SHANGHAI We started our China trip in Shanghai, a small village 250 years ago now a clean megacity of 25 million. The historical British Concession (Bund), won in the Opium Wars of the 19th century lies west of the Huangpo…
Yangtze River Cruise
YICHANG A two hour flight from Shanghai followed by a two hour bus ride and we arrived at Yichang for our Yangtze River Cruise. It takes the MV Katarina with 264 passengers and 128 crew 4 days to navigate the…
Ciqikou
CIQIKOU Ciqikou was a center of porcelain production during the Ming Dynasty. Today it’s a suburb of Chongqing, retaining old China appearance, hustle and bustle along its cobbled food streets.
Giant Pandas
CHENGDU We made a 5 hour bus ride from Chongqing to Chengdu (pop 14 million). It’s the capital of Sichwan province and a modern, clean leafy city in the Singapore mould, famous for Pandas, hot spicy food and face-changing opera.…
Terracotta Warriors
XIAN Xian has a population of 9 million and another 9 million visitors a year come to see the famous Terracotta Warriors first discovered by a farmer in 1974. This delightful city has a long history – until 800 years…
Beijing
BEIJING We flew from Xian to Beijing, about 2 hours. Beijing has a population of 22 million, almost 5 million cars and a reputation for dreadful pollution, but we were lucky to have blue skies after rain the first night.…
Mongolia
ERLIAN Wednesday 21 September 2016 We left Beijing at 10:45 pm on the Chinese Special Train for the 850 km, 16 hour trip to the Mongolian border at Erilan, also known as Erenhot. At dawn next day we were in the…
Siberia
Siberia is the Asian part of the Russian Federation; a huge area (10% of the world’s land) with little population. After completing Russian arrival formalities in our cabins we were on our way again at 10 am, next stop Ulan-Ude at 3 pm, 285 km from the border.
Western Russia
The border between Asia and Europe is the Ural Mountains near Yekaterinburg so having travelled 4300km across Siberia in 5 days we are now in the Russian heartland. Yekaterinburg, founded in 1723, once closed Soviet industrial town, then scene of the savage Russian Mafia wars of the 1990’s …
Moscow
MOSCOW Saturday 01 – Wednesday 05 October 2016 After arriving in Moscow on the Trans-Siberian, we were off on a whirlwind tour of the sights – Red Square, Gum Department Store, St Basil’s Cathedral, the Kremlin and so on. After…
St Petersburg
ST PETERSBURG, RUSSIA Peregrine Falcon is Sapsan in Russian and an appropriate name for the high speed train which takes 4 hours to cover the 675 km from Moscow to St Petersburg. It runs smoothly and quietly in contrast to the classic…