Dear avid followers, I fail to be able to keep up with myself on the blog. The internet being down yesterday did not help. I would also be uploading more photos to flickr if it didnt take an hour to do ten photos. I have hundreds on the camera and am beginning to think I will run out before long. Some have already corrupted and have been lost forever :-( I think it is more likely to be the slow computers than the internet connection. This is of course a modern c...

Beijing As I begin to write this I am already in my ninth day here. Tomorrow will be my last before I catch a train to Shanghai. After buying a map at the station and finding our bearings we joined the que for the taxis. It was a long que and the Chinese would take any opportunity to seize even the smallest gap in front of you. The taxi was good and cheap and dropped us at the mouth of the hutong where I hostel was. Beijing is known for its Hutongs, little narr...

The internet here will not allow me to edit the last blog entry, so I will continue here. Leg 2 Irkutsk-Ulaan Bataar (Mongolia) We had elected to travel 2nd class for this leg of our journey and were most pleased to discover that we had a 4 bed cabin to ourselves, at least to begin with. We also found ourselves in a carriage with a few other english speakers, and even some genuine English people. Perhaps this kills some of the point of travelling through distan...

The Journey to Beijing Hello! Sorry not to have updated this blog previously, but I have been very very busy as I hope to explain. I will try and give you the full story, but having left it so long, such a lot has happened already and it may take several days to complete. Moscow Just in case you dont know why I refer to 'we' in the next section, my friend Angela joined me for the first two weeks of the trip. We made it to the airport safely at some previously...