Backpacking

We wanted to be in Shanghai by the 10th and since the "hard sleeper" for the overnight train on the 9th were booked out already we had to take the "soft sleeper". It was no problem taking the subway to the train station even though there were a lot of people. The difficult part was figuring out how the enormous train station worked and where we would have to wait for the train. Eventually we figured it out and got on the train all right. The train was really luxurious in comparison to the trans-siberian. It was impeccably clean, air-conditioned, we could order food directly to our compartment and our beds were very comfortable and clean. We even had a white table cloth and a fresh flower in a vase on our table! We had an improvised dinner consisting of coffee/tea, banana, rice crackers, some dried fruits and a muffin.

We shared the compartment with only one person who was Chinese and the conversation was scarce. He had a really friendly face and we managed to understand that he was from Shanghai. He showed us on the map where we would have to go and explained how much the food would be if we would have wanted to order.

On the train were almost exclusively Chinese people except for a Danish family which we overheard boarding the train.

When we woke up we enjoyed the scenery for a while before we packed our stuff. We arrived on time to Shanghai Railway Station and went directly to the metro and bought our tickets. The Shanghai Railway Station was pretty impressive as well, with a lot of people everywhere. I find that, just like in Beijing, people here walk pretty slowly. I don't know if it is because I have longer legs or what but I would almost go as far as to say that people here walk as slowly as in Mexico!!

We arrived at our hostel after having to look for it for about 20-30 minutes. We got a good room with our own bathroom and went down to have breakfast.

Lots of love,

Fredrik and Sabrina

A mix of grandeur from Imperial days, communist style architecture, modern sky scrapers, commercial centers and a maze of narrow alleys, Hutongs, with some delightful courtyard architecture, that is what you will find in today's Beijing. The 15.2 million inhabitants of Chinas capital (maybe not all of them) are frank, uncomplicated, helpful, friendly and every where to find.

We arrived early in the afternoon on the 5th of October. Apparently the Chinese had a week long holiday because of their National Day, 1 October, (in 1949 Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China on this day) and according to our Lonely Planet "it is not a great idea to arrive in China or go traveling during these holidays as things tend to grind to a halt". Well, we hadn't much of a choice and just stuck to our original plan.

Our hostel "Red Lantern Hostel" turned out to be a pleasant place right in the Zhengjue Hutong, northwest of the city center. The hostel had a delightful inner courtyard, good service and a friendly welcoming atmosphere. We had really cozy beds (much better than the train bunk beds) and a nicely decorated room.

We made ourselves at home and freshened up a bit, before we went off in search of food. Very quickly, we didn't have to have to walk long, we found a restaurant that appeared good to us and we walked inside. Fortunately, the menu had many photos and even some translation in English. We ordered a salad, vegetables, rice and squid. In the center of our table there was a hole with a grate or grill covering it where they put glowing coal and we could prepare our squid. Yummy!!! Apart from the food we ordered, we got tea, an appetizer, melon and ice cream. The food was delicious and of really good quality, and the prices were ridiculously low. We paid 30 Yuan (almost 4US$ or 2.90 Euros or 26 SKr) per person.

After our delightful dinner experience, we walked around in the close by hutongs, the typical traditional Beijing neighborhoods with narrow alleys. There are lots of shops, like the hole in wall types, stalls, people passing by on bicycle, walking, chatting, buying and selling. In particular at nightfall the hutongs seemed to come to real life with a big huddle of people with noises and odors coming from all directions. It is exciting to walk through the hutongs, there is always something new to explore.

The next day we had planed to get up early to see the Forbidden City but since it was pouring with rain we decided to take it easy. A bit later in the morning when the rain stopped we went off to visit the Temple of Heaven. A paragon of Ming Design, the Temple of Heaven, set in a 267 hectare park, originally served as a vast stage of solemn rites performed by the Son of Heaven, who prayed here for good harvest, and sought divine clearance and atonement for the sins of the people. We walked around the park and with us thousands of Chinese. We saw the Round Altar, Imperial Vault of Heaven and the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, the standout complex with a triple-eaved umbrella roof mounted on a three-tiered marble terrace. A neat place!!

Afterwards we walked around a bit.................

.....and we then headed for Tiananmen Square where there seemed to be even more Chinese. It's national holiday week, you remember? The world's largest public square, Tiananmen Square is a vast desert of paving stone at the heart of Beijing. In the square, you stand in the symbolic centre of the Chinese universe. The square employs a conventional plan that pays obeisance to traditional Chinese culture, while its ornaments and buildings are largely Soviet inspired. Mao’s Mausoleum (the Chinese Chairman died in 1976) can be seen here as well.

