The Day We Caught the Train

Wednesday February 20th - Monday February 25th

The planning for this stage of the trip has taken months and finally we find ourselves wandering around Beijing Central Station looking for Train 3 to take us to Moscow. A few blank looks and hand signals later and we're being shown along carriage 10 to our room for the next 5 nights. We decided to go posh and have a deluxe soft class cabin, i.e. it sleeps 2 and has a shared sink/shower room. As it turns out it's pretty much the only option if you want to a) have some room (some of the 4-berth cabins had 5 or 6 people in them!) and b) not be in a cabin shrouded in cigarette smoke the whole trip.




Our journey takes us 7865km through Northern China, into and out of Mongolia, through the Siberian plains and into Moscow. As the train passes through each of these countries the restaurant car changes so you get Mongolian in Mongolia, Chinese in China, etc. Sounds good but for the majority of the journey we're in Russia and they're not renowned for their culinary work. We did try it but after paying an extortionate amount for a boiled egg and slice of bread avoided it thereafter. To get around this the advice is to come stocked up with food that needs only hot water as every carriage has a samovar, a small coal-fired urn giving you boiling water when you want it. This meant that we came loaded up with pot noodles of varying flavours. As it turned out they all tasted the same and were nuclear hot. We managed to supplement this with bread from some of the stations and of course chocolate and beer!


As well as a new restaurant car as you cross borders you also have the delights of customs and passport control boarding the train. Travelling west meant these took place at 11 at night or later and you had the joy of a friendly Russian (an oxymoron if ever there was) rummaging through our things or looking in the roof of our cabin. Quite what he expected to find is anyone's guess but my jar of Marmite survived.

So, enough on the logistics, what about the journey itself? It takes 6 days to travel between Beijing and Moscow and during that time you get the chance to see some stunning scenery. Once you leave the smog of urban and industrial Beijing behind you get into agricultural land that in season would be filled with fruit trees and corn. You also run close to the Great Wall at a couple of points and again can appreciate the scale of it as it snakes up and down hills. You soon start to climb from the lowlands of China up to the high plains of Mongolia which sits at around 1500m elevation.



As you pass through Mongolia you go across part of the Gobi Desert and we saw a few Bactrian camels (the two-humped variety). You also see a lot of yurts (or gers), the traditional Mongolian style homes. As you reach the northern parts of Mongolia you start to get into snowy landscapes that stay with us until Moscow.



Siberia is renowned as being a cold, god-forsaken place and as we rush by in the train you can see why. There's not a lot there and what there is looks pretty industrial with the odd exception of some interesting churches. The natural beauty though is stunning and in winter is very picturesque. Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world, is particularly impressive stretching away to the horizon and occupying our view for several hours. Every so often there are groups of people fishing through the ice, although as the lake is pretty heavily polluted I'm not sure what the catch would be like.



The snow remains very thick and even as we cross back into Europe from Asia and the temperatures remain on the fresh side. The lowest we got was -12°C at one station and we didn't hang around to watch the thermometer drop any lower.


Before we know it we're pulling into the Yaroslavsky Station in Moscow, bang on time as well, saying cheerio to people we've met and heading off to our hostel for the final 2 nights of our trip. We've travelled nearly 8000km by train without a hitch, an amazing feat really when you consider the terrain it covers and the weather at this time of year. No frozen points or wrong kind of snow problems here. We've been treated to some stunning scenery and are glad that we decided to do this journey as part of our Big Trip.

Trans-Mongolian 24/7s

Wednesday: Sitting comfortably? Let the train journey begin.
Thursday: Through desert, past camels. Mongolia looks stunning.
Friday: Even under ice Lake Baikal's still impressive.
Saturday: We don't get snow. This is snow!
Sunday: Can't speak Russian? Pointing and smiling works.

