Many of you have asked how we cover the long distances in China. Well for the most part here the answer is trains. We loved using the trains in India as we found you always knew where you would end up, something which was always a surprise when using the buses, so we're keen to compare transport in the two countries.

The Kunming to Xian sleeper is a 35-hour journey, so we'd opted for what the Chinese call soft sleeper (at least they would if they spoke English). The use of the word soft is a bit of a misnomer as there is certainly nothing soft about the beds. I can only think it's a reference to it being the option for softies versus the "hard" people who go in three-storey bunks in the hard sleeper. In reality, the difference is that in a soft sleeper you will be sleeping in a lockable cabin in one of four beds arranged as two bunks. In hard sleeper, the bunks are stacked in threes, and there are no doors, so not so great if you want to shut yourself away. They do have a ladder to climb up as opposed to the wall brackets in soft so it's not all bad.

Anyway, assuming you've got your ticket (see "next stop Lijiang" for details of that if you haven't ) you start the journey by heading for the station. The first hurdle is getting through security into the station. Bags have to go through the scanner so that's always great fun when you're laden with backpacks and bags. Then it's onto the first ticket check to get into the next section of the station. Then you have to locate the waiting room you have to go to that's probably the easiest bit as you just locate the train number on the board and head to whichever room it says. Then you wait.....in our case for five hours as we'd got fed up of killing time in rainy Kunming, and then the train was late. The doors to respective platforms are labelled with the appropriate train numbers so it's easy enough to see which one you'll leave by..... Anyway having safely negotiated the various stages listed above, and avoided having my comb labelled as a potential security risk again, we found a chair close to our departure gate and settled down for a long wait. John played on his Kindle Fire, and I fitted a few more pieces into one of Rembrandt's masterpieces on the iPad.

As the departure time grew closer the hall filled with more people, and the noise level rose accordingly. The Chinese can be very quiet at times, but in a group seem to develop a mob mentality. Shrieking at each other down phone lines or across the room it became like the run-up to a school trip, with a room full of excitable pupils. With the prospect of a 35-hour journey ahead and uncertainty as to the buffet arrangements on the K166, I headed to the provisions store on the station. Scanning the multiplicity of instant noodle tubs I decided neither of us could face more reconstituted meals, and just opted for a couple of milk juice. A great invention and really tasty- sometimes branded as Nutri-Express, and sold for around 5yuan/50p it's a treat. I supplemented the supplies with hot milk for me and Coke for John from reliable Dico's.

As the departure time approached people started to congregate around the gate, so we donned our backpacks and waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually, we noticed the time on the board had changed from 19:32 to 20:20 and realised our train was delayed. We put everything back in its resting place and sat down again. After almost an hour, and preceded by a 1950s telephone ringtone, the doors opened and the crowd pushed forward. We had to show our tickets again as we surged through the narrow gap, and then we were able to follow the crowd to the train.

Before coming on the trip we momentarily considered the option of roller cases over backpacks. In Chinese stations, backpacks are a definite advantage. Apart from taking them on and off to get through security gates, it was definitely easier when it came to accessing the platforms at the station. Despite the narrow slopes on the edges of the stairs to enable people to wheel their luggage down the owners seemed to have momentous problems taming their cases sufficiently to get to the bottom or top before us.

Anyway safely on the platform, the next hurdle was to find the carriage. This is an easy bit as all carriages are numbered and you just have to match this to the numbers on your ticket. Same with the bunk numbers. When we arrived at our carriage we were able to get straight to our cabin without negotiating hoards of people in the corridor- certainly, an advantage when you have luggage. Having booked our tickets early through the station we'd been able to select two bottom bunks- Definitely a luxury for John who usually ends up staring at the carriage ceiling. You are provided with a pillow, and a light duvet to go with the bottom sheet already fitted to the bed, and as they seemed clean enough we opted to use these rather than the silky thin sleeping bags we carry to replace dubious bed linen. The backpacks were sufficiently slim ( something of a miracle) to fit under the bunks so we were soon settled in and ready to receive our first stablemate.

Like our first sleeper trip, we only had one travel mate for the first part of the trip - a young Chinese guy who whilst very personable spoke little English- so we were in for a quiet trip. As the train pulled out of the station into the darkness we settled down with our respective electrical devices and time just rolled by. Chinese trains always have a tap at the end of the carriage where you can dispense boiling water for your tea leaves or dried noodles. Pre armed with this knowledge we'd brought our supply of tea bags, coffee and large plastic lidded mugs. The lids are essential due to the jerking of the train at inopportune moments. We began to think we were about to experience another Yangon to Mandalay train ride with all the rolling about, and the incessant creaks and joints. Whenever the train braked it seemed like the other carriages were crashing into the back of ours. Despite all this, your two intrepid travellers, after a nightcap of three-in-one coffee, shut their peepers and went to sleep.

