Two Halves

Day 28: Erlyan (CN) – Beijing (CN). “It's like trying to cross the road in Ulaanbaator”, I joked, as we emerged from the railway station. But stepping forward tentatively, trying to negotiate our way through the 'traffic', our difficulties this time weren't caused by the number of cars as they were back in Mongolia's capital but by the number of people: Thousands of them – we had finally arrived in Beijing

And the culture shock was explosive. We expected to find a ragged tableau of communist China, but instead we found ourselves in a thoroughly modern city displaying chic and commercial vibrancy (although that didn't stop us having dinner sat next to a man with a poodle on his lap dressed in a panda costume (the dog that is, not the man!) or horrifying our waitress by trying to eat our soft shell crabs with the shell still on!

Reaching China's capital represented a major landmark in our journey. Firstly, we had reached the end of our Trans Siberian adventure and in turn had reached the most Easterly point on our voyage, having crossed through 120 degrees of longitude (or a third of the way around the circumference of the earth). From now on our direction would change and we would be generally travelling in a Southerly direction, until we were within 10 degrees of the equator. Secondly, we had completed the major travelling phase of our journey and (hopefully) escaped the bitter penetrating cold of Central Asia. From now on our travelling pace would be much more leisurely and relaxed. And thirdly, we no longer had any plans or schedules to keep. From Beijing we had no idea of how we were going to get to Bangkok - we were just gong to make it up as we went along.

Having covered two thirds of our journey in one third of the time we were now in the second half of our adventure. (who says I wasn't any good at maths!!)

Day 28: Total Mileage to Date: 8,154: Number of Time Zones Crossed: 9; Number of Countries Visited: 8; Number of Transport Modes Used: 15, Maximum Temperature Encountered: +8C, Minimum Temperature Encountered: -32C.