Mongolia and China

Ulaanbaatar

Monday

Today heralds our arrival in the Mongolian capitol city Ulaanbaatar – a metropolis of western proportions but eastern chaos.  We arrived this morning at 6am, local time of course, and so sleep was rather wanting, having to alight such an un-Godly hour, exacerbating this calamitous dawn rising was the late hours our cabin neighbours were keeping over the journey. Last night I awoke to Sam and Pete complaining about the noise they were making in a room down the hall, inspired by alcomohol, I interjected they should ask them to quieten down, the reply to which informed me they twice already had. This is almost unforgivable at 3:30 in the morning, in a country in which one is an invited guest – nothing more. So we filtered into our hotel at Ulaanbaatar and many people allowed themselves to succumb to fatigue, that is to say nap until breakfast at 9. Pete and I saw this as a waste of precious time, so we elected to take a short walk in order to survey the locality in which we were temporarily resident. The first thing that hits you is the lack of totality – pedestrians force cars to stop in order to cross the road, drivers themselves ignore light signals and pursue their own conscience, pavements have gaping holes in them, 10 meters deep in which people have wantonly hurled rubbish, and continuity in the buildings is totally lacking. A chaotic city. This said however, all the people seem nice, and friendly, although I felt incredibly conspicuous; no one here has blond hair, and so more or less everyone seemed to be staring at me as we walked around! The place does have a nice vibe to it, and so one is very happy to be here, not least because of the festivities planned for our visit to the Ger camp tomorrow. We returned having walked the block around our hotel, and happily surveyed the dusty circuit. The breakfast at 9 was held in the nicely decked dining hall of the hotel, with the breakfast buffet presented along one side of the room in reflective steel dishes, very stylish. They served eggs, bacon, with bread and jam, pastas, sausages and potatoes, along with juices, coffee and tea. I found it to be the best breakfast we have had so far on our travels, and consumed so much that lunch was not necessary – a rare feat for me. Te mornings schedule was to encompass a bus tour of the city, as it is far too expansive to allow a walking tour. Our driver for Mongolia, Mia (meaning rock, like Peter) drove us around, fittingly I suppose. The first stop was a Buddhist temple, still in use as a monastery, within the city limits but walled off to keep the hordes of heretics from its pious core. Lead by our guide, we walked around the temple, including some of the practicing prayer rooms, in which groups of monks chanted from sutra in harmony, a very foreign sort of sound, which to be fair is not something I am used to enough to pass comment, or judgement, but it was not pleasing to the ear! This temple is possessing of one of the most astounding testaments to human religion, a massive statue of the Buddhist god of compassion. This statue is 7 stories high, composed in Gold and has a detailing which confounds understanding. Standing in the temple, only his toes are at eye level! Surrounding this are hundreds of little statues, stacked in cabinets, of the god of longevity, encircling the giant in the centre. It is truly an amazing site, and sight, but I did not find it spiritual. Stepping out of the temple one is faced with a view of the mountains which surround the city, and my first thought was why build such a statue to god when you can feel this; the folly of religion is idolatry, God created this world so what can His creation do to represent Him? From here we went to the winter palace, the seat of Mongolian royalty during the winter months, until their abolition of course, and received a tour of the small museum there. A gift shop proved most popular, and I realised that with only a week left before heading home, I had not filled my consignment of souvenirs with which to make the appropriate representations to people back home. The shop was selling tasteful arty Mongolian wares, and so more or less everyone picked something up here – with Mongolian money of course, which is valued against pennies, but still broken up into denominations smaller than a tenth of a penny. This all took a little longer than anticipated, and so we rushed to our final destination, which was the monument which overlooks the city – I mean this in an absolute literal sense. This towered statue atop the highest of the hills affords the best view of our resident city – brickey, sandy buildings as far as one’s eyes can attain vision, punctuated by random, sporadic inclusions of modern glass and metal structures. We climbed out onto the rocks of the thing and I took a few pictures, one looking directly down for Dad! The monument itself was circular, and on the inside lined with a mosaic depicting what I cannot be sure. There seemed to be motifs referring to many different time periods, including the Second World War. After looking down on the city for a while we rejoined its numbers, in search of lunch, but first tok a quick break at the hotel. Having a quick sandwich so as not to need to pay for food, we rejoined the group in the lobby downstairs. The chosen location for lunch was a place called BBQ chicken, with a charming blue neon sign (I begin to despair at Katrina’s choice of place at this point), though I have eaten so chose sociability over culinary quality – a rare discrimination indeed. Their coffee was dire, but the ice cream passable – hardly Yak milk ice cream, rather a Mc Flurry type, but still. Following this the afternoon was ours, until 7 when we had tickets to an exhibition of traditional Mongolian music and dance culture, sure to be an interesting experience. We dispatched the afternoon on a wild goose chase, looking for an English language bookstore (a quest chose not by my own volition) which took up most of the afternoon. We did, though, find a restaurant recommended by lonely planet which we agreed to come back to later. We strolled back to our hotel, a walk of an hour, and met up with everyone ready to head out, out bus was waiting at the hotel, and we drove to the culture show.