At night we met with Emily, the Australian girl we did a climb excursion with in Peru and who now lives and works in Beijing. We also got to meet her flatmate who is of Chinese origin but grew up in Singapore and got her higher education in Australia. Thanks to her Mandarin knowledge, we could order the drinks and food we wanted to without using the otherwise so typical sign language. We paid 16 Yuan (US$2.10 or 1.50 Euros or almost 14 SKr) each. Can it get any cheaper?

The next day looked great, blue sky, few clouds and refreshing winds. The Forbidden City was on our agenda and we got up early to be there before the crowds. That was what we thought at least. We took a bus, got off at Front Gate, walked pass the Tiananmen Square and passed through the Gate of Heavenly Peace to eventually get to the Forbidden City. It is Beijing's top tourist site which for 500 years was off limits, thus the name. It was home to two dynasties of emperors, the Ming and the Qing, who didn't stray from this pleasure dome unless they absolutely had to. When we got there the site was full of Chinese and Western tourists alike. We strolled through the different gates, courtyards and buildings and saw the Three Great Halls, the heart of the Forbidden City, build in the 15 century and restored in the 17th century, and the Imperial Gardens, a classical Chinese garden of fine landscaping, with rockeries, walkways and pavilions. The whole complex is a true exhibit of the grandeur of Chinas Imperial days.

After Beijing’s top tourist site visit, we walked through Beihai Park, which lies northwest of the Forbidden City. It is a beautiful Chinese garden type of park with a huge lake in the centre and a perfect place to stroll around, enjoy the peaceful atmosphere and to watch calligraphers practicing characters on the pacing slabs with brush and water. The site is associated with Kublai Khan's palace, the navel of Beijing before the creation of the Forbidden City. Kublai Khan, who reigned over China as emperor of the Yuan dynasty, was grandson of Genghis Khan, the Mongol conqueror.

There as in all the other tourist places, Chinese tourists/visitors are really busy taking photos of all the different tourist attractions with them posing before it. At one place some Chinese ladies even wanted to take a photo of me next to them. So I did some posing together with them. Funny thing!!! I guess they think we Westerners look quite exotic and it's a cool thing to have a photo side by side.

After the park, we carried on to walk through the hutongs until we got back to our hostel. On our way back we had probably the best tasting dumplings ever at a tiny local restaurant. I guess I don't have to tell you how cheap it was.

The day after we had organized to go on a trip to the Great Wall at Mutianyu. Hugo and Beatrice, who we shared the compartment with on the train to Beijing, and a couple from Peru joined us. We left early at 6.00 am and got to Mutianyu before 8.00 am. We were lucky there were hardly any people that early and we climbed up our way along the wall to the different watch towers. The weather was perfect, the surrounding beautiful and the atmosphere breathtaking (not just because of the endless seeming number of stairs we walked up and down). We had four hours to walk around and were totally exhausted at 12.30 pm when we headed back to Beijing.

At night we went to Liyuan Theatre to see a Beijing Opera performance. We had been trying to get tickets through our hostel for several days and were lucky to get some on our last night in Beijing. The place turned out to be really touristy but the performance was ok. We saw some nice acrobatics, beautiful costumes, fascinating face paintings and listened to the vigorous song.

The last day in Beijing, we were busy with packing, surfing the internet, emailing, updating our travel page etc.

Then we left for Shanghai our next and maybe last destination on The Big Trip 2007.

Lots of hugs,

Sabrina and Fredrik

PS: We have been really slow with updting our travel blog. Sorry!!! We will try to catch up.

We were picked up from our "Guest house" early in the morning, but on the way to the station I realized that I was missing my book (Mei Wenti). We managed to get back, pick the book up and still we arrived at the station in exactly the same moment as the train rolled in. No problem, "Mei Wenti" in Chinese.

There were sooo many tourists and at least half of them seemed to be Swedish. We shared compartment with Hugo and Beatrice a Swedish couple who were on a trip with the transsiberian down through China and Vietnam until Christmas.

The train ride went fine, as did the boarder crossing, and we arrived on schedule in Beijing. Exciting!! We took the subway to our hostel that we had booked from UB. Hugo and Beatrice hadn't booked anything and went with us to check the place out.

The week is marked as a national holiday and one of the worst times to arrive in China (since all the Chinese people are traveling) but there was absolutely no problem at all. We took the subway to our hostel "Red Lantern House" which is pretty central for Beijing and which turned out very affordable and nice.

