Last night in China

August 13

Tomorrow we start on the Trans-Mongolian railway, the beginning of a two-month journey from Beijing to Moscow. (Although the railway from Beijing to Moscow is sometimes referred to as the Trans-Siberian, we don’t actually get to that until we join it at Lake Baikal in Russia. The Trans-Siberian railway goes from Vladivostock on the east coast of Russia to Moscow.) As well as the sights that I’ve written about on here, we also visited Tiannamen Square. Chairman Mao’s mausoleum is in the Square’s Centre but the queue was too long for us - even though it seemed to move fairly swiftly, we weren’t that interested in seeing the body of the mass-murderer... oops, I mean the founder of the nation.

This seems an appropriate point to make the progress of my trip so far. It’s been six months since I set off from Lyttelton. Highlights so far are the Java volcano, the Malaysian jungle-trek, and Angkor Wat. Hopefully just as many and spectacular adventures are still to come.