The culture show was a most excellent experience; I had long been interested in Mongolian throat singing, but this covered a whole lot more than just that. The event lasted an hour, and had singing, dancing, music, of course throat singing, and two contortionists. The style of singing is amazingly foreign, similar to that of Chinese or even Japanese vocals, very unstable in pitch, almost like a wailing! The throat singers though were something else; able to sing two notes simultaneously, and thereby harmonise with themselves, which is audible in their output; one fellow was so stretched as to be growling a deep lower than bass tenor note whilst producing panpipe like sounds at the very other side of his range. The cultural references were unintelligible to us, such as a dance piece featuring an old man chasing off evil spirits set to to very minimalistic three instrument backing – yes some pieces held one’s intrigue more than others. I say he was chasing off evil spirits, but this was my interpretation based on Western cultural socialisations, no background should be assumed for such a performance.  And of course the contortionists were just plain weird! We left and began our walk to find dinner, heading for the restaurant mentioned earlier, whilst the rest of the group went elsewhere. I liked this place a lot, but it was by no means a typical Mongolian eatery, I sided eventually with the ranch steak and salad, for £5, value indeed. Prices here are highly unpredictable, but consistently low. Leaving the place as late as we did, around 10pm, one of the more unpleasant aspects of the city presented itself to us, homeless children run up to you in the street with their hands open asking for money, and there are more than just a few of them about. It must so often be the case, here especially, in second world countries that their adoption of the West produces a facade hiding the true ill health of a nation-state, and more to the point its inhabitants. We took a slow saunter back homewards, and packed for the trip to the Ger tomorrow. An early night would have been in order, but a comment I had made at dinner pricked Pete’s perspicacity and he landed me with a line of thought which kept us awake for many hours hence – suffice it to say that we got little sleep that night, although a circumstance which afforded a conversation of a profoundly revelatory note.

Tuesday

Today we departed for the Ger Camp, which is a traditional Mongolian style of settlement, similar to that of American Indian dwellings only somewhat bigger. We arrived midday, after a very merry 2 hour bus trip singing show tunes, and found our Gers. It is a permanent building of wooden construction, sleeping five at a time, with a wood burning stove in the centre for heat. Tonight we were joined by Joseph, the intrepid leader who is taking over from Katrina in China, as she was unable to procure a visa in time, putatively due to the Olympics. He is a snorer. We all had 10 minutes to acquaint ourselves with our quaint new surroundings, quaint and surprisingly comfy in fact, before lunch was due to be served in the main hall of the camp. Meals here are regimental affairs, served at break-neck speed; our lunch was four courses of nicely foreign un-nameables. My appetite could not surmount the sheer volume served, but I enjoyed the range of traditional foods, soup, dumplings, a nice rice meal, all followed by an apricot roll. All in all, not bad at all. The entire group had agreed to go horse racing (for a 10,000T fee), in the afternoon, so we paid and made our way towards the horses. I was paired with a nice friendly horse I christened Artimus, and I think we got on very well, he liked the name Artimus of this I am certain. Whilst the others were in the process of mounting however, Artimus decided to wander off, which set the tone for our outbound journey – that is me leading the way as some unwilling trailblazer. After an hour of gentle walking we reached our end point, the turtle rock, which is as eponymously suggested a rock in the shape of a turtle, a justifiably eminent landmark indeed. I have said nothing of the scenery here, which is quite breathtakingly magnificent. Rocky cliffs of undulating mountain tops push up through the gravel and flower along the sides of the valleys etched out of the Earth. We pushed up along one of these valleys, and up through a meadow the side the valley to the peak, and the views are just stunning; this constant terrain covering even the horizon before us. As you may have already rightly judged, little shade is to be garnered, which explains the temperature of 38 degrees, very hot indeed, and though Artimus is well developed to cope with such extremes, his poor master is not quite so suited, well not without sun block at least, which was liberally applied prior to venturing out. One the way back we opened up the horses, as it were, breaking out into canters leaving a trail of dust thrown up in our wake. I must say I felt very much at ome on the back of a horse, as Bonnie later commentated, and managed to get him to canter on command by twisting my legs in the stirrups as directed by the horse-guy. By the time we arrived back, 3 hours after having set off, ones lower back was becoming quite tender (Artimus was indeed a keen canter-er) but many of our number were quite sore in their legs and stomach, so they chose to sit out the hike we had planned to entertain the time before dinner. After a brief repast Katrina led us out in search of a monastery down in one of the valleys nearby.

