After the rickety, sedate carriages of the Trans-Siberian, we soon agreed that the bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai is the only way to travel by rail. Our sudden arrival into modernity was not complete by the time we left the railway station though; for we had arrived in Shanghai; the former treaty port foreigner's paradise, now financial powerhouse of modern China, via the birthplace of the CCP. We dumped our bags in our hostel and set off for East Nanjing ...

HI everyone. Sorry for the lack of blog, we have been ridiculously busy in the past few weeks. Beijing is an amazing city, with so many people and sights and sounds. Every hutong (alleyway) there is someone cooking chicken or egg and soy sauce pancakes or fruit on a stick glazed with sugar. This place doesn't allow you to get hungry, there is so much, Even too much food around. We have tried dumplings and dim sum, and of course Peking duck. They don't really do...

As the pine covered mountains and snowy taiga gave way to rocky outcrops and gentle rolling hills, we knew we were leaving Siberia behind us to cross through Buryatia to the Mongolian border. The border crossing itself however, did its best to dull our excitement. Aside from a small market selling cigarettes and completely genuine Calvin Klein boxer shorts, there was little to do but wait out the ten hours or so it took the officials to take our passports, search...

Having just arrived at Irkutsk after a four day train ride it is so nice to be on solid ground. The width was probably only about two single beds put together with four people crammed inside. It was fine for a few days but by the forth I definitely had cabin fever. I watched the world go by, slept and drank vodka with our group. We were put in a gorgeous chalet with amazing views of Lake Baikal. The lake was pretty much frozen over, and ice had formed that looke...

If St Petersburg was Russia's Paris, then Moscow would be its London. A bustling metropolis with a grumpy man in a woolly hat for every one of St Petersburg's fur clad fashionistas, it has a grandeur expressed more through its metro system and towering Seven Sisters skyscrapers than palaces or cathedrals. The Soviet legacy is most keenly felt in the bold Constructionist architecture than anything else, with the Russian State Library opposite the Kremlin a neat ju...