I know it's been a long, long time since I've updated this journal. I'd like to apologise to you for that! Some of you might even have been a bit worried but most of you probably know that I'm back in England and have been for a while. Our journey came to an abrupt end when we found out about someone in P.'s family being really sick and dying. We ( Read more... )

Map of the Caucasus

Ah Georgia, beloved country!

It's hard to try and describe such a beautiful place! It was definitely one of the big surprises of our trip. First it was only "on the route" but now it will always be in our memories. As with Azerbaijan we didn't know much about Georgia but quickly found out that there is lots to see. We divided ( Read more... )

Here the promised pictures of Baku.

As soon as we arrived in the little village of Lahic, there were some men approaching us asking us if we had somewhere to stay. Of course we didn't. *lol* One of them said he knew a homestay where we could stay. It was in a traditional house of a Muslim family (Azerbaijan is Muslim) with wooden floor boards, old ( Read more... )

We didn't know anything about Azerbaijan (or the other two Caucasus countries) before we actually got there as the plan of going through Central Asia didn't work out. So we didn't have any guidebook or anything. I just thought it'll probably be “a bit like Russia” and to better get through it quickly and on to Turkey. Well, here we are in Georgia ( Read more... )

Happy Easter!

Yes, I'll try to make this my last entry about China. We left the country already a few weeks ago and it's about time to get it finished on here as well. There is actually not that much to tell, although there are still three weeks missing which I have to write about. But we spent one whole week in one place where we didn't do that ( Read more... )

Final Map of China

(06 - 16/02)

We chose Chengdu to spend Chinese New Year there as we got there just before local transport got really busy. It already had taken us hours to get the tickets to Chengdu in Xi'an and there had only been a few tickets left. It was a long journey, the longest we had in China, 14 hours or so I believe. We stayed in a ( Read more... )

We unfortunately had to skip Central Asia and are in Azerbaijan already. We left China a couple of days ago and flew from Urumqi to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. I'm going to explain a bit more when I get there in my accounts. For now I still have to finish China.

Final map of China

Kaifeng & Xuzhou (27.01. - 01.02.)

Xuzhou was a bit of a ( Read more... )

Shijiazhuang & Zhengding (15.-16.01.)

Shijiazhuang isn't really worth writing about except to say how awful the place is! *lol* We got there quite late in the evening, tired and exhausted, and it was absolutely impossible to find a hotel room! First we checked the youth hostel and then a dozen or so hotels. Some of them being really big and they ( Read more... )

I have quite a lot of catching up to do and probably won't have internet very often in Central Asia so I'll try just writing about some places and highlights and posting the pictures. We did get our second visa extension in Chengdu and now have till the beginning of March. We can't really stay much longer anyway as time is running out. Central ( Read more... )

I don't even know where to start writing about Beijing! We stayed there from 30/12 till 10/01, longer than anywhere else while travelling. But there was much to see and we also did an overnight trip to Chengde. We'd arranged it so we'd be in Beijing for New Year which wouldn't have been necessary really as there weren't any public fireworks or any ( Read more... )