Trip to the West

This is the end, my friend....

From here on, the Trip to the East has come to an end and I'll next be heading West from Beijing to the UK by (a decidely unadventurous) airplane this coming Wednesday. I feel it's a cop out to fly back, but my stamina for enjoying overland travel after seven months on the road is not sufficient to sustain the six-day non-stop train ride to Moscow and then dealing with another alien culture, language, system etc So, the trans-Siberian Express will have to wait for another time

Anyway, to recap on the movements of the last week or so:-

There were lots of pandas (both giant and the small red version) to video at the reserve at Chengdu. Then it was the train up to Xian, the ancient capital of dynastic China. This was the final destination of Marco Polo, I've been following his footsteps for large parts of my route, and it is also the classic endpoint of the Silk Route. The famous terracotta army is nearby to Xian, so we joined with the hordes to take that in. Definitely a must-see.

Then from Xian we took a very plush deluxe sleeper train to Beijing - the only tickets left. It was expensive , but having in our berth just the two beds, an armchair, individual bed TVs, private bathroom, thermostat control and, most importantly, a bonzai fern over the sink made it all worthwhile.

So, in Beijing we've been doing the tourist things - Forbidden City etc. Yesterday we took the bus 1 hour away up to the Great Wall - yes, it really is as amazing as I had anticipated. It's huge and goes winding off into the far distance along the top of the mountain ridges. I walked up and down it (Peter taking it easy) far enough away to where the crowds thinned out.

China has been a fascinating experience and I've very glad to have seen this economic giant in its emergent stages. There is a phenomenal amount of construction and change going on all over the place - further galvanised by the prospect of the 2008 Olympics, which is trumpeted everywhere you look.

The people here in China have generally been very friendly and helpful - you even forgive them all the spitting and gobbing on restaurant floors that goes on.

So, this is probably the last post I'll make whilst abroad. The Trip to the East has been a fantastic experience. There have been downs as well as ups, but in general it's been a real sense of feeling alive. Even when some of the events along the road have been unwelcome (as they often are), there is no 'off' button on a remote control and you just have to deal with them.

Over and out (for now),

Gareth

Slowly up the Yangtze

Guilin is located in the area of China made famous by artists who come from al over the country to paint emblematic high domed karst limestone formations. Add in a couple of thickets of bamboo to the foreground and the inevitable mist swirling around the upper half of the tree-covered dome and you have the classic traditional Chinese watercolour. The downside is that the areas dramatic beauty is no secret and has longer been a tourist attraction - reflected in the exhorbitant prices charged to hapless visitors.

Then from Guilin it was on by a surprisingly comfortable 'hard sleeper' (it wasn't at all hard) train for 14 hours north to Wuhan. This is another multi-million person city that few outside of China have heard of - 8 million people to be (roughly) precise. Peter went of in a taxi to look at the centre. I, feeling jaded of amorphous big Chinese cities, lingered around in the hotel room, watched Kevin Costner being tough in 'Wyatt Earp' on cable TV and then eventually ventured forth a couple of hours later.

I was adopted by a local 14-year old boy (he looked at least 20, being about 5 foot 10 with a moustache and confidently articulate in his perfect English). We swung by his cousins flat, picked her up and proceeded onto the Yellow Crane Tower (too expensive to go in) and then onto the huge bridge over the Yangtze that connected to the city centre. In the smog-filled air, a gloomy grey sky arching above and an inhuman skyline of vast grey oncrete blocks, it looked like a vision of hell. We walked across the 110m high, 2km long bridge and got a bus back from the other side.

The next morning, it was a five hour bus ride along the Yangtze up to Yichang to find a boat ride upriver. That went smoothly and we were booked on for the next morning. So, then it was three days and three nights of cruising upriver. A very pleasant interlude. The first day of river trip included an excursion to see the Three Gorges Dam, that is now almost completed and has displaced 2 million people from their flooded homes. On the upside, the flood control provide should avoid a repeat of the one million deatsh from drowning that have happened from the Yangtze bursting its banks over the last few decades.

It was dripping rain and quite misty, but we got a blurry view of the concrete behemoth rearing 600 ft over us. Then our boat made the labourious, 3 hour journey up the series of 5 huge locks to the 500 km long reservoir above this dam - the largest in the world.

We passed through the flooded, but still dramatically beautiful Three Gorges and then we came to the upper Yangtze with its million-plus soul cities - disgustingly ugly concrete jungles all, belching factory chimneys and non-stop coal barges sending fuel downriver to the energy-hungry coast.

Our cruise ended at the city of Chongqing. You've never heard of the place? What?! How can you not have heard of the biggest city in the world - 30 million people!! More gigantic concrete apartment blocks and giant bridges spanning the Yangtze. Really, China has some very beautiful countryside, but the big cities have all frightened me in their look of despair. The surprising thing is that the inhabitants seem unaffected by their surroundings and they are frequently very friendly and helpful.

So, tomorrow we're off to a reserve to hopefully see some Giant Pandas

All for now

Nanning and Guilin

Peter and I have got as far as Guilin, on the way up to Beijing.

We stopped in Nanning for a couple of days, being shown round by Ar Ping, a local girl we met on the way up from the Vietnamese border. Went out to Guangxi medical herb park, which I suspect my brother (an acupuncturist and chinese herbalist) as visited on one of his many trips to China

China so far doesn't at all give the impression of a 'third world' country. 'Developing' is more accurate, as everywhere you look there is frantic construction and modernisation going on. The cities seem clean and well-organised and light on traffic (for now!). The countryside appears less prosperous, but still unlittered and tidy. Quite unlike India, for example.

We've been looking round the caves and limestone karsts of Guilin today. These are the very tall dome-like rocks you see in the classical Chinese paintings - all very beautiful. The hotels (so far) are cheap, but everything else in China is pretty expensive - verging on European prices.

Very little English is spoken here, so the primary challenge in the travelling is just being able to communicate one's needs! (eg getting an edible meal)

Bye bye,

Gareth