Author archive
17 May 2005
Above: Beautiful wooden lattice-work adorn some Siberian homes. Tatiana prepared a nice breakfast for us, comprising sausage, egg, bread and a sweet. We prepared for Eugene’s pickup which had been indicated as 0930 to 1000. But he turned up at 1045 in an old van for some reason and we had to wait for another […]
16 May 2005
Arriving at Irkutsk The guard or conductor woke us up about an hour before our 0809 arrival at Irkutsk. We packed and checked that we had everything. The train pulled into the station on the opposite side of the river from town. It was a gloomy and drizzly day. We were met by Eugene who […]
15 May 2005
Sukhbaatar to Naushki The train appeared stationary while I was in the dozing hours before I woke properly. I got out of bed around 0830 while we were in Sukhbaatar. We had made a seemingly long stop and the toilets were locked. I had to hop out of the train to use the station toilet. […]
14 May 2005
We have a night-time departure from Ulaanbaatar to Irkutsk on the train tonight. That gave us a whole day to kill, starting with a leisurely breakfast. We then walked to town to check out the museum. It had interesting displays of Mongolian culture and history, eg. costumes, the expanse of Chinggis Khan’s empire, the Communist […]
13 May 2005
Interrupted night I woke three times through the night, each time wary that someone had crept into the ger. It was the girl from the family, coming in to stoke the fire. Not the best job in the world, having to do that several times in the cold dark night. For all the occupied gers […]
12 May 2005
Continuing to Ulaanbaatar To my surprise, we slept really well and woke up around 0900. We wandered to the breakfast car and found it to be different from yesterday’s. We now have a rickety but ornately decorated (with carved light wood) dining car. A breakfast of tea, omelette, slaw, bread and pancaked was CNY60 (NZD10). […]
11 May 2005
All aboard! We woke at 0545 for check-out at 0630, in order to check-in for our rail adventure at Beijing West station across the road. We had some muesli in the room for breakfast before setting off. At the impressive-looking station, our luggage were x-rayed before we entered and turned left into the international waiting […]
10 May 2005
It was drizzly and cool today. We had woken up early to get into the swing of an early start for tomorrow morning. And besides we wanted to squeeze in some minor sights after doing only a half-day yesterday. First up was the Lama Temple. This began as an imperial palace in the late 1600s. […]
9 May 2005
Above: Tiananmen Square as viewed from the Tiananmen Gate Tower of the Forbidden City. Getting going Rather unusual of us, we had 11 hours in bed and woke around 0800. Breakfast wasn’t included in the hotel rate so we had a light feed of muesli before heading out. For today, we didn’t feel like the […]
8 May 2005
Leaving Osaka Today we are Beijing-bound. We woke around 0600 but that was fine. The sun rises very early in Osaka this time of year. We hurriedly left the hotel at 0635 by taxi rather than by foot, for the railway station. We made good progress by making the 0700 train and arrived at the […]