At this point I would beg your indulgence is allowing me to discuss the bird life we have encountered so far; all over Russia, black hooded crows and ravens abound, very ominous creatures of grim foreboding countenance and ill-favoured look, but for the wonderful hawks at Baikal there can be found little redemption. But here in Mongolia’s National Park we see Eagles and hawks, and a few other strange things, one beautiful massive eagle flew over all of 100 feet above my head on the horse, and it was a fantastic thing to witness. Anyway, our hike took us up some steep hills and granted us some great views, but Katrina was regrettably unable to sufficiently navigate to this monastery; we could see the path leading to it, but a cliff edge of some not inconsiderable dimensions separated us from this route. She took this perceived failure very hard, and so we decided to climb upwards, and found a nice giant rock teetering on the edge of a cliff which looked like a fun climb. With everyone on one side of the thing having problems gaining a foothold, I picked out a good route on the other side, up a crevice carved out of the side of the rock, and then a couple of well placed trees sprouting out its side to pull up against. A respectable feat, probably about 20 feet at least; and so having boasted with the appropriate volume, I waited for everyone to join me at the top. The view was, once again, beyond description, and I feel myself falling back to the oh-so insufficient vocabulary of sublimity, at the height at which we had gained from the hours worth of wandering upwards through the landscape we were able to look back at the way we had come, at the miles of treetop littered valleys and rocky hill tops. Quite serene. Alas we could not linger, as our dinner was set to go off at half seven, and so we made back for camp. Going down these hills is so much worse than coming up, the steep gravel coated earth becomes quite treacherous to the feet, and with the promise of the view at the top spent the spirit can tend to flag. We agreed, the three of us, that we would climb the rocky hillside behind the camp after dinner. This turned out to be far more than we had bargained for, mostly due to the rapidity of the onset of darkness, by 8 o’clock it was quite dim, with so many mountains the light from the sunset becomes obscured – partly the idea was to see the sunset from the wonderful vantage point of the hill top. Alas some dreams are not to be realised, and we stopped before the peak, principally because of light concerns, it as in truth quite close to what might be described as dark and we had been told that wolves were quite frequently around these areas, in packs of 10 or 14, so loitering in bite sized morsels would not have been sensible. Once back in the hut we reclined and rested our weary selves, but our fellow travellers had no intention of allowing such peace, and had moved a drinking party into our Ger. We summoned the patience to endure them for an hour before throwing them out, and Sam and I sat on top of one small hill, not far away from the safety of the camp but far enough away to dilute the light pollution it creates, and became transfixed by the stars. The array of twinkling lights in the sky was incredible, and unlike anything I could have imagined, we could see the band of the Milky Way, shooting stars, and clouds of intensity sat against the oppressive blackness of the universe. I saw seven awesome shooting stars in the half an hour we were out there, before chills and an anonymous rustling forced our egression. Politely expunging our unwanted guests we hunkered down until the morning, against the mounting freeze of the night air. Pete didn’t get a wink of sleep – I woke up at 7 to him sat up – as he had been afraid to go to the restroom because of the wolves, and the cold of course hadn’t helped, the temperature in the Ger was 12. After a brief councilious discourse, we both got back to sleep for the few hours before a dignified arousal mandated.

Wednesday

After a suitable breakfast we left the Ger camp at 10am, wishing most sincerely one were able to remain a few days longer. We’ve barely scratched the surface of these beautiful surroundings, but still our bus took us back to Ulaanbaatar where we have one day to spend, before leaving the country southwards. I, as now always, sought to refresh myself with a shower, before going out into the city in search of a Cashmere gift for Katrina, to thank her ostensibly for doing a good job, given that she was to leave us tonight. After a very long walk we found the state department store, which houses the more exceptional stores to be found in the country. Our locating the place precipitated an hour long search for an appropriate token, but we eventually sided with a Teal scarf for the more wintery weather Russia is so known for. We got lunch in a seventh floor patio restaurant overlooking some of the city, which made for a nice view, and I split an adequate noodle soup with Sam, not really wanting to  eat at all. Since leaving the Ger camp I had been feeling increasingly anxious, a feeling which peaked at lunch, a mixture of such compounded scenery changed and jolting psychological states rendered me mute for much of the preceding events. I believe this style of travelling is not designed for people who so feel their environments. I picked up Kimberly’s shoulder throw here, another lovely Cashmere item, and we went back to the hotel to use the internet. Successful in this desire for connectivity, I sent a couple of emails, as did Pete, and we left Sam to continue his computations as we investigated a Mall which had looked attractive to us previously. This mall was indeed coalition of unassociated shops; I popped into a Cashmere speciality boutique, and found a burgundy scarf I simply couldn’t have left without, Mongolia is famous for its Cashmere after all, and Yaks. Pete bought himself a new wallet – a purchase which had been eluding him earlier – which looks quite the part.

