nowhere to pull off. Another two days driving and a second nights camping and we were ready for another unscheduled hotel stop in the regional capital Urumqi. Another nice enough city but nothing that exciting.

The truly amazing local site is "Tian Chi" the heavenly lake. It is relatively cool being up in the hills at 2000m. Firstly you drive up for three hours or so. Then an ancient cable car takes you another 4km and finally you jump in electric golf buggies for the final 3km to the lake. Once up there you stay in Yurts erected by the local semi nomadic Kazak population. The lake itself is amazingly beautiful and we went on a speed boat ride round it and then walked to a Taoist temple where for 20p they let you bang their gong!

After all that our current location of the Turpan Oasis is a bit much for me. At 154m below sea level it is the second lowest place in the world after the dead sea and it is also the hottest place in China with temperatures up to 49 degrees celsius recorded here. Yesterday at around 42 was a cool day! We walked round some ancient ruins in the full heat of the day for about an hour and then retreated to the pub for several cold beers.

My time has been well spent however collecting Chinese CDs. So far I have a CD by the local Disco outfit Western Sino Stom with some very goiod tunes including " Bride Take off your headcover" I also have Cookies by 4Play the Chinese version of the Spicegirls which my guide tells me is very popular in China and includes a christmas hits medley sung in Chinese to the tunes of "Oh come let us adore him" and "Silent Night" Finally I picked out an Album of Chill out music including a Cover version in Chinese of Enyas "Sailaway"! What more could you want.

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Testing, Testing

2004-06-12T12:26:00.000+01:00

Well the Chinese government seems to be blocking Blogger.com again so I am having to resort to posting by email. I have never tried this before so I donft know if it will work and as the government also blocks my site there is no way of checking if it appears or not! I am still in Kashgar and have wandered round the old town today and then done the Bar shopping ready for the desert, 100 bottles of beer, 50 cans of coke and 50 cans of sprite. Its like being House convenor all over again!

I had an interesting experience last night when I met a woman from Chester-le-Street in the bar. After we got chatting and I said I was from Felton it turned out she had lived in Longframlington for 10 years in the 80s which is only 3 miles from Felton. Very weird when we are thousands of miles away from Northumberland.

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2004-06-11T09:56:00.000+01:00

The Karakorum Highway

I am back in Kashgar now after 3 days away on the famous Karakoram highway which heads south to Pakistan. We only went as far as Tashkurgan the last Chinese town before the border although ethnically its population is actually 83% Tajik. Along the way we passed through some of the most amazing mountain scenery I have ever seen and passed over a 4100m pass, the highest I will be going at any point on the trip. The town of Tashkurgan itself is somewhat of a let down after the excitement of the trip and even Rough guides promise of "An alcohol and sex industry aimed at repressed Pakistani tourists" failed to materialise. Instead the highlight was last night when we camped at Karakul Lake (The old Loch Dubh/Black Lake syndrome again). Despite its name the Lake was perfectly Blue and surrounded by mountains over 7500m high although as the Lake itself is at 3800m they do not appear that big. I walked round the Lake for around three hours to avoid the enterprising souvenir sellers who set up around our tents as ssoon as we arrived. Despite our lack of purchases they persistently remained in place until well after midnight.
We are back in Kashgar now waiting for the renowned Sunday Market and stocking up on Beer and Coke ready for the 5 days we spend crossing the desert. Else the doctor who hit her head and went for checkups has had a CAT scan and everything appears to be ok sdo she is back on the trip, with the new additions as well it means the truck is quite crowded with 17 people on board. Michael is a 25 year old Irish guy who can only be descibed as a geek. Not only does he work in IT but he also dismantled the electrics on the truck fridge to try and resolve its intermittent problems. He is a nice guy though and we are already planning a surprise birthday party for him next week... Danielle the American girl who worked in Taiwan I have already mentioned and the final addition is Rene, a 70 year old American who may or may not be a professor of Politics or Geology depending on what day you talk to him. He is quite fond of the sound of his own voice though and has thouroghly annoyed everyone at the front of the truck, luckily I sit at the back so he hasnt irritated me too much and I am convinced he must have some redeeming features. We also have a somewhat excessive complement of 3 local guides. One is from Kashgar one from Urumqi and one from Xian. Apparently the two who arent from Kashgar hired the other guide as they had never been here before, which begs the question Why do we need the first two? Anyway they have proved useful as Rene talked at them non stop for three hours yesterday and it might have been too much for just one guide to cope with! i am off to sample another of the delicious meals that have made China bearable so far.

2004-06-09T02:38:00.000+01:00

Welcome to China!

Well I have arrived in Kashgar, the city at the center of the Great Game. We were meant to be camping last night but circumstances conspired against us. Yesterday was a lon gand stressful day. We got up at 5am and drove for 7 hours to reach the border by 12. the border formalities took a total of 7 hours during which time we had all our food confiscated meaning our plan to camp last night had to be cancelled or we would have starved. I also had several pages cut out of my Rough Guide to China because the map of China did not include Taiwan as part of the Peoples Republic! Utterly crazy. Then they took our temperatures using a sort of device that they wave in front of your forehead and looks like a ray gun. This is to stop people with SARS entering the country as anyone with an unusually high temperature is turned back! All told by the end of the day we were fed up with China and its petty rules, After a very pleasant dinner though we were much better disposed to the place. 4 weeks of bad food in Central Asia will let you forgive anything for a great Chinese Meal.

2004-06-06T09:26:00.000+01:00

The Great Game

Well done to Stew who spotted the deliberate mistake in the last post regarding the height of the Torugart Pass. It is of course 3759m not 7539m as that would be higher than all but the very highest peaks in Central Asia! Yesterday I met an interesting man at the hotel who is one of the owners. He is called the snow leopard as he is one of the few people to have climbed all the 7000m+ peaks in the former Soviet Union. He also trained and climbed with the famous Ukrainian climber Anatoly Boukriev, who anyone who has read Jon Krakauers book "Into Thin Air" an account of the Everest disaster in 1995 will be familiar with.
Todays recommended reading though is a book called The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk. This is a fantasticly well written account of the history of British and Russian interest in central Asia from the 18th century though to the first world war. The phrase "The Great Game" was popularised by Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim and refers to the proxy conflicts between European officers and explorers and the local rulers of the Khanates and petty kingdoms of Central Asia as Russia sought to expand into the area and Britain worried about the possible invasion of India by Russian forces from the north and west. Kashgar where we are heading next was one of the most important areas in the great game where Britain and Russia set up consualtes/spy posts in what was a nominally Chinese but largely uncontrolled region. I would say that this is the one indispensable resource for finding out about this period of history, apart of course from watching "Carry on up the Khyber" which also refers to some of the same instances as the book although in a slightly different way.
Good luck in Finals to everyone who is sitting them this week!