Hazy Shade of Winter

Sunday February 17th - Tuesday February 19th

We've left the warmth of the southern hemisphere well and truly behind now and have hit winter properly. Beijing is pretty nippy when we land in the afternoon although compared to a month ago it's positively tropical at just above freezing. Our hostel picks us up from the airport and we're checked in and out of the door headed for Tiananmen Square. Every night there is a ceremonial flag lowering when the sun sets (and vice versa every morning) and hundreds of people cram around the flagpole in the Square to watch. Most of them are Chinese and you're watched closely by the local boys in blue as the soldiers perform a pretty elaborate ceremony and carry the flag off through the Gate of Heavenly Peace. It's fascinating to watch.

The next morning is a very early start and a very cold one. The temperature's not interested in positive values as we head out to JinShanLing and the start point of our walk along the Great Wall. We're doing a much quieter 10km section that will take us to Simatai. The air may be cold but the sky is clear and for the first two hours you're escorted along by local guides who, after you show no interest in buying books, postcards, t-shirts, head back to the start. There has been some restoration on this section but for the most part it's in a fairly rustic state but still a very impressive structure. It's the scale of it that is the most awe-inspiring as you see it heading up and along ridges and away into the distance.

Our final day in Beijing was spent mainly in the Forbidden City. This is the area that contains numerous temples and palaces that various dynasties in the past have used as their quarters and contains literally millions of antiques and religious artifacts. It's a huge site and only by walking it do you get the chance to appreciate its scale. There is a huge amount of restoration taking place and the palaces that have already been done look stunning.

To round off our Beijing experience we visited the Silk Market on the hunt for some coats that would mean we could get off the train in Siberia without succumbing to hypothermia in 10 seconds. It's an exhausting experience with everyone trying to get you to buy things from their stall. Cries of "Oi lady, you want cushion covers" are commonplace. We manage to get a couple of coats at a vastly reduced price from the original offer but whether or not we haggled well or paid over the odds is unclear. Either way we're not going to freeze.

We've really enjoyed Beijing and it will be interesting to see what the Olympics does for it. I've no doubt the Games will be a huge success for China and they will put on a fantastic show, the government will see to that, but the one thing that could detract from the whole spectacle is the air quality. The smog, even in winter, is clearly visible and will only get worse as summer comes around. If they can sort that they'll be onto a winner.

We packed our bags and stocked up on food ready to board the Trans-Mongolian train that would take us from Beijing all the way to Moscow.

Beijing's 24/7s

Sunday: By thunder it's cold, get the thermals.

Monday: It's not called the Great Wall accidentally.

Tuesday: Oi lady, you want jacket? Best price!

Hot in the City

Thursday February 14th - Saturday February 16th

The only previous experience we'd had of Singapore was a few hours in Changi Airport so we were looking forward to our 3 days in the city. Our flight from New Zealand arrived in the evening and after getting to our hostel we headed out on the forage for food. Singapore has a lot of hawker markets where you find hundreds of stalls selling all kinds of food and drink for next to nothing and it's good quality. Our hostel was a little out of the main tourist centre so we stood out a mile amongst the locals but didn't once feel unsafe and we helped ourselves to some very good food.

We hit the ground running the next morning. Our first port of call was Sentosa Island. This is where tourists and locals alike go for the beach (albeit manmade and facing the polluted waters of the Straits) and where the rich people (of which we were not included according to the frank tourist officer) have their apartments and boats, etc. We travelled to the island by cable car and you got a good sense of a) the development and land reclamation that is going on in Singapore and b) what a huge industrial port is in the city. We spent a short while looking around the island before the humidity 'forced' us to seek solace in a bar for a drink and some food.

Back on the mainland (or main island) we headed to two distinct areas of Singapore; Chinatown and Little India. Both areas are fascinating and relatively untouched by the huge flashy side of Singapore to the extent that you feel like you could be walking in either of those two countries. We looked around the many markets and temples of each area and enjoyed the sights and smells. The temples in particular were extremely ornate and elaborately decorated and yet fitted in perfectly.

Our final day begin with an early alarm call as we were off to school, cooking school that is. We'd booked ourselves onto a Thai cooking course for the morning and had a whale of a time. Our chef, McDonald, was fluent in Singlish (the Singaporean take on English) and was very funny, as well as extremely talented, as he described the interesting properties of some of the spices he was using and had Rach in tears of laughter at some points. We were shown a couple of dishes and then got to prepare 3 of our own which we then enjoyed for lunch with the others on the course. Really good fun and anyone who visits us now will be treated to some awesome garlic prawns!

