50 months later
The junk I’d planned for my last Saturday in HK had to be cancelled due to a black rain storm that morning, in fact during just one hour of the tempest a record 145mm of rain fell, it was clearly time to leave HK and to take on the Great British summer.
So, I had a few final final drinks, boxed up the last of my things and once Hannah arrived we were ready to go. Unfortunately virtually as we left the flat my 100 litre plus hold-all burst its seams in a very terminal fashion! A note was rapidly written for Matt (flatmate) to forward some essentials, the charity shop gained a few pairs of shoes and I stuffed anything I could into an old 65 l rucksack Zoe had left me to bin about 9 months earlier. Alas, a few hours later I began to think the journey might be doomed as the China Air flight assistant started to serve the “in flight meal” while we were still sat on Shenzhen airport’s runway...
Thankfully after only a little over two hours delay we were on our way again and Beijing bound. We only had a day in Beijing but rather than rushing about in the smog we headed for a remote section of the great wall for a bit of a walk. After following the it for a couple of hours and not seeing a soul we naively thought we’d escaped Chinas rampant capitalism, however as we climbed into one of the wall’s many defence towers we came face to face with a man selling souvenir t-shirts, still, we weren’t complaining as he also had a box of cold drinks.
Being as organised as I am we got our train tickets almost a whole hour before it left Beijing bound (eventually) for St. Petersburg. Now given most people think I can’t sit still for 5 minutes it might be thought Hannah was crazy to agree to travel over 8150km with me by train with only two stops in between, but I’m sure she’ll agree that it was a fantastic trip.
The first leg was a mere 31 hours which took us to Mongolia’s capital, Ulanbattar. Ulanbaatar isn’t much of a city to look at but we took half a day to visited the Gandan Khiid Monastery (when asked at a Mongolia monastery if you like pigeons don’t say “yes but they don’t have enough meat on them”, apparently they rather like them there) Sukhbaatar Square with first of many Ghinggis statues and Peace Hill plus a rather nice karaoke restaurant where our guide Naki sung a couple of Beatles tracks for us (apparently Mongolians like to sing!).
After Ulanbattar we headed into the hills for a couple of nights of archery, horse riding and camel racing on a ger camp (Mongolian version of a Tibetan yert if that helps). The scenery and sunsets on the Mongolian Steppe were spectacular, unfortunately the nomadic horses up there aren’t so reliable and didn’t show up plus it turned out the camel racing was using a pile of sheep ankle bones. On the bright side I won the race and as a prize I was generously allowed to act out a theatrical representation of 12 randomly picked animals to the rest of the group... for the record camels are much harder than badgers!
After the camp it was back on the train, this time for four nights (thankfully this time in our own 1st class carriage) during which time we gazed out of the window as we entered Russia (about 7 hours of boarder based fun), passed lake Baikal for 207 km, traversed Siberia and the Ural Mountains and crossed from Asia to Europe, we also played the unofficial world championships of whist, rummy and the ever popular sh1thead!
One of the most entertaining elements of the train was the dining carriage. The peroxide blond, chain smoking attendant that ran it wasn’t the friendliest woman in the world, however she did seem to take great pleasure in going through the extensive menu pointing to each dish in turn and growling “N’et, n’et, n’et”. It turned out that all she actually had was bread, cheese and borsch but thankfully the three worked very well together, especially when washed down with cold Russian beer.
Moscow fashion sense is fantastic, fantastic that is if you loved the 80s. The city itself however is rather more timeless and we had three great days exploring the Kremlin (Kremlin meaning walled city you know), Red Square (original meaning of red being beautiful not communist), the amazing tube station (sorry Hannah) and searching for an internet cafe (Moscow has no tourist information centres making this as good as impossible). We also found time to happen across a rally for the communist party outside the Central Lenin Museum, take a couple of thousand photos of St. Basils and eat some rather good Caucasian food.
An overnight train to St. Petersburg brought us to the house of Eleanor, a Russian widow who for a small fee rented out a bedroom (her bedroom as if unfortunately turned out) right in the middle of town. We were welcomed with open arms as apparently Hannah is the spitting image of Eleanor’s sister (a year or 40 ago) and from there we explored a city that proved the match of any European capital.
Once we’d cleared the hours of queuing, the Hermitage museum was one of the many highlights, admittedly we didn’t stay long enough to see all the 3 million pieces housed there but we worth a look. The best however we saved for last, for the final night of our trip we managed to get tickets to see Prince Igor in the Marlinsky Theatre. I have to confess that beforehand I wasn’t 100% sure about the idea of Russian Opera and thought I’d be ready to leave in favour of a pint by the interval but the pair of us were absolutely transfixed from start to finish.
And that was the trip (and only about 35 months longer than planned), the following day it was off to Polkovo II and after a quick bounce in Copenhagen we were back on English soil to see sunset over the motherland as we made for Bristol. I have to say England is still one of the most beautiful countries I know. I think I might stay, for a while at least...