2004-06-05T08:56:00.000+01:00

Some observations on hotel bathrooms in Central Asia

Firstly well done to Iain Munro, seemingly the only person I know who is aware that Lake Baikal in Russia is the deepest fresh water lake in the world. I will be passing Lake Baikal later in the trip as I return home on the trans siberian but will only see it from the train.
I am now in Bishkek the capital of Kyrgystan where we have a few days rest before we set off on Monday to cross the 7539m Torugart Pass to China. We have three people joining in Bishkek all of whom are apparently under 30 but so far I have only met Danielle a 24 year old American who has spent the last three years living and working in Taiwan. Interestingly (for my parents though not for anyone else) She comes from Ramsey, New Jersey which is one stop down from Mahwah on the train into New York. When I was visiting New York back in 1998 I stayed in Mahwah with an old friend of my mothers. The other two newcomers are meant to be guys but we wont meet them until Sunday night so I will describe them later.
Since my last post I have been passing the time trekking in the mountains and am feeling extremely tanned and fit (or at the very least tired and sunburnt) Kyrgystan has some beautiful mountain scenery reminiscent of Switzerland and you could happily spend weeks walking here, although it can be quite hard work as even the easy treks start at an altitude of around 2000m and get higher! I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for an unusual walking holiday though. Bishkek is somewhat less exciting, the main highlight was meant to be the enormous statue of Lenin which has been removed since the last edition of Lonely Planet was published and there isnt much else to do here. Last night though I did enjoy a very good night out at the Kyrgyz/German joint venture brewery Steinbrau where we threw a surprise birthday party for Charlie, our Driver. A good time was had by all and I was delighted to find Currywurst although there was no gluhwein so I avoided the problems that befell me when I last mixed those two!
So the main excitement of the stay in Bishkek has been the hotel room, If you can ignore the fact that three of us are sharing a room (difficult if you ever hear Allan snore) then it is unsurpassed luxury. It has a bath! and the bath has both hot water and a plug! This is something of a first for central Asia where the washing facilities usually consist of a cramped toilet and washbasin with a showerhead you can use to pour freezing cold water over your head. And that is if you even get a western style toilet, most facilities consist of a pit with a small hole that you squat over. Also nearly all toilet paper here consists of a hard corrugated material with the feel and consistency of sandpaper so the comparitively soft (Although think tesco value range) paper on offer in the hotel is another bonus. The only thing that the hotel here lacks is proper western sewage pipes enabling you to flush the toilet paper away. Apparently all pipes here are built narrower (who knows why?) so all used paper has to be left in a bin beside the toilet or if no bin is available in a small pile on the floor.
On the satellite TV I have been able to watch Mr Bean, the simpsons and pearl harbour dubbed in russian and learn about Jack McConnell's current political difficulties, the highlight though has to be Scrapheap Challenge dubbed into russian, somehow it just works perfectly.

2004-05-31T05:42:00.000+01:00

Liechtenstein

Well done to all of you who got it right the answer of course is Liechtenstein. Pippa, Tom, Kenny and Jo all claim to have worked it out together. Iain and Ginger Ruth got it right as well. I am now in a town called Karakol which is an extremely common name in the mountains being the equivalent of the Gaelic Loch Dubh, or English Black Lake. This particular Karakol is the one in the North East of Kyrgystan on the banks of Lake Issy Kul. This is apparently the second deepest fresh water lake in the world and despite being at an altitude of 1600m it never freezes. This begs the question, what is the worlds deepest fresh water lake? Answers on an email and I will put you and the answer on the site when I get to Bishkek on Saturday. Tomorrow we are going trekking up the Djety Oguz valley to look for an ice wall which should be interesting. We are a few people short though as Else the retired doctor has been having dizzy spells since she hit her head in a fall and has gone with Margaret to Bishkek to get it checked out. Hopefully if all is ok they will rejoin us next week when we arrive in Bishkek. The only new arrival at Tashkent was Mike a retired American Airlines Pilot in his 40s. He knows Pete and Betsy and Ben from a previous trip and is a fun guy. He was entertaining the local kids with magic tricks yesterday to try and distract them from their constant quest to get us to give them Piva (Beer). Also had some good news today that my Russian and Mongolian Visas have been successfully acquired by Monkeyshrine in Beijing and my second passport is safely locked up in their office. So last major worry about travel arrangements is sorted.

2004-05-25T05:47:00.000+01:00

The Roof of the World

Well I have made it safely to Osh in Kyrgystan, we ran our usual sweepstake on how long it would take to cross the border yesterday and made it across in only two hours upsetting the betting which was favouring around 4. We now head up into the mountains for a week, we have just been shopping as there will be no shops or restaurants for 6 days so we have to carry all supplies with us. Osh is the second city of Kyrgystan but is a bit of a nothing sort of a place the main tourist attraction being the worlds only three storey yurt! I will be out of communication for a while but can hopefully post again in about a weeks time.

2004-05-22T09:51:00.000+01:00

Uzbekistan Culture: Linedancing Cowgirls???

Firstly well done to Lindsay, Gerwyn, June, Wendy, Philip, Billy, David, Simon, Stew on answering the question correctly. The rest of you have got a couple of days but in case you need an extra clue it is apparently one of the few countries that Simon has visited but not been deported from!
Anyway I had an extremely surreal evening last night. We went to a restaurant that was recommended for having an Uzbekistan cultural show while you ate dinner. When we arrived there was a pianist playing Western hits who was soon replaced by a guy in unfeasibly pointy shoes and a white suit singing Elvis numbers. Finally 16 dancing girls came on stage did one Uzbek dance and then spent an hour doing slick costume changes and Vegas style chorus routines with lots of bellydancing and including one routine set to "mambo number 5" and one where they were all dressed as cowgirls while they linedanced! All very amusing but not especially Uzbek. We then moved on to an "exotic" bar where various girls were doing their thing but then suddenly stopped and were replaced by a heavily tattoeed man called Igor, who put his ankles behind his head while doing a handstand and then put two kebab skewers through firstly his tongue and then up through his chin and out of his mouth. A bit of sword swallowing followed and the whole act was topped off when he inserted a spinning electric drill which he demonstrated on a block of wood through his face into his nasal cavity. Again a slightly unexpected turn of events but very impressive. The man could make a fortune in the festival.
Well I am off to the Ferghana Valley tomorrow morning, will try to keep posting but I will be in fairly rural mountainous areas for the next fortnight until I get to Bishkek in Kyrgystan so I may not get online too often.