There's one thing that is considered a must when visiting Singapore and that's a trip to Raffles Hotel. We duly obliged and were surprised at how good it actually looked and how large it was. We took it all in over a Singapore Sling cocktail in the Bar & Billiards Room, well you have to really don't you?

With that box well and truly ticked we then headed onto the Singapore River for a quick trip in a bumboat. The sun was just going down so we got the best of both worlds seeing the city at dusk and then all lit up for the evening. Back off the boat we headed a short distance and got ourselves a good viewing spot to watch some of the Chingay Parade that celebrates the Lunar New Year. This is a huge event and has numerous colourful floats, dancers, Chinese dragons, etc. For once we'd turned up in a city at the same time as a big event was taking place, not something we'd managed often while away.

We had a great time in Singapore, albeit a short one, and crammed in plenty of things and boarded the plane to Beijing to do it all again.

Singapore 24/7s

Friday: Away from tourists we really stand out

Saturday: Being tall in Asia comes in useful

Relax

Friday February 8th - Thursday February 14th

And so the final week in New Zealand is upon us. Can't believe that we are now just two weeks from returning to the UK. We're already starting to make contact with respective works sorting things out for when we return but we're not going to wish away the final days. With this having been our final week in NZ we decided that we would do what we had said we would do 23 weeks ago and find a nice place and hole up there for a few days to take it easy. The weather is still great here, the farmers aren't enjoying it as most of NZ is starting to go into drought but for us it's lovely.

With new car key at the ready we headed off from the Coromandel and started to make our way north of Auckland. This was another part of the North Island that we'd not explored before and we'd hoped to be able to make it to the Bay of Islands and spend some time there. When we looked at it though we would be spending a lot of time driving and not a lot of time enjoying the location so we spent a night in a small place called Waipu Cove and ended up staying for 3 nights as it was a very nice place with private beach access. We were able to enjoy strolls up and down the deserted beach, plenty of swims and sunbathes and even caught a beautiful sunrise too (something that we'd not really been able to do before). Only for a short 10-minute spell did the weather turn on us going from hot sun to driving rain to hailstones to muggy rain to sun.

After our relaxing time in Waipu Cove we had to head back to Auckland. We've been staying with a former colleague of mine, Neville and his wife Yvonne. They've made us very welcome and have shown us around a lot of Auckland that we've not seen before. We've been out an area known as Iron Sands because the sand is black. This is very close to the Manakau Heads where the Tasman Sea enters the estuaries and harbours around Auckland. We've also been able to get to Waiheke Island, one of the many islands close to Auckland in the Hauraki Gulf. We spent a very pleasant day having lunch in a winery and a quick trip to the beach. We've rounded our time off in Auckland and NZ with a very nice meal in the Sky Tower in the revolving restaurant.

We fly to Singapore on the 14th and then it's 3 nights there before a flight to Beijing. They're in the middle of one of their coldest winters ever so we'll have a chilly 3 nights there before boarding the Trans-Mongolian train on the 20th to take us through China, Mongolia (where they're just had an overnight temperature of -46°c recorded) and into Russia arriving in Moscow on the 25th. We've got 2 nights there before we return to the UK on the 27th. The likelihood is that the final blog entries won't be added until we get back so we'll make sure there are some good photos to add when we do update.

The week's 24/7s:

Friday: Sun, sea and sand. Feels like holidays

Saturday: New Zealand is like two different countries

Sunday: Hot sun to hail in thirty seconds

Monday: All you can eat? With my reputation?

Tuesday: No more car keys to worry about

Wednesday: It's all about the eating...and drinking!

Thursday: 6431km, two islands, that's New Zealand...done!

The Riverflow

Friday February 1st - Thursday February 7th

It's been a week of two halves really with the first part being pretty active and the second part being pretty relaxed. There's been drama and high emotion so brace yourselves for the next five minutes.

