The Li and Dragon River

Next stop was a flight to Guilin in the southern portion of this huge country. We did not fancy the 32 hour train journey and the flights were only 10 quid or so more than the cheep sleeper tickets so in a comfortable hour and a half we were transported from Xi'an airport to Guilin. We had heard bad things about this city but in our 1 night stop-over we saw no problems and had no hastle which was a pleasant surprise. We booked our boat trip for the following morning, saving 30 yen each by booking direct a few doors away rather than through the hostel and soon enough we were cruising to Yangshou. The scenery is unbelievable. The traditional ink paintings depicting fantasy landscapes are actually not so far from the truth with limestone pinnacles jutting from the river plain like fingers stretching towards the sky. The shear cliff faces, water staining and forests all then combining to produce a landscape conjuring up thoughts of the lost world. 4 hours later we arrived at the transplanted European resort town of Yangshou, a good place to recharge the batteries! although we still have 1 full day left at the time of writing we have (deep breath)... hired bikes, wondered villages, swum everyday in the bath-like dragon river, had a cookery lesson, been shown round the local market (hanging dogs and all), visited caves, seen the amazing "Impressions" show directed by the same guy who did the Olympic opening (stunning and with a cast of 600) and also found time to read 2 books and catch up on sleep. Tomorrow we are walking and then seeing some Cormorant fishing but more on that once we have actually done it. We are recovered, relaxed and ready for the next leg where we are planning to try and get away from the tour groups and by heading north, first to Ping An and eventually ending up in Kaili via lots of small villages of minority peoples. There should be some stories to tell I'm sure...

The Home of Kung Fu

Yes, that's right, we visited the Shoulin Temple which is obviously the home of the world famous shoulin monks and their martial art. Although we had intended to head there for the whole day we ended up, through misdirection followed by persuasion, on a Chinese tour bus which turned out very much for the best. I seem to be writing similar reports on a lot of our excursions so it must be that we are very easily led away from our intended course of action onto something completely different. Still so far things have worked out as well, if not better, than intended and so hopefully these "accidents" will continue to provide a source of stories and adventures of a good kind! Back to our bus full of local tourists (i.e. non-English speaking, not even a bit) we went first to the birthplace of a monk who had traveled to India and returned with a rich supply of sutras. The Big Goose Pagoda in Xi'an was built to house these in. The second stop was then more unexpected. We followed half the group through a couple of rooms in a more run-down looking building, thinking it was just some other old temple of sorts, only to then find ourselves in a small room with a few benches and a monk sitting facing us behind a ornament strewn table with an able assistant in tow. He then proceeded to give (what we presumed anyway) a short service which he ended by wondering up the benches flicking holy water on all including us. Finally we were given some incense to burn and were led away. Not an experience we would have had by simply catching the local bus. A few stops later at scenic and cultural locations and we arrived at our intended destination. As expected, the tourists have very much landed at Shoulin. There was a 30 minute show put on which was fantastic. You could really see the animal origins which is how the art progressed, through studying the movement of different species. We saw several hundred students in training, there are 6000 on site at any one time. Finally of course we wondered through the actual monastery! It was very beautiful despite the masses though most has recently been rebuilt following fire and destruction so it was not as ancient as appeared. The temple was a worthwhile trip but the day was made infinitely better by all the other stops.

The Longman Caves

Our train to the next destination of Louyang left Xi'an at 3:30pm on the afternoon of the 10th. The 5 and half hour journey passed very quickly as the friendly Chinese family next to us insisted on feeding us apples, meat and pomegranate with Amy's language skills having really broken the ice. The alarm went off at 6:45 so we could catch an early bus to the Longman caves, a complex of hundreds of man-made with Buddhist carvings. It really does pay to make such an early start, not only to avoid the worst of the tour group crowds but also to make the most of the cool of the morning. The caves were fantastic and well worth the detour to Louyang in themselves. They varied in scale from small depressions in the cliff face to huge caverns with the Buddhist figures ranging from a couple of centimeters to tens of meters. In all we spent 4 hours at the site, including a separate burial site with garden and another temple, before heading to another complex dedicated to a warrior whose head had been sent to a local warlord. It was quiet, peaceful and beautiful, were it in Beijing it would have been rammed and was worth a peak inside especially for the brightly painted, gaudy, cartoonish statues dotted around. After some successful menu guesswork we headed back exhausted.