2004-05-20T15:00:00.000+01:00

An interesting Pub Quiz fact about Uzbekistan

Well greetings from Tashkent to everyone, Yesterday one of my fellow travellers posed me a geographical question which having solved I thought I would pass on to everyone as an interactive challenge. Anyone who emails me the correct answer in the next week or so will get a mention on the website, what more could you want?
So the Question is:
Out of the forty or so landlocked countries in the world Only two can be described as Double landlocked, that is to say all the countries they border are landlocked as well. The first country is of course my current location Uzbekistan which borders Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan all landlocked countries. What is the second landlocked country though? It puzzeld me for a few minutes but I am sure it will be obvious to you all. I look forward to hearing your suggestions.

2004-05-19T14:56:00.000+01:00

3 Americans, a Canadian, a Welshman, 2 Aussies and 7 Englishmen walk into a bar...

We have 14 people on the bus at the moment which as busy as the trip is going to be at any point between Dover and Beijing. The maximum we can take is 26 so we still aren't exactly overcrowded but it does make for quite a different atmosphere than we had back in Europe when there were only seven of us. I mentioned Alice earlier who joined us in Baku even though she wasnt meant to be getting on until Ashgabat, It turned out this was because she lives in Baku and it made more sense for her to come on the ferry with us than fly to Ashgabat. Alice is an American Government Employee with an Official Passport (Better than a pleb passport but not fully diplomatic) and high levels of security clearance. Despite all this she is actually a very nice person. She works for the US Peace Corps in Azerbaijan having previously been in Georgia working for the peace corps and in Ukraine as a volunteer. She has a wicked sense of humour for an American and I have been teaching her lots of English and Scottish slang terms, She now knows how to Shag a Schemie Slag which she didn't beforehand. She is only going as far as Tashkent so willbe leaving us at the Weekend. John who flew into Ashgabat is also only going as far as Tashkent. He spent all his working life as a Solicitor in Hong Kong but has now retired to the West Country. The final newcomer is Kaz a PA in her 40s who is between jobs at the moment and is another of these overland veterans who has been on these trips all over the world. She is coming all the way to Beijing and is an intersting character. She is also a vegetarian making it hard for us when we cook meals but she makes up for it by being a fun and interesting person. When she finishes this trip for instance she will be taking up a post at the United Nations in Vienna. We will also be losing Barry the IT guy from Sydney and Phil the loud mouthed Canadian. Phil by the way was meant to be returning to Vancouver but it turnsout he has a brother in West Calder who has decided to get married at Gretna Green next week so he is flying to Scotland instead. I have been advising him on the delights of Ryanair and Prestwick Airport as he has to get to SCotland from Frankfurt as cheaply as possible. You'll all have to keep an eye out for noisy bald canadians with big moustaches in Edinburgh next week. We should also be getting a few new arrivals in Tashkent to keep us entertained so I will keep you all informed.

2004-05-18T13:19:00.000+01:00

Andrew of Arabia

Hello Everyone, Sorry for my lack of posts in the last week or so but I have been intrepedly crossing the deserts of Central Asia. There was some internet access at $4 an hour in Khiva and Bukhara but it was so slow my $4 bought me 2 emails in an hour and a lot of frustration, So the blog has had to wait until now. I am currently in the City of Samarkand. This is for those of you who don't know in the Country of Uzbekistan having been put there by Josef Stalin in 1926 even though the majority of its population are Ethnically Tajiks. This sort of Gerrymandering was part and parcel of Stalin's Divide and Rule policy in Central Asia which he intened to prevent the rise of a united Muslim "Turkestan" in the Soviet Unions Central Asian republics. This policy worked exactly as he had intended and Central Asia was one of the areas most reluctant to achieve independence after the collapse of Soviet Rule. Several of the republics held referenda in 1991 where the people voted to remain in the Union only to be forced into independence after the coup attempt against Gorbachev led to the Russians unilaterally declaring independence under Yeltsin. The artificial borders in this region which were never drawn up with independence in mind have caused all sorts of problems for the countries since independence with ethnic tensions galore, This was particularly the case in the Ferghana Valley where I will be next week.
However enough of the history lesson. Since I last posted I have crossed two of central asias largest deserts the Karalkum and the Kizilkum. I have also moved from Turkmenistan to Uzbekistan. After leaving Ashgabat in Turkmenistan we went to the Sunday Market where I purchased a traditional tribal hat that looks like a 70s afro wig. WE then spent two days crossing the desert to the ancient city of Konye Urgench where we stayed somewhat bizarrely in an old collective farm that had been rebranded a "Hacienda" and was run by ethnic Koreans sent here in the fifties as forced labour. We toured various ruins and saw the first of several minarets that we have been told are Central Asia's tallest. We then crossed over into Uzbekistan with the border crossing enlivened by a sweepstake on how long it would take us with guesses ranged between 2 and 5 hours. My guess of 4 and a half hours got close but we just made it over in 4hours 15 minutes much to my disappointment. We then visited the museum city of Khiva an ancient Khanate that was depopulated by the Russians to turn it into an open air museum. This means that you can get an accurate idea of an 18th century city but the whole place can seem a bit dead. It has some beautiful palaces and mosques though all decorated with Turquoise mosaic tiles. (This makes sense as the word turquoise comes from colour of the turks). We then travelled on to Bukhara the other Silk Road City that gained notoriety in the 19th Century as a visious Khanate. Two young british army officers/ambassadors/spies called Connolly and Stoddart were imprisoned here after they offended the Khan in 1842 by riding in his citadel and not bringing him gifts. After languishing in a bug infested jailpit onand off for three years they were taken to the town square made to dig their own graves and beheaded. This caused all sorts of upsets in Victorian England but nothing much was done and eventually the Khanate became a Russian possession 30 years later after teh Russians became sick of the endemic Slavery of the Khan including 3000 Russians he had imprisoned. We then travelled on to Samarkand where I am now staying the imperial city of the emperor Timurlane but more about him tomorrow. The last two nightswe have been experiencing local hospitality firstly staying in a Yurt and going Camel riding at an ethnic Kazak village in the desert, then going up into the mountains to stay in a ethnic Tajik village where we tasted the best plov in Uzbekistan. (Plov is a rice stew with mutton or beef and the Uzbek word for it Pilof is the origin of the word Pilau for rice). I will post again tomorrow about Samarkand and tell you more about our various new passengers.