We woke to some more beautiful Chinese countryside. We have no idea where it was but it was all diligently planted with sweet corn and other crops, backed by mountains. During our explorations for a western toilet (there is usually one western and one Asian in each carriage) we discovered we were next to the dining car, so with the prospect of a further day and night on the train, we headed there for some sustenance. The server there was a smiley woman who seemed pleased we had chosen to use her facility.

Unlike the dining car on the first sleeper we had used this was very underused. She brought a breakfast menu with English subheadings. We quickly scanned the shortlist. The first word which jumped out was Gruel, then eggs with rice, then Gruel again, then eggs with steamed bun. It transpired you got the gruel anyway and you only needed to choose the more exciting part. We both opted for the fried rice, wishing to reduce inconvenience to the minimum, and it duly arrived, delivered by another smiley server. We tucked into the rice giving the gruel sideways glances whilst we ate. It was purple coloured water that covered a bed of soaked rice grains and what looked like a few red beans. As we only had chopsticks we adopted the Chinese method and slurped the liquid from the bowl. It just tasted like liquid starch, so we returned to the fried rice and ate like it was our last meal.

The rest of the morning passed pretty uneventfully listening to the various throat retches of the neighbours. With the help of a young girl who was sitting in the corridor, I managed to stop the fruit trolley long enough to acquire supplies of five somewhat bruised red apples and a tray of cherry tomatoes. Whilst the sustenance trolleys make periodic trips up and down the car it's difficult to know when they're coming and sellers, although shouting in Chinese, never make eye contact, so it's difficult to catch them. If they ever introduce a trolley dolly race at the Olympics my money will be on China.

The train chugged on and by two o clock the landscape had changed and we were ploughing past a more developed landscape shrouded in a thick haze. The steward arrived in the cabin looking around between the bunks, at John and our stablemate who were both asleep. After a few minutes, she woke our friend and gestured that she needed the duvet which was covering him. She took it into the corridor, folded it, and then placed the duvet back in a pile on his bed leaving him to lie uncovered. She then looked around again, having noticed one of the pillows was missing from the other top bunk and saying something to me in Chinese. I had to shop the comatose John, and he had to return the pillow he'd "borrowed".

It transpired our stablemate was leaving us at the next station, and the linen check was presumably to return the beds to a state of readiness for subsequent passengers. John, unhappy at losing his extra comfort, headed for the toilet. Which did nothing to improve his mood as he returned twenty minutes later complaining about someone who had "sat in the disabled toilet for 15 minutes having a fag". Calming him with the offer of a tomato, his least favourite food, did nothing to appease him, as he returned to his Candy Crush complaining about the way he was being treated!

It transpired we had arrived at Chengdu, home of the Panda Research centre, and a place lauded by two girls we'd met on Snow Mountain. The young girls had befriended us in the cafe on the mountain and were keen to ask us whether we were planning to go to Chengdu. They declared it to be a beautiful place, but we had to explain that although on our original schedule we'd had to make the decision to skip the city due to the time limitations of our four-week visa. Having seen the haze and grim-looking buildings from the train we weren't sorry to be omitting the "utopia" from our schedule.

Eventually, at around three we chugged out of the station again through the dusty suburbs of demolition and dust on our way towards Xian. Expected arrival in another 15 hours. We had been joined by two new stablemates at Chengdu, a young girl and a male probably in his mid-thirties or so. Both apparently mute we should be in for a quiet journey unless they are both champion throat clearers of course. Looks like it's back to the jigsaw for a bit....forgot to mention we have the luxury of a charging point in our cabin so no need to panic about losing power! Well, here we are, nearly five hours after leaving Chengdu. The kids seem to have gone to sleep next door, and we've not heard a peep out of our new roommates. That might be due to the fact they both went to sleep straight away. I guess they must have had an arduous security and waiting regime at Chengdu which has tired them out! They both woke about an hour ago, and since then we've come pretty close to writing an Agatha Christie sequel- Murder on the Xian Express! Thank goodness our male new arrival turned the sound off his iPhone game before things got messy.

It's yet another rainy morning as we pull into Xian, 08:42 ( over an hour late) and debunk from our hotel on wheels. It's been an interesting journey and time has gone surprisingly fast. We've passed through lovely mountain scenery, with fields full of corn and other greens, and chugged our way through areas of the grim-looking high rise, and dusty construction sites. The people on the train have been much quieter than the rowdy bunch in the station, thank goodness, so we both arrive refreshed and ready to embark on the next leg of our journey, Xian- home of the Terracotta Warriors.