So after the Mall we returned to the hotel, and waited an hour or two before our designated meeting time, for our final fatal dinner with Katrina. A new development came with this, in the introduction of our new guide, the venerable Joseph, who was to escort us through Beijing as a resident of the Chinese capitol. The restaurant was just around the corner, and all, now 14 of us sat along a picnic bench style table and perused the menus. Supposedly offering a host of Mongolian cuisine, the choices were fairly innocuous – I opted for a salad backed by a veritable battalion of white Russians, after all being but a stones throw from the place still. A very pleasant meal, lubricated by the bottle of wine Pete and I had consumed before in the hotel, but also by the stimulation of good company; Joe, whom we sat with, seems to be a decent chap. With the meal wound up, all that remained was to bid a fond farewell to Katrina, which transpired to be a drawn-out affair, not tearful but sad to be sure, she has been a splendid guide for us, all in all, being a warm and friendly person who, although being new at this job, faired admirably in playing Vergil to our erstwhile Dante. Agreeing in principle to play in concert one day with her, we bid goodnight and retired to sleep.

I lie here on my fragile stomach and count myself lucky that I am today able to put pen to paper and reflect on the impressions that Mongolia left on me. Evidently that proud and majestic country took exception to our leaving so soon after our arrival, and saw fit to strike many of our number down with a vile and grasping malady which sought to empty good cheer from our hearts, and the contents from our stomachs. However, in its ferocity, the affliction burned itself out quickly, and within 24 hours I was again ready to tackle all tasks with standard vigour – though my stomach still registers surprise at the presence of unfamiliar solids.

But, back to Mongolia! I confess that the first day spent in Ulaanbaataris a little hazy around the edges; partially because I was on the tail end of three nights involuntary sleep deprivation but mostly because the experience was unremarkably touristy. Granted, there is much of interest in giant golden statues of Buddhaistas, and in the traditional costumes, furnishings, and punishment-bouts of Mongolian royalty, but the experience was presented as a pill to be swallowed and briefly digested, before moving on to yet another place of money spinning. Ulaanbaatar itself left a pleasant impression on me once we were released to explore the intricacies of the city on our terms (read: getting lost). The city appears to meld the Asian far East with the continent of Africa: bustling people moving through the streets, predominantly carefully dressed, often in shirts with corrupted English slogans, their style was not entirely congruous with the dusty, ramshackle buildings and small holdings which seem to have mushroomed up in locations dictated by the locations of main roads. As in China and Japan many women carry umbrellas against the sunlight to keep their skin tone light – evidently the same taboo of looking like a rustic peasant exists in Mongolia. I fail to understand why, as Mongolia seems completely un-cultivatable, and so the only hard working sons-of-the-soil are noble, proud horsemen, skilfully guiding their flocks of Yak over the grand steppe. Who doesn’t want to look like a cowboy?

That first night we parted tearfully from $8 US in order to witness a traditional Mongolian culture show which involved music, dance and singing. Though the two-stringed instruments are not quite able to produce quite the depth and breadth of sound as their multi-stringed Western counterparts the musicians nonetheless handled their wooden partners with great skill, and realised some wonderful melodies (mostly inspired by the running of horses). However the undisputed masters of Mongolian music-craft were the throat singers. Armed with a small banjo-like affair with which to keep a rhythm, the throat singer performed strange and private acts on the air within his throat and upper chest cavity, releasing two distinct tones simultaneously – one at the pitch of pan pipes, the other more akin to a barber’s electric razor. The strain of such singing was made evident by the short gasping collapse of the singer’s voice after his lungs had spent their capacity, though he never rested for more than a second before embarking on the next motif.

Dinner took place in some kind of trendy, fusioney and most importantly un-Mongolian bar and grill ‘Silk Road’. Food was an eclectic selection spanning from the Indian subcontinent west towards the Americas. Nothing really Oriental about it, to my chagrin, but I think everyone else appreciated a recognisable Western restaurant meal. Aside from the three stooges (groan) ‘everyone else’ included Bonnie and Colleen, those of pleasant American accent, and Jen whose rapid and high pitched delivery ruffles my feathers in the same way that an automatic bird disheveller is the bane of a starling’s sanity. Wait, what?

