Well, we arrived in Guilin after an entertaining train journey from Shenzhen. We had to get two cabins as we went for the cheapest top bunks we could. Tom and Sarah shared with an elderly couple while Laura and Sam shared with five screaming children next door. Apparently the crèche didn't close until the early hours of the morning, which annoyingly was when the train pulled into Guilin station. We arrived at our hostel and soon began to realise that we did...

From Lhasa we headed to Hong Kong for a few days. To get there we had to get a 3 day train from Lhasa to Guangzhou. We decided to treat ourselves to a bit of luxury and got a soft sleeper. This meant we got our own compartment with a tv each and the most luxury of all.....a door! We have never had such a quiet train journey, as soon as that door shuts it's just silence. This meant we had a chance to catch up on some much needed sleep. We hadn't taken any fo...

The train to Lhasa was definitely the most difficult train journey we've done. We quickly started to climb in altitude and struggled with the effects it had on our bodies. We skipped between nausea, light headedness and headaches. We reached 12,000ft by the evening of the second day on the train which is the same altitude as Lhasa. This meant we would get three days to acclimatise to this altitude before we continued to climb to base camp.The train journey was ...

Our train ride to Chengdu was a fun one with us playing cards all the way. The lads decided to try some rice wine, which they soon regretted. It quickly became a punishment drink for the loser of the game.This train became the beginning of us turning into a spectators sport for the Chinese. Laura was unfortunately in a cabin with three Chinese girls who liked to poke her and repeat everything she was saying. They were quickly renamed the wicked witches.We arriv...

For our train to Xi'an we chose to go hard sleeper, much to the dismay of the hostel owner! When we boarded we found that it was an open carriage with triple bunks again. We had heard some pretty bad things about Chinese trains so we were pleasantly surprised with what we had got. The train was spotless and the beds nice and clean.Because of the lack of space on the trains during national holiday we all got allocated top bunks, although it was quite high and cr...