2004-05-08T13:19:00.000+01:00

Vive la France

Last night we had an interesting mixture of local and expat culture. Went out to a local bar and danced to a live band who played a combination of Arabic music and Kylie Covers. We fell in with a girls night out from the Coca Cola offices as they spoke some english and helped us order our kebabs. The whole night out with food and beers cost less than 2 Pounds a head! The place closed early at 11pm because today is war memorial day in Turkmenistan. We thought this would force us to go to bed but when we returned to the hotel the sounds of the disco in the basement reminded us of the presence of a private party thrown by a French construction company. Putting on my best gallic scowl and trying to remember how to pronounce Deux bieres s'il vous plait Charlie and I walked in nonchalantly to claim our share of the free bar. All in all it turned into a very enjoyable evening with some wild dancing to Johnny Halliday, all for a very reasonable price!

2004-05-07T13:32:00.000+01:00

The Arch of Neutrality

Well here I am in Ashgabat posting in a country where there is only one Internet Service Provider (The State) and outgoing messages are liable to be read! The main tourist site here in Ashgabat is the Arch of Neutrality a snappy name for a monument to President Niyazov's policy of Neutrality in what is a volatile region having borders with Afghanistan and Iran to name but two. This consists of a three legged base symbolising the stability of a traditional Turkmen cooking tripod with a large pillar rising from this surmounted by a giant golden statue of the president which revolves slowly on top. This completes one circle every 24 hours so as to allow him to greet the sun each morning face on and bid it goodbye each evening.
In the end we waited from midday on Tuesday until 6am Wednesday for the boat to leave although we got through passport control and in to our cabins by about 3am. The crossing itself was only 14 hours or so but on the other side we then spent 6 hours in passport control and customs so we emerged at 1am yesterday morning! Since then we have driven 600km across the desert without much in the way of sites to see. This morning we went swimming in a 150m long warm underground lake that was in almost complete darkness which was really amazing. We have also been to see one of the worlds largest mosques. The thing here that is really worth seeing though is meant to be the Sunday market in Ashgabat. It is the largest market in the world and you can buy anything from Camels to Carpets to Tanks! We shall be going there Sunday morning and who knows what I might come back with

2004-05-04T05:56:00.000+01:00

Turkmenistan Ferry

Still hanging around in Baku with some level of uncertainty. The ferry to Turkmenistan takes between 18 and 30 hours depending on how they feel and does not have a timetable and cannot be booked in advance. Last night we were all told to be back to the hotel by 10pm as we might have to go and jump on the ferry in the middle of the night! Now it looks like the ferry will leave at midday but we are still not sure. All we can do is sit around and cross our fingers.

2004-05-03T10:04:00.000+01:00

A Night out in Baku

Readers of a nervous temperament and especially my Parents should look away now. Baku is a very European City with all the Oil money and the cosmopolitan mix of nationalities. Although Azerbaijan is an Islamic country it seems very secular and you see fewer women here in headscarves than you do even in secular Turkey. Last night we had several beverages in O'Malleys while watching Liverpool beat Middlesborough in the football and you began to think of yourself as being back home in the UK or at least in Western Europe. When the English manager of the bar recommended a club to go on to called "Blackjacks" I was looking forward to an Espionage style night out of dancing. My initial impressions were also favourable with loud western music, lots of pretty girls and it at least was cleaner than say Subway. When I got up to dance and my fabulous rhythm immediately attracted several women to dance with me however my suspicions were immediately raised. When I sat down to drink my beer and the women came and tried to sit on my lap my fears were confirmed. The rest of the night as I tried to observe the progress of the snooker on the big screen I was continually having to fight them off and assure them that "No I wasn't interested in a little fun" Eventually around 2am I decided to call it a night and bid my many new lady friends goodbye to return to the hotel. As I strolled soberly down the street a friendly local bobby pulled up to check I wasn't lost or something like that. He then told me of his suspicions that I was carrying a quantity of hashish and that I had most probably secreted it in my wallet so to aid him finding it he would need to count my money while his colleague checked my passport. I suggested to him that perhaps we would deal with one thing at a time and that they could easily check my passport while I maintained a firm grip on it and I would count my money myself rather than letting him count it for me. Once we understood each other and he realised I wasn't as stupid as I looked it all became very friendly and he hugged me and called me his brother and sent me on my way, and I made it home without further incident. Still I have learnt that Baku isn't as Western and civilised as you first think and that it pays to be on your guard if you don't want to get ripped off.

2004-05-02T16:11:00.000+01:00

Who the F#%K is Alice?

Well we have arrived in Baku the Oil capital of the Caucasus, this means that it is less poor than the rest of the area and is full of fat Aberdonians splashing their cash - no really. Once I finish this post I am off for a few beers in O'Malleys Irish Pub which authentically enough is apparently run by a guy from Romford. Since I lasted posted we have been up in the Northern Caucasus mountains. We visited the vineyards of Georgia and tried some of the wine which is ok but a little young in general (Pete the american used to work for a californian vineyard and told me this). We then camped near Telavi which is only around 20km from the Russian border which in this part of Russia is the area known as Chechnia, you may have heard of it! Still it was all peaceful on our side of the border and we did'nt see anything worrying at all. We crossed over into Azerbaijan on Friday and stayed in the most beautiful hotel in an old caravanserai at the town of Seki. Seki used to be an independent khanate (independent mini kingdom) in the 18th and 19th Centuries and developed as an important post on the silk route. The hotel was only $15 a night and for that you got a wood burning stove, BBC World, good food and a beautiful 19th century stone building used by camel trains. Today we visited stone age rock carvings and a medieval zoroastrian fire temple, (somewhat inauthentically the temple is now lit from mains gas instead of the natural gas from the ground that used to power it). As I said we are now in Baku and expecting our latest travelling companion who is a 47 year old American called Alice, apart from this we know nothing about her so we will have to wait and see. We catch the ferry on Tuseday to Turkmenistan where central Asia proper begins and the signs of civilisation will be harder to find. Hopefully i'll be able to post again from here in Baku before then.