Sam

Thursday

Scheduled to depart from Mongolia today, we had breakfast scheduled at 6:30, with the bus leaving at 7:15 for the station. We set the alarm for 5:30, but woke at 6:55, our plans scuppered and our time more than short! A hasty packing spree ensued and we were set to go, not quite as prepared as one would have liked but all in one piece by the time set. Of course for all our panicking, the other mirrored our approach perfectly. A very quick bus ride, and a quick farewell to Mia our driver, left us ready at the train station with a few minutes spare before our train was due to move out, a train which was to carry us to China, our next and final port of call.

Mongolia has been a stark contrast to the arrogance and endemic racism of Russia, a country whose national pastime seems to be despising its dependence on the west, and so the time in Mongolia was a welcomed juxtaposition. Ulaanbaatar is a city full of warm and friendly people, and being here allows one to realised how good home really can be, this is the pseudo-epiphany I will be carrying with me on the way home I think, a journey which at this point grows ever nearer. So, to out train, this carriage is the best yet, equipped with very comfortable beds clad in eiderdown, four TV screens (one each) with remotes and headphones for considerate viewing – a factor not included in Russia – a most importantly a fine air conditioning system keeping the temperature inside a balmy 27 compared to the heat of the Gobi desert which we are to be passing through at this time of year. I spent the journey engaged in writing this infernal journal, which is now a size beyond what I could have reasonably been expected to document! At the border crossing, where Mongolia suddenly becomes China, they lock the carriages the toilets, a rather uncivilised way to carry on but seen as necessary by the totalitarian Chinese administration. I should mention at this point that now both Sam and Chris (t’other Chris) have been ill, quite very much so ill, and as Pete and I sharing a cabin with them left with some quite ill-foreboding murmurs. Sure enough at about midnight, just when the customs officials were marauding through the train I felt the onset of some brewing sickness, and little further of the night can I remember. My lasting memory of the crossing is having to fill in a slip stating that I was perfectly healthy, and had suffered from ‘none of the following’ in the last six months. Fun.

Beijing

Friday

Still recovering from the horrors of last night, I spent the morning amid a haze of headaches and joint pains, and following some well judged but insanely risky pharmaceutical interventions I felt better, if not quite well, by the time we pulled into Beijing around half three in the afternoon. I was not so far gone that I missed the scenery pulling through the mountains of North China though, I remember passing over beautiful lagoons with purple tinted waters, and over high bridges over gorges dropping hundreds of feet. A very cool crash course in the countryside of China, and is a nice change from the steep which we have become accustomed to. Today we had planned nothing particular, but later the possibility of a trip to a Chinese acrobatics display had been raised by Joe as a worthy occupation for the evening. Feeling as I did, I declined, more inclined to recline, and spend the day recovering as tomorrow was the highlight of our China stay in my mind, the Great Wall of China. The walk from the hotel to the railway station was all of 5 minutes, a portion of time which afforded us to acquaint ourselves with the immediate vicinity of our hotel. Here, on our street can be found a post office, a hostel with provision for cheap internet, and a host of markets, shops and eateries. Our hotel lies just off this street, a receded high rise building with welcoming door men and taxi services outside. One’s first impression are indeed favourable, although marred by infirmity; Beijing looks (apart from the smog) all the part like a modern city, lots of very impressive glass high rise buildings and skyscrapers puncturing the skyline making it look like the modern metropolis of an American city. Herein lies my problem though; they seem to be recapitulating the West in deference rather than defiance, and as such started to lose everything that makes them so unique. There are so many people on the streets too, the place is brimming with a billion bustling businessmen all buried in themselves and their own importance as they cross the massive eight lane streets amid a cacophony of ill meaning horns and taxi-driver berating, a symphony which one does not easily take to. And the heat here, of the heat, it is far too hot for my tastes, my watch registers above 40 degrees, which is its accuracy tolerance, but with the smog effect the closeness is barely tolerable for extended periods. With these caveats the place looks beautiful and well polished, and the hotel, Hotel Harmony, is a nice enough place. Yet another three starred hotel, this one simply feels like it, and so deems it unnecessary to fault its tawdry acclaim, such as it is, in its customers faces like the Moscow Hotel we stayed in. Our room, set to be so for three nights is very comfortable, TV showing all the wacky Chinese channels, and the obligatory mini bar, a good view of the skyline such as it is from this vantage point, and possibly the best shower so far saving the excellent if off-colour facilities at St. Petersburg! Sam required the internet, so I left him to the task and after showering and the consumption of tea Pete and I went out into the city, to explore a little further. Greater exposure did not disappoint, we strolled through a banking district, an eight lane road flanked by grand skyscrapers, well tall building at least, I am not quite certain enough of the definitions separating skyscraper from high rise to use such lexicon with authority. In my state however I wished only an hour or so walking in the heat of the afternoon, so I left Pete wandering and went back to the hotel, navigating myself perfectly of course and without incident, and returning allowed myself the opportunity to be lulled by the air conditioning to sleep.