Xi'an

The train left from Beijing West station, easily the largest station that I have every had to visit but, as with all transport so far in China, navigation to the correct waiting room proved very easy. The hard seats did not turn out to be quite as bad as expected with individual seats rather than the benches we had read about. The padding was on the minimal side, the seats were slightly too upright to allow comfortable sleep and our knees were knocking with the people sitting opposite so all was not completely rosy. We both managed to catch a bit of kip though still arrived in Xi'an in need of a couple of hours extra which were grabbed once we checked into our central hostel (we had booked a couple of nights in our own room in anticipation and not wanting our recovery to be disturbed in a dorm!). The afternoon was spent wondering the streets of the Muslim district to the northwest of the centre with its narrow lanes, street stalls and plenty of hustle and bustle. We ended up snacking on slivers of barbecued meat, fried flat bread and the regional dish of mutton soup poured over cubes of a dense bread. This was more by luck than design but it was all very tasty. We finished the evening up the Bell Tower in the centre of the main roundabout which gave some very pretty views over the Drum Tower opposite and the surrounding illuminated city. The bell towers in China originally rung in the dawn with the drums beating to signal night (or was that the other way around?).
The nights sleep was rubbish to put it bluntly, someone having previously stolen all of the mattress padding to leave only a few spiky springs for support. We walked to the old city wall and once on top hired bikes to cycle round the entire perimeter. A bus then took us to the Big Goose Pagoda, built to house some Indian Sutras, which was nice enough but full of rude jostling western tour groups trying to photograph the singing monks. The next stop on our list was "one of the best museums in China" but they had already stopped selling tickets (it was only 4pm) and so, having a bit of belly ache, we headed back for a quiet evening.
Next stop was the Teraccota Warriors and we went expecting big things (always a mistake!). The scale of the project is huge with there being 3 main pits with the main one being absolutely gigantic. Inside they have only excavated a relatively small amount (maybe a quarter to a third) and so if they ever complete the project the result will be more grand. The warriors and the horses individually are also very detailed and have been restored to a level whereby they look almost new and so I sympathise with a view I have heard that it is all one big fake! I am not sure that they lived up to the hype, though Amy thought more of them than I did, but it was an interesting visit to a "must see" attraction that I would not have missed. We experimented with the street food that night and were generally rewarded with the only disappointment coming in the form of two big bowls of nasty gelatinous stuff that we had seen previous evenings and thought had looked like very tasty fried spicy potato cubes! Our last morning in town was a bit of a disaster as when we tried to visit the museum we had previously failed to see we arrived early only to find that it closed every Monday!

A City of Bikes

Despite the modernisation of the city, with monstrous highways and a clean, efficient metro, it is still the bike that rules and as such we hired a couple of rickety bicycles to tour a bit of the city on. We had a great time weaving in and out of the narrow hutongs to the north of the city. These are classic residential areas and are some king of heritage site. They have been tidied up as a result which unfortunately gives them a bit of a more sterile atmosphere than the residential area around Qianmen (where we first stayed) which is destined for demolition. Our train to leave for Xi'an was at 5pm the following day and we just wondered for that final morning. We ended up enjoying the city far more second time round than we had expected. It may have been the preparation for the heat or just the lack of time difference but we found Beijing to be a lively, clean, easy to navigate city with plenty of worthwhile sights and just a touch of "developing" charm. In general much of life still takes place on the streets with small food carts, cycle deliveries and collections of everything from cardboard to gas cylinders, grubby faced children playing (and peeing) on the pavement and people cycling to wherever they happen to be going. The hutongs prove a contrast with narrow, grey painted alleyways and the only hint of the life inside is given by glimpses stolen through half-closed doors into the courtyards beyond.

The Great Wall

We had booked a tour to the wall when we arrived and were up at 6am on the 4th to make the journey to the section at Jinshanling and walk to Simatai around 10km away. We were advised to get the cable car to the top of the wall and were treated to spectacular views that far exceded all expectations. Despite the haze from the cities pollution (though the BBC reports that the air quality has continued to improve since the 2008 Olympics) the spectacle of the wall snaking from peak to peak, up and over some seriously steep mountain slopes really was very majestic. The feat of constructing such an obsticle (over such natural obsticles) is very very impressive. Suitable impressed, the 4 hour walk was highly enjoyable with new views at every turn, and once at the end there was a zip-wire over a gorge to take us to the waiting coach and home. I would recommend anyone visiting Beijing to see the wall at Jinshanling and then provided they were not too scared of hights to take the walk along the top as we did.

