Friday 27 June 2008

One World, One Dream... one week

The one year old train from UB to Beijing made the thirty hours pass surprisingly quickly. Some bright spark had the idea of putting air-conditioning on trains the trundle through 40'C heat. Although the personal DVD screens would have been more useful if they hadn't only shown XXX (dubbed in French with Russian subtitles), a Mongolian teen drama, or some wierd music video / porn concoction.

T24 seemed to be the temporary home to everyone we'd met in the previous two or three weeks: from the Moscow train, the Irkutsk hostel, Mongolian train, all eight from the Terelj trip, as well as a handful of others... although my suspicions were correct, that we'd all disperse into the fourteen million bicycles, five million bicycles (apparently), and the billions of olympic moscots which populate every shop in the city...


Ok, well Beijing is hot and humid and covered in a blanket of Lima-esque cloud (or, if the delightful Aussie on the train is the believed, it's actually smog from the burning of all the cheap Antipodean coal; and pigs can fly), contains more residential tower blocks and Chinese restaurants than I though possible, and taxi drivers with very limited geographical knowledge of their workplace.

On closer inspection, there are also many big red walls, stone lions, green and blue policemen, and small dogs... Now, these dogs are not of the malnourished midget mongrel variety familiar back home, nor the handbag dwelling peroxide-permed-blow-dried poodles of Russia. No, the Beijing ones are far worse. They come in all (small) sizes, (inappropriate) shapes, (hideous) colours and (high yappy) pitches imaginable; from guinae pigs on stilts, to furry toads, slightly oversized mice, and electrocuted rabbits. Enough said.

The standard Beijing sights have been explored: The Forbidden City, Lama Temple, Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, Mao's mausoleum (eventually), hutons, markets and a couple of Olymic stadiums (stadia?).

The "Birdsnest" appears to have been intentionally designed to camouflage perfectly with the sky; usign #204 grey. The stadium itself is finished, but the supporting infrastructure is erm, not. A few small tasks remain, including building two more metro lines, surfacing some roads, planting a few hundred trees, fixing the escalators (which currently lead nowhere but the sky), and plastering another few thousand Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying and Nini images to road signs, shops, taxis and any other available surfaces...

Highlight of China (no prizes for guessing) was a very big, old, long wall. Went to the steep Samati section. From the resevoir climbed up to the rope bridge (to the Jing______ section), and upto tower #1 (of 12). Another Wonder of the World which failed to disappoint, and look exactly like it should. Snaking its way across steep mountains and deep green forest, with frequent towers (which are surprisingly spacious inside). The Samati section is mostly steps, but some sections were just gently sloped - a relief in the heat, but presumably lethal in the icey winters? View from the top was pretty impressive (if not somewhat hazy). Almost more remarkable than that was the lack of midweek company on the wall; even at the top of the cable car (for cheats) there were only a handful of fellow tourists....


Now less than twenty four hours until home time...

A note from Outer Mongolia

The "short" twenty eight hour train journey from Irkutsk to Ulaanbaatar saw more change in scenery than the five days through Siberia from Moscow. Flat green forests turned to sandy mountains in the dry desert heat. And the jolly Chinese train crew made a refreshing change to the Russian matrons policing tea consuption in Siberia.

The journey was made all the more infuriating / hilarious by the couple sharing our cabin. It never fails to amaze me that stupid people manage to get quite so far in life (or at least so far from home). They didn't know that the train went to Mongolia (and were therefore missing the necessary visas), didn't know that trains run on Moscow time (so got the departure time for their train wrong by five hours), and after submerging an old SLR in a litre of fresh OJ wondered whether our resident camera expert could fix it...

The Russian / Mongolian border crossing took a mere seven hours (not the rumoured eleven), and a quick check under the beds seemed to satisfy the customs officials (rather than the full train / bag / body search experienced in the opposite direction.


The Mongolian capital is nothing special to look at, but the massive Gandantegchinlen Khiid monastery for male nuns (apparently known as monks) is pretty impressive. And there is a small army of (stuffed) "living dinosaurs" to be found in the Natural History Museum, which bear an uncanny resemblance to camels.

Gorkhi-Terelj National Park offered what I wanted from Mongolia: a lot of nothing. Miles and miles of sand and mountains, with a scattering of trees, camels, horses, gers and people (in that order). We stayed in a ger (or yurk or whatever else you want to call it), although the multicoloured sprial pasta for lunch took some of the shine off the authenticity. Tea made up for it though. Five of us in each ger, (eventually) a stove to keep warm, and a clear sky for the fullmoon rise was pretty impressive.

Decided to be brave and do the "must do" Mongolian thing: horseriding. Much to my relief, said horse looked like it would die if it exerted enough energy to chuck me off or gallop off into the technicoloured sunset. As it was, the thing was utterly uncontrolable, and repeatidly tried to lose its saddle (and therefore me). Anyway, well done me. And Priya.

So, apart from the ATMs' dislike for my card, and the kids whose fists had an affinity for my face, all Mongolia needed was a fe more weeks to explore the Gobi.

Siberia

Wednesday 11 June 2008

A very long way...