Lots of hugs,

Fredrik and Sabrina

Our hostal in Ulan Bataar (UB) was more like an apartment converted into a guesthouse. We had a fairly large room but with a bed as hard as a rock. It was many times worse than the relatively comfortable bunks on the train. Luckily there was also a couch in the room and we could make ourselves comfortable there. We went out to change some money (Togrog) and found an exchange office just across the street.

UB has around 800,000 inhabitants and is pretty grey and shabby. Many still live in gers (tents) or shacks. The Mongolian law allows anyone to put up a fence and call the land his/her own (15 x 20 m per person) and you see fences everywhere. It's far from being a beautiful city and we didn't do much sightseeing as we spent almost all our time in the Gobi, but it definitely has it's own atmosphere. We managed to look around town a bit.

We also went to see UB's temple. Gandantegchinlen (Gandan) Khiid is Mongolias largest and most important temple. It was built in the mid 19th century and survived the russian religious cleanout in the 1930's.

We also ran into Walter and Walter again. The Austrian guys, father and son, from the train and Irkutsk. We met by chance at a small cafe and chatted a bit over a cup of coffee. It's a small world!

Lots of Love,

Fredrik and Sabrina

Ok, after some thinking we decided to go. The tour was organized by UB Guesthouse and they gave us all the information and alternative tours, but this sounded like the best one. Since our time in Mongolia was pretty limited we had to opt for the 7 day tour and we booked it straight away. 414,000 for the both of us!!!! Wooooow, that sounds expensive, doesn't it? Well it's about the same as 175 USD per person for a 4WD-van (old but good), with driver, gas, sleeping bags and some cooking gear and a translator, all for 7 days. In the end we managed to find a fifth person to join us so it turned out even cheaper. We met Dee, a Dutch girl who had been travelling south-east Asia, Australia and China for almost a year on her own.

We left UB early the morning of the 26th. We just had to stop for some additional supplies, Gas for the stove, matches and, last but not least, water. Pretty good to have in the desert I've been told. :-)

Gobi was the destination. The name is Mongolian and means desert and is a vast region occupying much of southern Mongolia and a large piece of northern China. By some definitions, it encompasses desert lands stretching more than 3000 kilometers in a broad arc from the Tarim Basin in western China to the Da Hinggan Mountains on the border to Manchuria and from the centre of Mongolia to the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau.

The tour was planned so that we would drive between 5 and 8 hours per day and then eat and spend the night with Nomad families in their "gers" (tents). We would have the possibility to take one shower in a village that we would pass on the way after about 3 days.

We stopped at a "Sacred Stone" a holy place consisting of a blessed pile of rocks where you are supposed to walk around it 3 times clockwise while making a wish while for each lap adding a rock on the pile.

After about 10 minutes drive from Ulan Bataar we left the paved roads behind us. We were amazed by the beautiful countryside and we stopped a couple of times to take photos. -"Bairat, STOP!" was the command. Our driver, Bairat, who by the way always had a smile on his face, didn't speak much English, but that he understood. J

ust before sundown we arrived at the camp where we were to spend the night. The sunset was incredible as was the (full) moonrise. We had Mongolian tea (a kind of salty goat milk) and ate dinner, consisting of small mixed pieces of mutton and rice, together with the family while our guide, Saga, explained about the local customs and translated some questions for us. The family really made us feel welcome and we had a great first night in the Gobi. We went back to our ger, which they had warmed up for us by making a fire in the stove. The fuel was cow dung...

We slept like babies and since it was so cold in the morning nobody would have wanted to get up unless half an hour before it was time, our hosts lit the stove for us. That was great! Breakfast was fried bread and tea. We paid our 4000 per person before leaving (3.5 USD) and said goodbye.

The program for the day was to drive another 300km through the wilderness, and stop on the way at the "Mud Cliffs" for dinner. First we stopped at an old temple in the middle of nowhere.

We bumped in to our first herd of camels and called -"Bairat, STOP!" to check them out. Later we would see camels from time to time as we made our way through the gobi.

When we arrived at the mud cliffs we walked around the area. There are many crystals scattered around on the ground and the dirt is in shifting tones of red, brown and yellow.

We then had lunch on top of the plateau that makes out the cliffs. We cooked inside the van which is a good way to avoid the sand and ocasional winds but maybe its not the safest way to cook.

On the way we saw some mirages, it really looked like lakes in the middle of the desert, but in the end there was just more desert. In the evening we arrived at Dalazadgad village (1450m above sea level) where we arrived late at night and had some difficulties to find the tent in the dark after that all of us had had our showers at the local "bath house".

Since we were in a "village" we had an electric light in the tent, but no heating so it got quite cold. We had our rice and mutton (Soya meat for the vegetarians again) in our own tent and went to bed.