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Back in Beijing

Wanting to see a different area compaired to our first visit, we checked into our hostel to the north of the center near the very impressive Lama buddist temple. Not wanting to push things too much and making the same mistake as before we restricted our sightseeing on this first day to this temple which refreshingly turned out to be by far and away the most impressive we have seen to date (and we have been around a fair few already). Not only were the actual buildings, statues and other "exhibits" impressive but there was also a large number of chinese burning incence and praying at every budda which I found very interesting considering the governments not so distant heavy handed approach towards all things of a religious nature. Then again I may just have been taken in by all of the western propaganda about China's past! The following day we were up early to catch the metro and bus to the Summer Palace. The haze was significant meaning that it was impossible to see even to the other side of the grounds, let alone of the city from the various viewpoints. Around 80% of the palace is occupied by a lake which did have the effect of lowering the temperature by as couple of degrees. We were finding the heat more bearable than before but still pretty opressive at the peak of the day. We had a good wonder around at it was not difficult to see why this was a retreat from the heat of summer for the emporers. Much of the modern site was reconstructed after being destroyed in the late 1800's and it is the extreme amount spent here by the then empress that some people blame for allowing Japan to make inroads into the country a few years later. We jumped into a cab to take us to the metro having thought it would be a good idea to walk the entire perimeter. Having to think a few days ahead, we booked our train ticket to Xi'an with the intention of taking the so-called hard sleeper class. Unfortunately, being the countries summer holiday, the only tickets were for hard seats but we had no choice so the booking for the 14 hour journey was made with some trepidation as we had heard this class (the cheapest) was possibly going to be a bit of an endurance event. In the evening we went to the Olympic area to see the Birds Nest stadium and Water Cube. We were lucky to arrive 15 minutes before the lights illuminating the stadium were turned off at 9:30 and had a pleasant stroll in a good atmospere with lots of kite sellers flying strings of around 40+ small kites.

Mongolia- Final Thoughts

I wrote rather a lot in my diary summing up our time in Mongolia and my impression of the country but don't worry as I'll try and keep this a little bit shorter and to the point!  Mongolia was a place that I had wanted to visit for a very long time, more because of its apparent isolation and lack of any real information or coverage of the place.  A bit of research will uncover the grassland steppe as far as the eye can see interupted only by the odd ger and its livestock.  The rugged mountain regions reaching towards the acres of sky with their snow-capped peaks.  The arid gobi, hostile and desolate yet somehow supporting a life of sorts.  Well, I believe we managed to briefly tase all of these be it the Gobi from the train, the grassland and alpine foothills of the Terelj and seen as we traveled west to the more mountainous volcanic region around the White Lake.  In a way I am dissapoinded that we did not see as much as we had originally planned and looking on a map it appears we did not branch that far from the capital.  This however gives an idea as to the vastness of the country and its infrastructure, or rather lack of it.  Once off the paved roads, of which there are very few at present,  an average speed of no more than around 30km/hr can be expected, bumping, swerving and jarring your way along rock strewn and potted dirt tracks.  This lack of infrastructure must be in part due to the size of the country (large), its population (small) and the way of life (nomadic) and as such it is not something that I can imagine changing in any dramatic way any time soon.  This is half the charm of the place anyway, the other half being the people who live there.  The reputation of gererosity and hospitality that we had heard about was certainly proved true in the vast majority of the people we came into contact with, apparent even with our complete ignorance of their native tongue and the lack of English spoken.  This generosity of spirit combined with the nomadic way of life that has died out in other locations and the stunning landscape means that, in my opinion, any visitor to this country can not help but to have an interesting, exciting and cultural experience that will linger long in the memory.
Will we return？  There is certainly plenty more to see: the heart of the Gobi, the great lake to the north and the mountains of the west, each of which would need a minimum of 2-3 weeks to experience properly.  On the other hand, in the words of another traveller we met, "I feel I now know what this country is about" and that is surely one of the main aims of roaming foreign lands.  There are plenty of more places to experience but yes, I would return, and will look forward to the possibility, given enough time and money to due justice to what we left undiscovered.  There is no rush afterall as in my opinion it is not a land that will change soon.

Thats enough for now, we are in China which is equally appealing and you will be hearing more on this stage of our adventures very soon.

