Xian

We took a train out to Xian which is close to the Terracotta Army which we planned on visiting. Xian is a big city and has a few sights worth seeing, like the Bell Tower where we saw a traditional Chinese music performance and the Muslim Quarter with lots of markets, street food and the Great Mosque. The pollution was pretty bad the whole time we were here, and really bad on the day we left.

The Great Mosque, a very Chinese looking mosque

A lady doing some cloth spinning

The outside of the Army museum, you can see the pollution drifting around at the back

Kerry at the Terracotta Army

Rach at the Terracotta Army

A clay dude

Inspection time

A General, maybe

Clay horses pulling stuff

More photos here

Next up Shanghai

Beijing

20-28th November

Beijing is a cool place, probably one of the best places we visited in the whole time we've been away. There's plenty of stuff to see and just dealing with the cultural differences keeps you busy enough, mostly it's a bit of laugh but it can also be frustrating. We took in most of the big tourist sights and spent some time just messing about. It was actually the longest time we've spent anywhere in the last 5 months.

A couple of shaggy, tired looking tourists in the Forbidden City

Rach at the Temple of Heaven

Self Portrait on the Great Wall, about an hour later the sky was thick with pollution

Getting down at the Temple of Heaven

The Hutong where we were staying, bikes are the main way of getting shit done in China

More photos on Flickr: here

Next up Xian and the Terracotta Warriors!

Mongolia

16 - 18 November

After hitting Ulaan Baatar early in the morning we messed about in town for a while and then headed out to a Ger camp for a couple of days.

Buddhist Monastery in Ulaan Baatar

Sükhbaatar Square, Ulaan Baatar

A Lion, eating a chain

The Ger camp was permanent rather than the usual nomadic camps and was about an hours drive from Ulaan Baatar across some dodgy highways and then snowy fields. It was pretty cold and each Ger has a coal burning stove inside that keeps you warm. Rach went horse riding with the nomads who had setup camp about 1 km away and we visited them in the afternoon.

Rach about to ride satan's offspring

The dogs sleep next to the doors where all the heat escapes

They're not all that tall in Mongolia

The train out of Ulaan Baatar at first was snowy plains and then slowly changed into the barren desert of the Gobi. At the border crossing they lift the entire train off the wheels(with everybody on board) and replace them with the wider gauge for the Chinese tracks.

A Ger camp seen from the train

Desert

Here's us looking weird on the train to Beijing

Goodbye Mongolia

More photos here and here

Next up Beijing

Trans Mongolian

The next train was between Irkutsk and Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia. We had some trouble as we got on this train, some other kindly people had taken our seats so the cabin attendent moved us somewhere else. However the train is jam packed full of locals carrying heaps of shitty stuff to trade on the way and they took offence at us being in their cabin so after lots of yelling and some pushing, shoving, and so on we got moved into the 1st class wagon. The only difference between Kupe and 1st class is that each cabin is 2 beds instead of 4. The wagon is still full of traders and their gear. At Ulaan Ude everybody piles off the train for 30 minutes with their wares and trys to sell as much of their crap as possible. Even the cabin attendants set up a stall selling silks, it's all a bit comical really.

Traders selling their shit in Ulaan Ude

Not much else happened on this train, the border crossing takes about 6 hours but customs and immigration mostly ignored us to concentrate on the traders. After we got into Mongolia and on our way again the carpets in the hallway got pulled up and heaps of gear got pulled out, we assumed this was stuff they didn't want to declare/pay tax on. Everybody must know it goes on but nobody cares.

More photos here

Next up Mongolia

Siberia

12 - 14 November

Listvyanka

After arriving in Irkutsk we headed out to Listvyanka which is on the shore of Lake Baikal, the largest body of freshwater and the deepest lake in the world. Apparently it holds 1/5th of the worlds freshwater. It's about 1 hour on icy/snowy roads and was flippin' cold, and snowing. We visited the local musuem and had a bit of a walk around the village before heading for the relative comfort of our heated hotel.

Listvyanka Village

They have 1L beers in Russia. You hear that! 1L!

The next day we talk a walk to see if we could get a better view of the lake, it was somewhat successful.

Lake Baikal

Rach throwing a snowball.

In the afternoon we headed off for some dog sledding. We don't have any photos of that which is a bummer but it was good fun and exteremely effin' cold.

This isn't a sled dog, he seemed to be guarding some bricks.

Irkutsk
We stayed in Irkutsk overnight before catching the train into Mongolia. Irkutsk is quite a big city but doesn't have much going for it tourist wise, we visited a museum of some guy who had been shipped out to Siberia for being involved in a revolution in the 19th century. That's how interesting it gets. It was about -18c as we walked around.

The Angora river, the only outlet of Baikal

More photos on Flickr: here and here

Next up the Trans Mongolian train.