2004-04-28T11:31:00.000+01:00

Back in Europe

Hi everyone. Sorry for my lack of posts recently but I have been stuck in the middle of nowhere for the last week. Since I last posted we have travelled across Western Turkey in the heavy rain where we visited one of those greek orthodox monasteries called Sumela that is perched precariously on the edge of a cliff. You don't quite need to use a basket to get up there but it was pretty isolated. It was abandoned after the first world war but is still really atmospheric. We then crossed over into Georgia which is geographically counted as part of Europe again. We stayed the first night in Batumi which is in the Adzharia autonomous region. When the recent revolution in Georgia occurred the local warlord there wasnt happy and closed the borders to the rest of the country. Its quieter now but there are still a lot of humvees full of men with balaclavas and ak47s. It was nice to move on to the main bit of Georgia which still has a lot of policeman with guns but seems slighter more Western. We went up into the hills in the middle of nowhere for a few days. It is amazingly beautiful up there and we were just a few km from Mt Elbrus the highest peak in Europe which is over 5600m high. Walked up to the Rioni Glacier which is only about 5km from the Russian Border. Didn't meet any smugglers though who are apparently in the area. We are now in the Georgian capital Tbilisi which is a very cosmopolitan Western style city although extremely cheap. We had a three course meal last night with two bottles of very tasty Georgian champagne for under $10 a head. Very nice indeed. This afternoon I am off for a scrub and massage at the local hot sulphur springs which should be very nice. Hope life in the UK is not too dull for you all.

2004-04-19T16:48:00.000+01:00

Turkish Culture

Well I really enjoyed the culture evening last night. Any culture gets more entertaining when accompanied by the offer of unlimited free drink! The flooshow was really good though even if you hadn't been drinking. There were belly dancing girls guys balancing burning knives on their heads and then throwing them over their heads and whirling dervishes. All very entertaining. Today we went out to tour the area which is littered with Cave dwellings underground fortresses and weird rockformations. I feel like I have seen more churches carved into the rock than anyone ever needs to see. Tomorrow we head north towards Trabzon on the Black sea.

2004-04-18T16:53:00.000+01:00

New Arrivals

Well Istanbul is still as mad an exciting a City as the last time I was here with Stew Pattman on the way to South Africa a few years back. Everyone there is still trying to sell you a carpet even Canadians who look like tourists and ask for directions and then when you try to help them they offer to help you with your carpet shopping. I revisited the Blue Mosque and Aya Sophia the Bysantine Cathedral that became a Mosque and is now a museum. They are both truly awe inspiring buildings. Then we had the most interesting part of the stopover, the chance to meet the new passengers. They are an interesting bunch. Phil is an extrovert Canadian with no hair and a great moustache that Simon Finch would die for. He is an unemployed layabout or so he claims. Peter and Betsy are an American couple originally from California who now live in Florida and Barry is an Australian software developer/Clinical Pharmocologist who has more electronic gadgets with him than Dave Cavanagh and Paul Jenkins combined.

2004-04-18T16:37:00.000+01:00

Cappadocıa Kebabs

Where are they? I have been in Cappadocia since lunch time and not found any kebabs yet, Still there is plenty of time. Tonight we are going on a "Turkish Cultural evening" which i understand consists of: Raki, Kebabs and Belly Dancing. All the best bits of culture rolled into one really. Last night we camped in Ankara at a site which could sleep about 1000 people but the only customers were the 11 of us.

2004-04-17T06:24:00.000+01:00

Istanbul

Just a quıck note to everyone. We are settıng off from Istanbul ın 5 mınutes so I must rush. Next stop ıs Göreme ın Cappadocıa so should be able to get a good kebab there! Thıs ıs down to the SW of Ankara whıch ıs slıghtly off what I thought was the route. Wıll probably post agaın ın two or three days.

2004-04-15T09:06:00.000+01:00

Sofia - Istanbul, Wednesday 14th April

Another long travel day on the motorway down to the Turkish border, If you know how small that little bit of European turkey looks compared to the rest and it takes hours and hours to drive across the tiny bit then you get the idea of how long its going to take us to drive all the way across Turkey. Still we can relax in Istanbul until we leave on Saturday morning, I'll post again before then.

2004-04-15T08:54:00.000+01:00

Rila Monastery, Tuesday 13th April

The engine that we had brought to Sofia was still in the truck as the mercedes compound had been closed the previous day and they had not been able to d anything with it, this left us with another day stuck in Sofia when we had really seen all the sights there were to see. Instead we hired a guy to drive us to Rila Monastery a beautiful UNESCO listed monastery up in the mountains. We were really pleased we went as it is the most fantastic place up in the mountains with gorgeous frescoes and the most over the top gold iconostasis I have ever seen in the church, even Margaret who has been to Moscow and seen the icons there had to admit this was more impressive.

2004-04-15T08:47:00.000+01:00

Sofia, Monday 12th April

Went and admired the tourist attractions of Sofia, which were surprisingly good although 1 day is all you really need to see everything. The Alexander Nevskiy cathedral is impressive with golden domes and beautiful frescoes inside although it is really quite recent built in 1879-1912 in honour of the Russians who died liberating Bulgria from Ottoman (Turkish) Rule in 1878. The result is a genuine fondness in bulgaria for the russians that is still there in the post communist era unlike in most other former eastern bloc countries. The other main tourist attractions also mainly consist of ancient churches with ancient frescoes all of which are beautiful but can get a bit similar after a while. The centre of Sofia is very smart at the moment as they have just been celebrating being admitted to NATO last month and all the Flags of the Nato countries are flying on the main boulevard.