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The Journey Back to UB and Beijing

...The good news when we arrived for our lift is that we were early but expected with the shop owner doing an apparent stock-take before heading to the city to buy some more stock, so we presumed. Well we eventually hit the road 90 minutes late only to pull into her sisters ger at the nearest town. A phone was handed to me and an English speaking relative said that the driver wanted more money as they had been unable to find any more passengers (bare in mind that we thought we were just hitching on a trip that was being made anyway). Well, we explained the price had been agreed and we were nor prepared to pay double but increased to 80,000T. We were then fed while the driver did some last rounds to drum up support. A couple of hours later the van returned full but these people turned out to be helpers for the full dismantling of the engine which then took place. Evidently there was some problem! The rest of the afternoon was spent playing volleyball, Uno and reading while we were generously plied with milk tea and food. A few false starts and full bellies later we hit the road at around 8pm only for another problem to emerge, we had no fuel and all the petrol pumps in town were closed. We pulled up outside the English speaking sisters ger who explained the problem which we had already guessed. Fine, deep breath and count to 10, we will camp next to her ger and set off at 5 the next morning. We were aware of our shortening time in country and eager not to waste too much more, no matter how enjoyable the day had actually been. This was agreed to and the sister truly took us under her wing (she turned out to actually be the sister-in-law to the brother of the drivers wife!). She insisted that we sleep in her ger, which she moved out of leaving us alone, and gave us food and drink for the evening. It was a great experience to see and stay in such a place with there being hardly any possessions or luxuries evident, a stark contrast to the ger we spent the day in which had TV, computer, freezer and washing machine. The whole day had been a bit of a disaster but without which we would never have experienced the local life or been subject to their extremely generous nature.

Well, you guessed it, 5am came and went with us rising properly at 7am for some tea and breakfast. At this point our host was pretty angry at the driver, saying haw lazy some people were. She really felt responsible for us and dispatched her brother who came back with the expected news that the van was a non-starter and he had not been able to find any alternate transport. We headed for the road, our host refused to take any money but did say she would email, with the intention to hitch which had been our original plan in the first place. Miraculously the van that was fuelling at the petrol station when we arrived had a couple of free places and with no waiting we had a lift for 15,000 each to Tsetserleg!

A queasy 4 hours later we arrived, had a bowl of restoring mutton and pasta soup, checked into a cheap hotel and visited the museum and monastery that had been recommended to us and proved to be worth the effort. A quick sleep (well 2 hours), a much needed shower and some dinner later and we felt almost normal again. The following day (28th July) we were on the move again, this time to Kharkouren the ancient capital. The minivan was not due to leave until 2 so we thought we would hitch again. It took us 45 minutes this time but a van then stopped and we were on our way. The van turned out to have originally been booked by three cycling Spaniards for their use alone but there was already a load of locals that had then been picked up leaving us barely enough room with which to squeeze ourselves into. There is always room for 1 more! We ended up in a pretty ger camp just outside of town right by a river and the owner dropped us at Erdene Zuu Khiid, Mongolias first monastery. It was a huge walled complex and the remaining buildings were impressive however the vast majority had been destroyed in the 30's. The atmosphere was very tranquil and we could only imagine how it must have looked in its prime. We had buuz for dinner, Mongolian meat dumplings, and then headed to our ger with Amy feeling a little worse for wear. She then proceeded to have a bad night and was bed ridden for the following day. I stuck around, wondering outside for a bit and then checking in. The waterfalls and monastery 80km away which we had intended to visit would have to wait for our next trip to the area. Feeling better, we were up early the next day to get a minivan back to the capital, arriving at the bus station around 8am. Well, the ticket office opened at 9, the van was due to leave at 11am but then spent 90 minutes driving around town trying to find a person to occupy the single remaining seat. We arrived in town at 6pm and headed to our hostel which turned out to have been overbooked and so we ended up at our 3rd hostel in Ulaanbaatar though it was comfortable. It is a good job that Amy was feeling better at it was a long day.

Our final day in the country was spent relaxing and wondering round the massive market selling everything from horse tack to kitchen goods to tools to furniture, if its not there it is not worth having! In the evening we went to a cultural show where the music was the real highlight. The horse head fiddle was much more melodious than I had expected and the throat singing less so, but bizarre and enjoyable none-the-less. Our train back to Beijing was uneventful and much more civilised than cramming into the back of a minivan.