First things first:
  • these trains are big
  • they go a very long way
  • they all run on Moscow time (despite some of Russia being nine hours ahead of that)
  • food may or may not be provided at an odd or inconvenient time of the day or night
  • meals before noon are cold and chocolate based
  • meals after noon are "hot" and meatballandrice based
  • endless hot (one degree short of boiling) water is available 24/7
  • a variable trickle of cold water is also accessible; except for thirty minutes before, during or after every station. Helpful
  • Siberia is very big; Russia is even bigger
  • There is no ventilation on said trains. Fact.
So, 21.30 on Saturday seems like a very long time ago. 75 hours and 38 minutes of train journey from Moscow gets you as far as Irkutsk by 06.03 on Wednesday. Admitedly the thing only averages 60km/h (including pleanty of hald hour stops), but Irkutsk is still only half way along the Trans-Siberian.

Almost the entire trip was spent in a four bed cabin, occupied by two smelly, hairy, beer drinkers with dodgy accents. And a Russian guy.

Russia is big. I possibly already mentioned that? But Siberia is not as Siberia-esque as I had imagined. Ok, so possibly I'm naïve, thirty degrees too far south and six months late, but it is so green and full of trees. Not the vast expanses of nothingness that I imagined. Kazakhstan was a bit hillier, but other than that, remarkable little change in the 5185km from Moscow to Irkutsk.

A big capital city

Red Square is exactly that (except that it's not square), surrounded by St Basil's cathederal, the Kremlin, Lenin's tomb, State History Museum and гум. With the excpetion of the museum, all are better inside than out.

St Basil's is postcard perfect, an inside a maze of rooms, spiral staircases and turrets to explore. гум is a lot like Eldon Sqaure, and any keen shopper would have a field day; for the rest of us, a nightmare.

The remainder of the three days in Moscow included pleanty of wandering the vast Moscow streets, avoiding the cops, admiring the underground people's palaces, deciding that the view of Moscow from a ferris wheel was not worth dieing for, looking at yet more statues of dead people, and stocking up on train supplies.

Thursday 5 June 2008

Search for the king

First stop St Petersburg; actually my fourth, if you count 11/4, EDI and FRA. Lufthansa did their best, but despite stalling check-in and delaying all their flights (arriving after public transport comes to a halt in the wee hours), managed to find the hostel; staffed by a one armed mute. Oh, and the visa registration people kindly decided that my place of birth does not exist, and therefore could not be registered in Russia. Excellent.

As windy (of the breezy variety) and full of stone as Edinburgh, as water filled and church infested as Venice, and as huge and impressive as Buenos Aires, St Petersburg seems like a pretty decent place; being about one whole metre above sea level helps the ol' HACE too. And at just 305 years old, St P is really quite a youngster.

Peter and Paul's "fortress" appears to be 122m of gold-coated-Thailand-esque cathederal, a few one storey buildings, surrounded by a big brick wall; they shoudl go the Northumberland to see how to build proper castles. It appears compulsary that ceilings in these places are covered with small naked cherubs, but here they have a a slighty unusual take on them. Bow and arrow, check; twigs/flowers/carefully positioned cloth draped around them, check; but cherub with step ladder? - with planks of wood? - with lead pipe?

Once again, my faithful travel companion, LP, was right: the queue for the Hermitage was insane; and Russians have a soft spot for students. Inside, the Winter Palace contains more Russian/French/Spanish/British/Flemish/Islamic/Italian art/paintings/tapestries/fabrics/old things than anyone could ever want to see (although maybe that is just my pretty limited attention span). Dozens of lion x eagle hyrids, and more slighty odd cherubs were scattered amongst the hundreds of square metres of gold. Then I got bored and escaped.

So far, CT's taxi service (thankyou), two AEROplanes, a bus, a taxi, and so the next non-train vehicle list was the hydrofoil to Petrodvorets; James' highlight of Russia so far. Forty five minutes later, and we were welcomed by the fountains of Petrodvorets Palace's Lower Gardens. Actually surprisingly nice; mostly due to the "gardens" being more of a mixed woodland, rather than overly pretentious floral constructions. Fish, frogs and sprogs all enjoyied the watery cascades and fountains; and there was yet another giant palace.

The return trip to St Petersuburg started the train journey to Beijing. All twenty-nine kilometers and fifty minutes of it. Unfortunately, the train museum was closed. Dammit. Next time, eh?!

And despite all of these palaces, I still can't find out where the king of Russia lives.

Sunday 18 May 2008

T minus two weeks

So, here's the plan...

St Petersburg
to Beijing; via Mongolia.

Six trains.
9,000 km.
One month: June (annoyingly).

Flights booked, three visas acquired, LP read, flights unbooked (by an ever helpful third party), route devised, trains investigated, flights still unbooked, and essentials listed: camera (singular), iPod (not to be taken to altitude), passport (useful), notebook (to filter internal monologue and prevent it all ending up here), pencil (superior to pen), LP (the jolly man will make me smile), Frog (may get squashed), sofa fan (but prefers trains) and some plastic (to procure train supplies).