A most gratifying slumber, extinguished by my roommates return, and still feeling less than full speed I elected to stay in for the evening, as I had predicted earlier would be my want, omitting the acrobats in favour of a good rest. Armed with a tube of wonderful Pringles-clone crisps, and juice I spent the evening lapsing between eating, sleeping and watching some brilliantly unintelligible TV. A fairly lousy 24 hours or so to be sure, but such calamities are to be expected exposing oneself to the virgin pathogens of half the world.

Saturday

Leaving at 7:30 sharp, our bus took us north to a region of partially reconstructed Great Wall, a 3 kilometre stretch up in the Northern Mountains, garnished with watchtowers and littered with majestic views. The bus made, apparently, record time in getting us there, driving through downtown Beijing and upwards along motorways, of course, for 9am, before the glut of tourists who arrive later in the day. The wall is atop the mountain, naturally, so a bus can only convey a person so far, the remaining distance must be conquered by the individual in the manner he sees fit; you can either take a cable car or a ski lift, which I opted for, or as Sam chose walk to surmount the summit up a very long staircase. The ‘walk’ would have been a challenge, but it means one is not able to appreciate the view properly, or at all, on the way up coasting as we were over the treetops, much to the displeasure of my slightly-vertigo-afflicted companion. Having arrived at the top, we were faced with the choice of where exactly to go along the wall, a choice which as I’m sure you will understand is essentially a binary one. One can walk ‘left’ along the wall, which all but we chose to take, or you can go right to the end of the reconstruction, a route we were warned was most strenuous. Indeed it was, a long section that moved in height quicker than it did in length, making the steps around a foot and a half in height and about a third of this in depth was probably the worst section! We took a minute or two at each of the watchtowers along the top to recuperate, and enjoy the views. Having reached the end one felt quite drained, I had ate virtually nothing in the last 48 hours, but still few others had made it this far making the achievement most gratifying. Bonnie later commented we must be fit, as unlike everyone else we hadn’t looked like we’d sweat much – quite so. I sat on the wall as Pete explored just a little further beyond the end of the reconstructed length, and watched the timeless attrition of the mountain range. It’s very easy to realise, sat up here, how so long ago the ruler of China thought a series of giant walls (as it was not originally designed to be linked) would solve his problems, and it is such a pity that such a grand design saw its labours, ultimately, fade into superfluity. Of course as with so many visions, they prove myopic, and serve later not to teach us this aphorism, not impart this sagaciousness but to awe us, and encourage repetition like some hideous self propagating curse. Anyway the wall was a spectacular thing to see, and to get down, to the meeting point which was a café designated earlier, we decided to toboggan – naturally. It’s quite an amusing idea really, individual, and speed controlled sleds which convey a person in comfort and velocity (and putatively safety) down the mountain side. It beats walking down at any rate. Sat in the thing, you push your one lever down to go, and accelerate and pull it back to brake, when instructed by the helpfully placed signs down the mountain side. One came all the way down in minutes, and it was a very cool way to do things, meaning we were only 10 minutes late for the lunch meeting. Still not feeling conducive to consumption I forwent the lunch, instead drank to replace that lost to the heat and bricks. We drove back into the city, but via the Olympic village, and stadiums including the so-called bird’s nest which was a very good looking building indeed, named for the multitude of spikes and appendages strewn from its rooftop.