2004-04-15T08:37:00.000+01:00

Croatia - Sofia Sunday 11th April

After a sleep much interrupted by rabid sounding dogs and a very noisy generator woke to my birthday morning cold, grey and damp. Much amused by obscene birthday card from Jo and Alan though, many thanks. Crossed into Serbia without any difficulty and again most of the day spent on motorways though Belgrade and down to Nis. Belgrade is a city of contrasts with some bomb damage still visible from the war and the Porsche dealership next to a huge shanty town. The road from Nis to Sofia is much more exciting however with steep climbs, narrow tunnels and winding railway lines that you can imagine Tito's partisans blowing up in WWII. You would never know it is the main lorry route from Turkey to western Europe. We entered Bulgaria without any more problems and the first town past the border was a good photo op as it is called Dragoman, the same name as the overland company! Late arrival in Sofia in time to eat takeaway Pizza, drink 12 yr old Bowmore and watch Jimmy White win the Players championship snooker on Eurosport with Bulgarian commentary. Very bizarre birthday all round.

2004-04-15T08:22:00.000+01:00

Salzburg-Croatia, Saturday 10th April

Early start from Salzburg for a day of Motorway driving enlivened by the fact that we were crossing the Alps so the scenery was fantastic. Another three countries ticked off as we went from Austria to Slovenia and from Slovenia to Croatia. The look on the Slovenian border guard's face when he asked Charlie where we were going and he said China was priceless, poor guy thought we were utterly mad. General impressions formed from looking at countries from the motorway, Slovenia: pretty and mountainous, Croatia: grey dull and flat, I am told the other side of Croatia is very picturesque but the bit between Zagreb and Belgrade is very dull and I don't recommend it. We camped three km from the Serbian border at an enormous restaurant that seemed out of all proportion to its location but they did me a very nice steak.

2004-04-15T08:11:00.000+01:00

The Edge of Europe

Hello Everyone Sorry for my imposed silence but it proved harder to find an internet cafe in Sofia than I had thought. I have now reached Istanbul where we are staying in a hostel beneath the blue mosque where I can see over the bosphorous to Asia from my bunk bed. It really feels like we have come a long way now. I will add another post in a few minutes saying what I have been up to since I last posted but Internet is playing up in this cafe so may have to move.

2004-04-09T13:43:00.000+01:00

Changes of Plan

Well we are well underway now, The last two days have been nearly constant motorway driving and the previous post was somewhat erratic. Yesterday we made a late night arrival in Salzburg, Austria and today has been our first non driving day giving us a chance to stay in the same hostel for two nights and relax a little. I have found a much better priced internet cafe here in Salzburg and am just about getting used to the strangeness of German keyboards.

I left Edinburgh late on Tuesday night on the sleeper train down to London. The bargain berths are one of the best deals you'll get in Britain, 19 pounds for travel to London, a bed and complimentary shortbread and orange juice in the morning. The departure was a very tearful brief encounter moment on the platform at Edinburgh Waverley and I have been missing Suzanne terribly.

My train trip down to Dover was uneventful and so I arrived an hour early expecting to be the first there. I was soon spotted by a big bald Welshman who called me over as he had correctly guessed I was a fellow Dragoman passenger. He turned out to be Allan Morgan a overland veteran who has been on more than twenty of these trips, all over the world in the last twenty years. He is aged around 60 something and is going all the way to Beijing. We then accosted some random French backpackers who had nothing to do with Dragoman before finding our next fellow traveller, Claire a 30 year old former TEFL teacher from Chester who is also going all the way, as it were. We then spotted someone who could only be a Dragoman driver as he was wearing an ethnic cap and multicoloured patched jeans. He was Charlie one of Dragomans most experienced drivers who has been doing this for over 10 years. Our co Driver is a guy called Ben who is from Adelaide and before he did this used to drive Road Trains in Australia. The last two passengers to turn up were Else and Margaret two retired GPS from Verwood in Dorset, It seems whatever I do I can't get away from doctors! The final member of our party is a trainee guide/mechanic called Neil who we are giving a lift out to Sofia in Bulgaria so he can fix a truck that is broken down there, We are taking out an entire replacement engine for it!

This has necessitated a slight change of plan and route. We will still go down through Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia but will then turn East to Sofia and head straight from there to Istanbul missing out Macedonia and Greece.

Yesterday we spent over 12 hours in the truck driving, we were stuck in terrible Easter traffic outside Frankfurt and we only stopped in service stations, In fact all the way through Germany including camping we never left the motorway except at service stations. By the time we got to our hostel the restaurant was shut so we headed for the bar instead and I got my first hangover of the trip to remind me not to drink on an empty stomach. Today has been spent wqandering round the city which is a beautiful little place with a pretty cathedral and a castle on a hill just like Edinburgh. Everywhere you go there are carboard cutouts of Mozart in the street trying to sell you Mozart Kügeln which are small chocolate balls, Despite all the commercialism it seems a nice place though.

We set off early tomorrow for Sofia which should take two days, Its unlikely I will be able to post tomorrow so it will be Sunday night or Monday morning before I next get a chance. Take care everyone.

2004-04-07T20:36:00.000+01:00

Blogging at speed

I only haVE MONEY FOR FOUR MINUTES BLOG SO HERE WE GO: Am now at our campsite which is the edge OF A SERVICE STATION SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF COLGNE IN GERMANY: TEMPERMENTAL CAPS LOCK Will post again later when i find a better internet cafe. busy day today with four countrries and lots of motorway driving speak to you all soon.

2004-04-06T21:43:00.000+01:00

Departure

Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of posts but I've been away on Holiday! I know I'm about to go away for four months so I hardly need another holiday but it was really just an excuse to spend quality time with Suzanne before I go. Some of you may have found out by more traditional methods of communication that Suzanne and I are engaged now, if not then you know now. Its going to be really difficult being away from her for so long but I know we'll be even stronger when I get back :-). Anyway had another busy weekend firstly on Saturday at my sister's wedding which was great fun. It was not like a traditional wedding at all but everyone had a great time especially the kids which was the important thing. Sunday was my big going away party up in Edinburgh so a big thankyou to everyone who came especially Simon and Lindsay! I'll see you all when I get back but in the meantime have a great time and keep on reading the blog. My sleeper train leaves for London in 2 hours so i'm definitely having to get used to the idea of going. All packed at least but I,m sure I'm going to leave behind something important, By the time you read this I will be en route to Beijing!