JP
Jonathan Partington
Redland, Bristol
+44 7942 641 959
So, I had a few final final drinks, boxed up the last of my things and once Hannah arrived we were ready to go. Unfortunately virtually as we left the flat my 100 litre plus hold-all burst its seams in a very terminal fashion! A note was rapidly written for Matt (flatmate) to forward some essentials, the charity shop gained a few pairs of shoes and I stuffed anything I could into an old 65 l rucksack Zoe had left me to bin about 9 months earlier. Alas, a few hours later I began to think the journey might be doomed as the China Air flight assistant started to serve the “in flight meal” while we were still sat on Shenzhen airport’s runway...
Thankfully after only a little over two hours delay we were on our way again and Beijing bound. We only had a day in Beijing but rather than rushing about in the smog we headed for a remote section of the great wall for a bit of a walk. After following the it for a couple of hours and not seeing a soul we naively thought we’d escaped Chinas rampant capitalism, however as we climbed into one of the wall’s many defence towers we came face to face with a man selling souvenir t-shirts, still, we weren’t complaining as he also had a box of cold drinks.
Being as organised as I am we got our train tickets almost a whole hour before it left Beijing bound (eventually) for St. Petersburg. Now given most people think I can’t sit still for 5 minutes it might be thought Hannah was crazy to agree to travel over 8150km with me by train with only two stops in between, but I’m sure she’ll agree that it was a fantastic trip.
The first leg was a mere 31 hours which took us to Mongolia’s capital, Ulanbattar. Ulanbaatar isn’t much of a city to look at but we took half a day to visited the Gandan Khiid Monastery (when asked at a Mongolia monastery if you like pigeons don’t say “yes but they don’t have enough meat on them”, apparently they rather like them there) Sukhbaatar Square with first of many Ghinggis statues and Peace Hill plus a rather nice karaoke restaurant where our guide Naki sung a couple of Beatles tracks for us (apparently Mongolians like to sing!).
After Ulanbattar we headed into the hills for a couple of nights of archery, horse riding and camel racing on a ger camp (Mongolian version of a Tibetan yert if that helps). The scenery and sunsets on the Mongolian Steppe were spectacular, unfortunately the nomadic horses up there aren’t so reliable and didn’t show up plus it turned out the camel racing was using a pile of sheep ankle bones. On the bright side I won the race and as a prize I was generously allowed to act out a theatrical representation of 12 randomly picked animals to the rest of the group... for the record camels are much harder than badgers!
After the camp it was back on the train, this time for four nights (thankfully this time in our own 1st class carriage) during which time we gazed out of the window as we entered Russia (about 7 hours of boarder based fun), passed lake Baikal for 207 km, traversed Siberia and the Ural Mountains and crossed from Asia to Europe, we also played the unofficial world championships of whist, rummy and the ever popular sh1thead!
One of the most entertaining elements of the train was the dining carriage. The peroxide blond, chain smoking attendant that ran it wasn’t the friendliest woman in the world, however she did seem to take great pleasure in going through the extensive menu pointing to each dish in turn and growling “N’et, n’et, n’et”. It turned out that all she actually had was bread, cheese and borsch but thankfully the three worked very well together, especially when washed down with cold Russian beer.
Moscow fashion sense is fantastic, fantastic that is if you loved the 80s. The city itself however is rather more timeless and we had three great days exploring the Kremlin (Kremlin meaning walled city you know), Red Square (original meaning of red being beautiful not communist), the amazing tube station (sorry Hannah) and searching for an internet cafe (Moscow has no tourist information centres making this as good as impossible). We also found time to happen across a rally for the communist party outside the Central Lenin Museum, take a couple of thousand photos of St. Basils and eat some rather good Caucasian food.
An overnight train to St. Petersburg brought us to the house of Eleanor, a Russian widow who for a small fee rented out a bedroom (her bedroom as if unfortunately turned out) right in the middle of town. We were welcomed with open arms as apparently Hannah is the spitting image of Eleanor’s sister (a year or 40 ago) and from there we explored a city that proved the match of any European capital.
Once we’d cleared the hours of queuing, the Hermitage museum was one of the many highlights, admittedly we didn’t stay long enough to see all the 3 million pieces housed there but we worth a look. The best however we saved for last, for the final night of our trip we managed to get tickets to see Prince Igor in the Marlinsky Theatre. I have to confess that beforehand I wasn’t 100% sure about the idea of Russian Opera and thought I’d be ready to leave in favour of a pint by the interval but the pair of us were absolutely transfixed from start to finish.
And that was the trip (and only about 35 months longer than planned), the following day it was off to Polkovo II and after a quick bounce in Copenhagen we were back on English soil to see sunset over the motherland as we made for Bristol. I have to say England is still one of the most beautiful countries I know. I think I might stay, for a while at least...
JP
Jonathan Partington
Redland, Bristol
+44 7942 641 959
posted by JP at 2:00 pm
