Having moved to the new dragon hostel down the road from our finishing hostel for vodkatrain, we set out exploring our new area and found all the essentials we would need. As most of the others from the vodkatrain group were also staying in beijing for a while we met back up with them and went to the silk market which was quite an experience. You are hassled continuously and dragged to the stalls to haggle fiercely for a variety of fake goods...however we did man...

Arrived in the afternoon and met Alex our honcho at the train station. We were driven to our hostel which was more like a hotel and our twin room was spotlessly clean and very comfortable. In the evening we went for a Beijing duck dinner in a restaurant round the corner from our hostel which has now become our favourite haunt for dinner. After dinner Alex took us to bar street in the sanlutin district where we found a bar which we stayed in for the rest of the ev...

This morning after breakfast we all boarded the coach and drove for an hour an half into the national park to the ger camp. We were very impressed with our new accomodation for the next two nights, our round tent contained four single beds, a small sink, a table and a fire buring stove. However, our toilet facilities left a little to be desired as it was a small hut with two toilet cubicles which contained a long drop which a few of us were slightly worried about...

During our train journey to Mongolia we were approached by the train attendents and after some pointing and guessing we realised that they were asking to borrow a knife so kurt, one of the guys from our group gave them his multi tool. We decided to walk to their cabin to see what they were doing and discovered them cutting up a sheeps head with it. On reaching the border leaving russia we had officials come aboard to check our paper work we had filled in and to s...

We arrived in Irkutsk in the morning, met our honcho Costa and drove one and a half hours to Lake Baikal. We were staying in a wooden chalet overlooking the valley and the lake, the view was amazing from our balcony as everywhere was snowy and the lake was frozen. Everyone showered and then catherine and everyone went to a russian sauna which involved being slapped with pine branches and rolling around in the snow whilst drinking tea. We all chilled out in the ev...