We woke up facing a seventeen hour train journey from Beijing to X'ian. Seventeen hours. On a train. Granted it was an overnight one but still, the prospect was daunting. Not least because it meant we had to find food, edible food, that would sustain us for the journey's duration. As our time in Beijing had made clear, this would be no easy task. Before all that though, we decided to fit in one more of Beijing's recommended sights and made our way to the Summe...

After the heroics of the day before we decided to tone things down and visit some temples and other buildings recommended by Lonely Planet. The Lama Temple, so called because of the Buddhist title not the animal, was initially quite disappointing as it contained almost identical architecture to that found in both The Forbidden City and The Temple of Heaven. However, as we delved deeper into the complex we found that the idols situated within each of the temples...

My experience of The Great Wall of China went beyond all expectations. In truth, I had given the sight little thought before entering the country as I could not see past the fact that it was, despite its impressive length, nothing more than a wall. The ingenuity behind its construction was something to be admired certainly but how exciting could it be to see just a small segment? As it turns out, very. We set off from our hostel, alongside a handful of other tr...

Alice was pleased to be touching down in Beijing. Where in India she had been stared at incessantly, here she was just ignored. From lechery to indifference. Progress. My experience in India had been completely different. I had enjoyed the way I was taken in by the locals, the respect they had shown me during my time there and, of course, being likened to David Beckham. Whilst there had been many culture shocks to process, with some being more difficult than othe...

With no driver to pick us up anymore, we were forced to take a taxi from the airport to the hotel. The horror. Unsurprisingly, our taxi driver had no idea where he was going. And after about the fourth time of stopping to ask a random pedestrian for directions, I did start to wonder what happened to a good old fashioned map. Instead we were forced to rely on the word of men who, being men, almost always pointed straight, then gestured left before uttering somethi...