After our Tongariro Crossing adventure and Rach's parachute jump we continued the active theme by doing a 3-day canoe trip down the Whanganui River. This journey is part of a 5-day one you can do that is one of New Zealand's 9 Great Walks. You walk nowhere but 8 Great Walks and 1 Canoe Journey isn't as snappy a title. The 3-day trip takes you 88km downstream during which time you have to navigate your way through numerous rapids, most of which are only Grade I (slightly lumpy water) but on the final day you encounter a Grade II one (potential for capsizing in an open canoe).

Our first day of the journey was the longest at 38km and with a low flowrate in the river thanks to very low rainfall it was pretty hard going, "canoeing through treacle" was what Rachel likened it to. For the 2 nights we were camping and made the most of not having to carry our food by taking 'proper food' with us. For the first time as well we even treated ourselves to some wine as we had plenty of barrels to fill.

The second day was similar to the first with great scenery as you canoe down river gorges with the occasional wild goat for company. It was only 28km on this day but we did get out of the canoe and walk to the Bridge to Nowhere. As the name suggests this is a bridge that goes nowhere. Built in the 1930s it's a pretty comprehensive concrete structure that was supposed to provide access to new settlers and help them make money from the land. In the end they didn't fancy it and went elsewhere leaving this huge bridge in the middle of the forest. It does attract plenty of tourists now though and the majority arrive by jet boat which means that the poor old canoeists have to hang on when these things come shooting by. Luckily we were at the end of the main tourist season so we only saw a couple.

The third day is the shortest at a mere 22km but it does have this large (for an open canoe) Grade II rapid. We'd been told the best way to approach it and felt pretty confident until we came to it behind a family group of 5 canoes and a kayak. The kayak made it through easily enough but of the 5 canoes 3 capsized, one after the rapids as it had too much water onboard and was unstable. We didn't have much choice, we had to go through it. The rapid itself was OK, pretty lumpy and big waves but not too bad but we took on a huge amount of water and my slight frame in the back it meant we became very unstable. A couple of wobbles and we thought we were going for a swim but we made it to the pebbly beach and bailed out. Another couple behind us manged to sink their canoe, he was very pleased with himself, she wasn't and had a face like thunder, very funny. We made it to the end with no more dramas and looked back on a very enjoyable 3 days.

From the canoeing we dorve to the west coast and a little town called Raglan. Famed for its surf beaches Rach was keen to get to the sea and get on a body board. We spent 2 nights here in a tipi set back in the bush, a very tranquil spot and different from what we'd stayed in before. It also had some of the most vicious mosquitoes we'd come across too. The beaches were pretty good here but it was the surf that was most impressive. The waves were huge and after a brief play I ran away to watch from a safe distance as Rach continued to get thrown around. A good spot and nice to relax for a couple of days.

From Raglan we crossed the North Island and went to the Coromandel Peninsula. This coastline is very picturesque with plenty of coves, bays and sandy beaches. I'd hoped to get out to White Island, an active volcano, but the wind was too strong so the trip was cancelled. Something for the next time. We spent a night at a campsite in a place called Hahei. From here we went to Cathedral Cove, a beautiful beach and huge arch eroded by the sea. We spent slightly longer than planned in Hahei as there was a small misplacement of some car keys on the beach. 3 hours of searching by hand, foot and rake failed to turn them up and so a few phonecalls to the local garage, several hours and a wad of cash later we had a new key. I won't say who's fault it was that the keys were lost, only that Rach is now the designated responsible adult of the two of us.

We've now got a week left in New Zealand which we're probably going to use to relax and enjoy before we begin the busy trip home.

The week's 24/7s:

Friday: Night swimming finishes us off, nearly completely.

Saturday: It'll be a relaxing journey we said!

Sunday: One more wave and we'd be swimming

Monday: Mosquito nets don't put off determined mosquitoes

Tuesday: Wind doth blow and I can't go

Wednesday: Where are the keys? In the sand!

Thursday: Heads screwed on? Good, can't forget those.