2004-03-22T14:45:00.000Z

More Stagnights

Another weekend, another stagnight. This time it was Justin's, he is my soon to be brother in law who is marrying my sister KT. They have been together for years and already have two children Kipp and Lily but have now decided to get married. My disappearing to China all summer hasn't made it easy for them so they are getting married on Saturday 3rd April before I head off on the Wednesday the next week. So we had a busy weekend with Justin and 5 mates coming up to see what a night out in Edinburgh has to offer. It was a really good night actually after we spent the afternoon quad biking over in Fife which was great fun. We then did a pub crawl along George Street having started at the new indian restaurant Zest which is next to Harvey Nichols. The food was really nice and there was a good atmosphere in town with plenty of rugby fans about for the next days Scotland-France six nations game. Am back at work now but I only have three days to go!

2004-03-19T13:50:00.000Z

Passports

The departure date is getting closer and I am finally starting to feel like I am somewhere near getting organised. I have been digging around in Suzanne's loft a lot this week and have nearly got all the things I need for the trip sorted. I went down to TISO's outdoor shop in Leith to spend a voucher that wee Laura got me for Christmas in a work "Secret Santa". I ended up spending the voucher and another £100 as well. I do now have a warm sleeping bag though which should come in handy when we get to the mountains and deserts up in Kyrgystan. Have also been putting a lot of thought into the First Aid kit and have ended up with so much stuff I had to buy two first aid kit bags to put it all in. Never mind, if I need to set up a small hospital while I'm away I should be ok! I have also finally got my first passport back from the Visa agency. I now have my Georgian, Turkmenistani, Uzbekistani and Chinese Visas. No sooner had I signed the Recorded Delivery slip for that one then I had to take the other passport out to the Fed Ex office at Edinburgh Airport to send it to Beijing. Cue a horrible moment where I thought I had sent the wrong one, thankfully i hadn't although I will have to wait until monday to fully relax as thats when the passport should get to Beijing.

2004-03-09T09:09:00.000Z

Family

I have been away for the weekend again, this time to visit my brother Dave in Yorkshire. He has just moved back from Norway with his wife Mo and their two children Billy and Frankie, my nephew and niece. As long as I can remember Dave has been travelling all over the world for years and has been one of the people who really got me in to the idea of travelling and made it seem a fairly normal thing to do. When I was seventeen he rung me up on a Saturday afternoon from Argentina where he was working and asked if I fancied going to South America for a few weeks, by Tuesday afternoon I was on a plane from Heathrow to Rio de Janeiro. I spent three weeks in Bolivia and Peru having a great time when i should have been studying for my A Levels and it has been downhill for me ever since.

2004-03-01T20:25:00.000Z

Preparations

Since I last posted to the site I have been busy both with my job and with preparations for the trip, I have just got back from a great stag weekend in Belfast for my friend Dave Cavanagh who will be getting married while I am away so it was nice not to miss the Stag do. On the trip side of things I have now received my second passport which will enable me to get the Mongolian and Russian Visas I need. The problem I had was that these visas, once issued only last three months and so as I won't be using them until the end of July I can't apply for them until after I leave the UK. I thought I would have to wait until I was in Beijing and apply for express visas there but now I have a second passport I can just send it to the guys at Monkeyshrine who are the Trans Siberian specialists I am using to book the Beijing-Moscow portion of the trip. They should be able to sort it all out for me while I am travelling and I will pick up my passport from them once I arrive in Beijing.

2004-02-22T19:58:00.000Z

Salam Pax

While the holiday has been planned for a long while and is the result of years of my life spent poring over maps and books of far off places the idea of having a blog to record it on is much more recent. Like a lot of people my first encounter with blogs was just before the war in Iraq with the amazing comments of a guy from Iraq posting acerbic comments about Bush, Blair, Saddam and 80's Pop Music. I have become an addict Salam Pax's blend of politics and inane chat which has provided an insight into the life of a guy who is my no means an "ordinary" Iraqi, but who reminds us that we have a lot more in common with Iraq and its people than we sometimes think. Anyone who hasn't heard of him get out there and read his Website. It was his blogging that drew my notice to this type of website and specifically here to blogspot who also host this blog. When a colleague at work, Jo Ward suggested that I should consider having a website to record my trip to China I immediately thought of Salam and blogger.com and the site was born.

2004-02-14T11:51:00.001Z

Why come back at all?
(P.S. Don't read this post if you dislike sentimental mush)

At the time when I booked this trip on Thursday the 2nd of January 2003, it was a new start for me. Since leaving university I have worked full time in the IT job I did part time as a student and have always enjoyed it without ever viewing it as my career.

The trip provided that focus I needed to say I will work long hours to save the money necessary to go on this trip, it will satisfy my wanderlust and when I return I will be able to settle down in a new and fulfilling career. I was never under any illusion that this would be an easy thing to achieve but I was doing no one any harm by going away and seeing what I might discover.

Since splitting from my then fiancee Susan a few years before I had been single and there seemed little on the horizon to suggest this would change. However Sods law ensured that the very day after committing myself to four months out of the country I found myself entering into a relationship. The first few months of a new romance are no time to start bringing up questions like "Will you be upset if i go away for four months if we're still together in a years time?"

Even when you are dating a close friend who it has suddenly struck you means that bit more to you than you thought. Besides if a week is a long time in Politics a year is an eternity in Love. And yet here we are over a year later on St Valentine's Day and the issue of my going away has become a big one. Suzanne knows my reasons for making the trip and I hope understands them. I will be coming back sooner than it might seem now and the reason that I'll be coming back is because I Love Her.

2004-02-12T23:15:00.001Z

And Back Again?

Of course having spent three and a half months travelling overland to Beijing there is a certain temptation to jump on the first flight back home and call it a day. Something however, either a niggling feeling that Marco Polo couldn't have returned this way, or else just my usual desire to see more new places told me that I couldn't do this.

Of course there is also the happy coincidence that there is a quick easy and (comparatively) cheap way of returning to Europe from Beijing. It just happens that the other obsession from my childhood as well as maps was trains, and the temptation to travel on one of the world's longest continuous train journeys was too much for me.

My route is to be what is popularly known as the Trans-Siberian Railway although properly that term applies only to trains bound for Vladivostock and my route is known as the Trans-Mongolian instead. The name surprisingly enough comes from the fact that it travels through Mongolia which has always been another one of those patches on the map that fascinated me as a child, stuck as it was between the enormous land masses of China and the Soviet Union. I am looking forward to seeing the wonderfully named city of Ulaanbaatar even if it is only from the train window as it stops briefly en route to Moscow.