The bus drove us directly to our next engagement, from hither to thither, which was the Forbidden City, and we met our guide for the afternoon – a chatty lady, read garrulous, with a definite grasp of Chingrish, which she seemed, rightfully of course, proud of. The boarders of the city are most impressive, a 15, maybe 20 foot brick wall all in red, very straight and almost a kilometre long stretching into the metropolis erected around its seemingly eternal presence. The guide was indeed knowledgeable, too much so perhaps, because for half an hour she persisted with facts about how many concubines each emperor had (we get it – they weren’t good people!) and that the 9999 rooms of the city were one short of the supposed capacity of heaven, whilst her charges were baking in the sweltering heat of this less-than-heavenly climate. All admittedly very interesting. The few open squares were very impressive, and the evident restoration project invigorated the paint work to a frenzy of colour no doubt surpassing the grandeur of its former state. The architecture is so archetypically Chinese, so much so as to be instantly judged hackneyed, before one’s mental state is altered by recognition of the age of this place; lots of greens and reds, with bowing ornate rooftops bearing dragon and bird emblems. But being led around often simply impedes the exploration of those parts which one seems most compelled to investigate. We went out the North Gate into Tiananmen Square, a landmark of political significance almost unparalleled in the west besides maybe the winter palace at St. Petersburg. A picture of Mao sits on the wall facing into the square, ever keeping watch should a situation of similarly despicable libertarian stirrings occur again. Now done, and with the sun setting, the three of us set of for home, agreeing to meet in a few hours with everyone for dinner – our last dinner, quite the event. In the mean time a shower and tea (thank goodness for the quality of the hotel here), in order that one should be ready for the evening. Meeting everyone dressed up in the lobby a couple of hours later Joe lead us out, just around the corner, to a good looking restaurant, with midgets as door men! We were guided to our place, the guest suite, and placed an order for a veritable orgy of gluttony. All the various dishes were placed in the centre of the table, which rotated of course, and one helped oneself. A host of dishes, enough to feed 12 of me a couple of times over, and the price was 50 yuan each – around £3.30; things are indeed cheap here. Outside the place a fair number of goodbyes were said, some more sincere than others, as Pete and I were excusing ourselves early (i.e. foregoing the karaoke) along with Bonnie and Colleen. With the latter mother and daughter pair Pete and I shared a nightcap in the hotel bar, a very civilised hour, before saying a heartfelt farewell. As always exhausted, sleep was a self-delaying blessing, but I had hoped to wake in time to catch the breakfast bar in the morning – having become something of a aesthete of such things.

Sunday

Having had said good night’s rest, the first in a lamentably protracted time, I was ready to assault this much a-ballyhooed yet admittedly extortionate breakfast bar (a whole £3 worth of it!!) but Pete was not well, so I left him languishing. An exceptional spread I think it is fair to say, from which I devoured much, Kirsty and Laura joined me (the vet-couple), as did Sam later as he had promised, and I was regaled at length with tales of their exploits the night before, such as they were. We saw Kirsty off in her airport-bound taxi-cab first, and Sam met up with his Beijing friends so I went back upstairs to check on the progress Pete had made from bed to floor. Still in bed, he was galvanised to movement only by the tantalising prospect of shopping in such a cheap city as Beijing, and so summoned the energies needed to master to hordes of viral Visigoths hurling themselves at the battlements of his immune system; and we trespassed out into the baking smog-ridden heat. In all seriousness, without embellishment, rhyme or exaggeration, the heat here is almost unbearable – my watch says 42 degrees having not yet even come up to temperature in the 30 minutes it has had outside between the hotel and the shopping centre! The department stores have an imposing business (that is busy-ness) to their arrangement, and if you walk into a shop, the attendant almost immediately latches onto you and tracks you like some tip-starved jackal. It can be useful yes, as with the lady who assisted me in picked out a jacket, but it would get very tiresome very quickly living with that sort of pressure I think. We were also targeted by some woman trying to get us to come up to a calligraphy demo, a scam we had prior warning of so issued an abject refusal to acquiesce. Having shopped, and been pleasantly surprised by the prices, I suggested we stop off at the Hagen-Das café for ‘lunch’, which transpired to be a capitol notion. I ordered a love lyric, and following a 20 minute build-up a plate of decorously arranged ice cream and sorbet arrived before me, it cost more than last night’s dinner, but it was so very worth it. My shirt drenched with the issued evidence of the heat outside I shower, and changed into a more newly acquired attire and rested, once again. Sam dropped by for a while, but shot out again to a metro station he wanted to see before leaving, and agreed to meet us at 7:30 for dinner, a western one we reckoned.

Still not really well myself, and with Pete increasingly so himself, we both craved something digestible and familiar, KFC was set upon us as the appropriate choice as a vendor was just around the corner from the hotel. On Sam’s insistence we returned first to the ice cream place, to be fair the dishes here really are something else, more so than the analogous houses in London, and quite worthy of proper exploration. So following this I bought some chicken, and we grabbed a taxi back to the hotel (90p for a 10 minute journey!) where the food was summarily set upon and dutifully devoured. Pete, having elected to abstain, now changed his mind and we went to the MacDonald’s around the corner again from the hotel, near the post office, and once again returned to the hotel to eat. Such moist (admittedly moistened by fat) and eminently edible food was something I had been craving, being not a huge fan of eastern cuisines, and I think the swift intake of food here got be back to eating again properly, and I quite enjoyed to food too – always a bonus. Sam was staying in Beijing for the night, but not at this hotel, rather a hostel around the corner, the Harmony has been booked up for months thanks to the Olympics, our enduring a night here is thanks to Pete’s forward thinking it would seem. So a fond farewell to Sam, even though we shall meet up again in all of about two weeks time! He seemed tired but also I sense in him a regret, almost compunction, related to the way the adventure has unfolded; it was not as Sam had expected, and I think he feels responsible in a way. For myself the trip has unfolded in a manner I would have predicted, although the effect it has had upon me I would not, the sheer scale of our quest to see so much in such a relatively short time mandates movements and travels to a degree which renders appreciation in the moment almost unattainable. One is so preoccupied with either assimilating the last place or event, or preparing for the next. In this sense the strain journeys served as a welcome sojourn from the hectic schedule foisted upon by intrepid travel, even though my experiences on the last train soured me a massive amount! Travelling on trains has been such fun though; it’s a very civilised way to travel, harking back to tales woven by Christie about embittered sleuths riding the rails in style across great continents, although of course our exploits weren’t executed with quite such flair.