After a breakfast of crackers and tea we played some football and packed ourselves in the van again.

We drove about 300km on bouncy roads to the Ice valley or Yolyn Am (Vulture Canyon), without ice now because of heavy rains earlier this year. Wildflowers line the banks of the gently flowing stream. It was beautiful and we truly enjoyed the scenery and also managed to photograph some of the many "Pikas", squirrel-sized members of the rabbit family with little round ears, who pop in and out of their burrows all around the place.

We then had a little pick nick lunch before we went straight to the next stop to save one day and to be able to fully enjoy the "Sand Dunes" where we spent two nights. After leaving the valley we had a nice ride through some beautiful terrain. We asked our driver to stop a couple of times and just enjoyed the views.

As the sun started to set we had still not reached the campsite. We encountered a group of camels and took the opportunity to strech our legs and get a couple of nice photographs of the animals.

The place is called "Khongoryn Els" and is a spectacular line of sand dunes (180km long and 12km wide) in a valley squeezed between mountains. The highest dunes are some 200 meters. It was more the desert that we had expected and it was nice to not have to get up as early and bounce around in the car all day. Emma had a cold and spent the whole day in bed and Dee, who seems to only need a couple of hours sleep per night, was up before sunrise anyway. Orna, the family's daughter played with us and Sabrina and I went on our first camel ride through the desert. Dinner was pasta and vegetables for all (Dee and I were tired of the mutton and had decided to become temporary vegetarians).

We also made a new friend. The lovely daughter of the family named Orna. She played with us and showed us how to treat the animals. Also she showed us what to do if you drop a candy on the ground. First you whipe it off on the goat and then you let the dog lick it and, abra cadabra, you can eat it again...

Saga went with us on the camelride which started at a neighbouring nomad camp. We drove there and rode the camels back to our camp. On the way we met Dee who had went on a walk to the dunes.

The following day, after the tea and crackers, we drove to Bayanzag, better known as "Flaming Cliffs". It’s a red-tinted badlands famous for dinosaur fossil discoveries that began in the 20's and continue to this day. On the way we stopped in a small village for some food.

At the Flaming cliffs we walked around a bit, enjoying the grand views and the nice weather.

The night we were lucky enough to experience a real ger inauguration party. The tradition is that when a couple gets married, the groom’s family gives them a ger and the bride’s family provides the furniture. We met the lucky couple and sat with the groom and his brother in law who, waiting for the bride’s family, had started the celebration with our guide and driver. We were offered "Mongolian vodka" it’s the rest liquid from yoghurt production, mixed with vodka. It has a really "goaty" taste. The other drink we were offered was "Mongolian beer", fermented mares (horse) milk. The third was the normal, Russian style, vodka. Our guide and driver was drinking the "beer" mixed with the Russian style vodka from big bowls (1,5 liters or so). The Mongolians are very bound by many traditions and our guide helped us so that we would not offend our hosts. We had many difficulties to gracefully decline the beverages and in the end I had to drink 4 shots of vodka and 2 silver bowls of the Mongolian Vodka. After that they started passing around the big "milk bowl" again. The only way not to have to drink it was to sing three songs. Our driver and guide sang beautifully together with the others, traditional Mongolian songs about their lands, parents etc. Then Dee got the bowl and started to look a little bit nervous. She started with some local Dutch song which everybody enjoyed and nobody understood anything of. Then I think she sang some Christmas song and finally "Allstar" from the firs Shreck movie. She happily returned the bowl and it was passed to me. Now I had had a little moment to prepare so I started with the obvious choice, the Swedish national anthem. It worked. Then it got a bit harder, but since they wouldn't understand a word anyway, I sang a lullaby. For the last one I had a really tough time figuring it out, until Sabrina got the idea and we sang a Swedish birthday song together and I got rid of the smelly milk. Now Sabrina was up. She wasn't prepared at all and had to think for a while. She started with a German Christmas song, "Oh Tannenbaum" and then after much thought, "Alle meine Entchen". For the last one she chose "Schneefloeckchen", or rather a quick version. We got out of there before they could serve us any more food or drinks. Puhhh.

The next day we started the final part of the tour. We had seen a lot of animals during the trip but especially during this last day did we really see many. We saw Gazelles, Buzzards, gophers, dessert mice, camels, horses, goats and even a dessert fox.

To sum it up, Gobi is great!!!

Lots of Love,

Fredrik and Sabrina

PS 1 The toilets were quite special. A huge hole in the ground with two stones, planks or something to stand on while leaving a gap in between for your "business". Check it out!

PS 2 We will upload some more photos shortly!!