I used to think by the way that I was alone in being mad enough to travel halfway across the world to see a bit of land on a map that had interested me as a boy. However I recently discovered that I am in good company as the political sketch writer for the Times, Matthew Parris did just that when he went to the desolate Kerguelen Islands in the South Atlantic for six months. He was alone in a desolate landscape with only fifty Frenchman for company so I think that what he did is perhaps even more mad than myself but at least I'm not the only one.

2004-02-09T23:04:00.002Z

What the hell did you do that for? (Apologies cousin John)

Well as the title of my blog may have given away, the trip that had caught my eye was the humbly titled "UKB34 UK to Beijing". This had turned me from an idle browser of a brochure with an hour to kill in a dull travel shop, to someone who had just committed themselves to spending four months travelling thousands of miles (and as many pounds sterling) on something that was not even going to happen for another 15 months.

The reason for this inexplicable behaviour had little do with the particular charms Beijing has to offer, after all there are much easier ways to visit it, and when I booked the trip my knowledge of China extended little beyond an intimate acquaintance with Loong Sing's takeaway menu. (I can heartily commend them to anyone who finds themselves on St Leonards St in Edinburgh).

No, the reason that this trip had me hooked was all down to my love of Atlases and Maps. In any sort of half decent Atlas you will find a wide variety of filler maps with details of topographical and historical interest. One map that you will commonly find is that which shows the routes of the great (European) explorers who set out to "discover" the world that its inhabitants already knew fine well. The names of Vasco de Gama who forged the first route to India via the Cape of Good Hope, Columbus who discovered the Caribbean thinking it was India and Magellan who bypassed Cape Horn by way of his eponymous straits leapt out at me from the page.

There was little chance of me replicating the exploits of these heroes marked out across the worlds surface in small dotted lines. For a start we tend not to travel long distances by sea anymore unless we are possessed of extremely large amounts of money to buy a yacht and secondly, even if I did have that money, I could hardly hope to replicate the sort of journey made by 16th century maritime explorers. There was always one name however whose dotted line criss-crossed my map not on the sea but by land, that man was Marco Polo. I will not attempt here to explain all there is to know about this amazing man, follow the link for a description of why it is his dotted line on the map has so drawn me to this route.

Quite simply Marco Polo crossed the entire world from his native Venice which he left as a 17 year old to the court of the great Mongol emperor of China, Kublai Khan. Once there he not only traded as a merchant, but was appointed an ambassador, tax collector, military engineer and translator. The journey he made in 1271 seems daunting enough today and was not to be repeated by Western Europeans until well into the 19th Century. It was my opportunity to follow, albeit vaguely, in the footsteps of this inspiring individual, tracing that dotted line from my atlas that drew me to this trip.

I knew that the nagging feeling I had that air travel had somehow devalued the concept of distance and the sheer vastness of the earth would be solved by going on this trip and that whatever else might happen it would enable me to feel I had done one truly amazing thing with my life.

2004-02-08T08:19:00.001Z

What is this site about?

Well the story all starts just over a year ago on New Years Eve 2002. I went to STA travel with my friend Iain who was picking up some flight tickets for his medical elective in Australia. Owing to the general uselessness of STA staff this simple job required us to sit around the shop for the best part of an hour.

To entertain myself I turned to reading the brochure of a company called Dragoman. This company are in the business of providing what are known as "Overland" trips. Now I knew the basic concept of overlanding having met several people who had done or were doing this sort of thing in Southern Africa when I was there in the summer of 2001. I have to say the impression I got then was not great as it seemed to me to be a sort of 18-30 experience for annoying rich people with names like Rupert and Emily who wore a lot of tie-die and talked about Tanzaniyah. Also it seemed to me that Southern Africa was not that difficult to get about on your own and there was no need to travel on a glorified package tour to see the "real Africa".

Reading the Dragoman brochure however I was struck by the sense that this company was a little bit different. For starters they advised the gap year ethno yahs to use their sister company "Encounter Overland" who specialised in the sort of Tanzaniyah trip I had encountered in South Africa. Secondly Dragoman had the sort of places on its itineraries that most people have never heard of, never mind considered going. This as anyone who knows me appealed to me much more. Initially I was tempted by the route overland across the Sahara Desert through Libya, Algeria and Sudan, all in varying degrees of international ostracisation and civil war. Extreme heat has never been my cup of tea however and so my eye was quickly drawn to the variety of trips they had in the region known as Central Asia.

For those of you who don't know me well my studies at University were in Politics and one of the most interesting and fulfilling topics I studied was that of the politics of Post Soviet Central Asia. This region of "Stans" squeezed between Russia to the north and the better known Afghanistan and Pakistan to the south has a fascinating history as well as being very interesting for their current political situation. During the course I had been determined that should the opportunity arise I would visit this region, not always the easiest place to either get to or travel around. But here in the brochure in front of me were trips to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and especially the most troubling and fascinating of all Central Asian countries: Turkmenistan.

My mind was made up that I was going to Central Asia, possibly for one of their two or three week trips as a holiday. However I soon found myself considering the difficulties of flying in the post Soviet countries and pondering to myself the strange perspective that international air travel gives us on the world. Nowhere is more than a 24 hour flight no matter how far we go, and in practice when we get off that plane, it makes little difference to us whether it is Prestwick or La Paz, we have little conception of how far we have travelled.

In the summer of 2002 however I had made the trip by van to the Polish/Belarussian frontier (another story that I will recount later) that had given me a profound sense of the size of even this part of Europe, it being well over 1000 miles from the ferry port at Rotterdam. This got me thinking about how good it would be to see the world if not quite how our ancestors saw it then at least from ground level to appreciate the sheer size of the world.

Then my eye finally fell on to one of Dragomans trips labelled as "Exploratory" and prefixed by the warning: "The itinerary is as intended but may very well vary. This is an exploratory trip. From experience we have found that clients who take our exploratory trips are well travelled and enjoy the unpredictable nature of the trip."

I knew this was for me, within three days I had reserved my place and within a week I had paid a £300 deposit for a journey that didn't even set off for over a year and would take me away from home for over four months.

2004-02-07T18:55:00.001Z

Who am I?

My name is Andrew Cotton and I live in Edinburgh where I work as an IT helpdesk adviser for a financial institution. Originally I came from Northumberland, England but for the last 6 years I have lived in Edinburgh, Scotland.