In truth, which one of course owes oneself if no others, our little adventure has been dogged by a couple of things, principally our comrades, who’s countenance has become increasingly self-evident as our time here races to its inexorable annihilation, and who are not, emphatically and with no amelioration, the sort of people I would associate myself with in more than a cursory nature, never mind travel half the way across the world with. It is for this reason that the three of us fractured somewhat from the group, though Sam to a lesser extent owing to his intrinsic desire to insert himself into their set, not because of any value judgement on them, but simp0ly as a factor of himself. Such a fine social balance to strike, though. An excellent hallmark of the strain brought on me personally is the extent to which I now look forward to returning home, and I think with a never-before held perception of its worth, which is an overriding emotion I am happy to convey with myself away from this misanthropic realm.

Monday

Our last day; alarm rousing us at 5:30 sharp, with a taxi booked to take us to the airport at half 6. A quick shower and rushed packing (a now 15kg rucksack means well packed indeed) job left us ready to leave for the airport. The added benefit of the early hour being the lower heat. The taxi ride cost a whole 90 Yuan, £6, which for the 40 minute drive is something beyond reasonable. The smog today was worse than it has been since we arrived just those few days ago, its like a cloud of noxious fog decent upon the city, I can but pity the athletes who are to compete here in these less than auspicious conditions! We now had the three hours to conduct ourselves through the airports workings, which happily transpired to be most conducive to expedience, rather than the labyrinthine systems employed by London to confound and exasperate even the most forthright and intrepid of travellers. We found the air Berlin gate and awaited, with some fellow passengers, its opening which was to occur exactly three hours before the departure time (10:45). The process was painfully straight-forward, and we were checked in with hours to go, a circumstance which precipitated a compunction in Pete due to his eagerness, a circumstance which I sought to ameliorate in order to remedy his worsening mood. We took coffee and breakfast (the first of many meals of the day) before boarding promptly prior to our takeoff. I think it is fair to say everything went more smoothly than I would have dared dream – our luggage was sent directly ahead of us to London, and a very nice spacious airplane for this 10 hour flight was ours, the first of two. A very smiley German steward was tasked to our portion of the aircraft, and he served us our successive meals and drinks. I was most impressed with what was provided, regular drinks (juices, hot or cold and water) on a cart, two main meals, the first of which was a pasta dish, the second a plate of meats and cheese with breads, both 3 courses and the former followed by complimentary cognac or Baileys! Suffice it to say neither of us were expecting such luxury. The flight was naturally accompanied by in-flight entertainment – a loose employment of the word – such as episodes of the hilariously German sitcom ‘Die Nanny’, and some movies including the inexcusable ‘Golden Compass’. So a thoroughly positive experience of the part of the airline and flying, though it is fair to say that the 10 hour flight did drag on just a little bit. Our arrival in Germany, Dusseldorf, reminded us of our 5 hour wait for connection, and so we concurred to seek a coffee shop in the finest tradition after circumspective perusal of the duty-free offerings. An unknown quantity revealed itself here, in the form of a fellow traveller to London, an individual named in coherence with serendipity Sam. He was an interesting fellow, only 19, who took the onerous task of directing conversation away from the embittered forms of myself and Pete – to say the least the was chatty. I, now back here in civilisation, availed myself the opportunity I’d been sorely awaiting in recent days which was to order tap water, and not be forced to courier my not-even-earned cash into the pockets of some nefarious pseudo-tycoon lording over aqua-vitae. A liberating experience after a whole month of benighted bottled water. We sat here with our new friend until the time came to take out leave of Dusseldorf and away on the short shop-over flight to, God bless it, London Stanstead. My pen flags at the thought and I no longer see merit in continuation of the chronological tradition established herein and so earnestly maintained, I am relieved.