It’s not often I get the opportunity to quote Toy Story but it seemed apt as today I come bearing good news. I’ve got some slightly old good news in the form of the Con-Demnation of plans to further expand UK airports, and I’ve got some brand spanking new technologies that might just change the face of travel as we know it.

So may I begin by tipping my hat to our new government. It’s belated I know, but for some reason I had a hard time actually typing the words: couldn’t…quite….congratulate…Tories. Phew, glad that’s over! But honestly, fair play. First came the end of plans to expand Heathrow, followed by the announcement in the Government’s new environmental policy that Gatwick and  Standsted would suffer a similar fate. Commentators got all over excited when they realised that mixing blue and yellow makes…wait for it…green; but the battle is not yet won.

Other naughty airports are still carrying the bastion of expansion – Manchester’s got all sorts of tricks up its sleeve – but it does seem that common sense is finally rearing it’s head. And what with a 7.3% drop in passengers last year (that’s 17 million fewer passengers – any mathematicians care to calculate that carbon saving?), and all the excitement that was the ash cloud, more and more people are finally looking for alternative ways of taking a holiday. Can I get a whammy?!

And so in the interest of giving the people what they want may I introduce some cutting edge technology. First the Yuneec e430 – the World’s first commercially manufactured electronic airplane. Charged off the mains, low noise, zero fuel and with very low emissions this might be the start of something beautiful. Granted right now it’s little more than a glorified glider (seating only two people and with only three hours flying time per charge) but it’s food for thought. Like I said, that’s not flying, it’s falling with style!

And now can I draw your attention to this “neutrally buoyant vacuum tunnel submerged 150 to 300 feet beneath the Atlantic’s surface and anchored to the seafloor, through which zips a magnetically levitated train at up to 4,000 mph”, or something like that. Nothing major, just a massive tunnel under the Earth’s second largest Ocean through which we shoot a train: The Trans-Atlantic Maglev.

It’s a steal at a little under $175 billion, (in fact I might get two) but since a head scientist from MIT sees “no serious stumbling blocks” from an engineering point of view, I am allowed to be at least a little bit excited. Before I get too carried away though I do have to wonder just what the environmental cost might be. However, I was delighted to read that at least the vacuum would  “save the tunnel from the destructive effects of a sonic boom” (obviously sonic boom was my first concern) good news indeed!

Photos: Yuneec & Popular Science

If you fancy getting down and dirty with a load of naked Scandinavians (quite frankly who wouldn’t?!) then it’s Roskilde Festival for you. If I were a festival I would want Roskilde to be my husband. It’s got everything I ever dreamed of, and probably a little bit more. It’s bursting at the seams with musical delights, is environmentally aware, raises money for charity, promotes a vegetarian and organic diet, uses green energy sources and rides a bicycle. Swoon! Read more about my future husband here. It’s only a mere 30 days away and tickets are on sale now.

For those who fancy some good old fashioned chaos why not take yourself to Eastern Europe. Belgrade once again brings us sun burn and dance parties in an abandoned fortress at Exit Fest. There are some excellent options for reaching Novi Sad by train, and we’ve featured a number of journeys with stopovers in Venice or Budapest.

If you’re feeling a bit more piratical, (yaaaarrgggh!) then let me recommend the Garden Festival in Zadar.  Funnily enough it’s got little to do with gardens, but will have you sailing the seven seas (*actually just one sea), while you dance in the glorious sunshine on the HMS Goodtimes. Tickety Boo. And here’s a cheeky journey plan.

Croatia is also host to Soundwave Festival in July; another treat on the Adriatic offering beaches, beats and bikinis! They’re going Loco too and offering the Sunshine Bus for a mere £125 return, from Manchester or London. Check out this mighty clever journey plan for further details and how to book.

Closer to home we’re spoiled for choice, with Spain offering its usual cache of fun and frolicks; July sees the 16th annual Benicassim Fesitival. So in the words of Dizzee Rascal (who’ll be appearing at this years gig), “get your passport, and your bikini, you need a holiday…come see me!” Ah, wise words Mister Rascal, and see you I will if I can get my hands on a ticket. For this one Loco2’s teamed up with some clever folks who are offering an all inclusive bus tour to and from the festival to make your festival experience as hassle free as possible.

Come August and it’ll be time to don your over-sized baggy hat and Jamaican themed string vest and take yourself to Rototom Sunsplash. Not only is saying “rototom” in a thick Welsh accent highly amusing, but it’s a tip top reggae festival too, with sunshine and bass and booming beats in the Spanish sunshine…

Right, that’s all for now, but certainly something to get you thinking.

Well, in short, yes! And in fact the newly formed Local Travel Movement is showing that there are a whole host of like-minded travellers and organisations out there that not only recognise the importance of authentic local travel, but are prepared to put their name down in support of it.

In less than a week the Local Travel Movement has snowballed, and there are already over thirty partners in the tourism industry who are entering into long overdue dialogue about how responsible tourism affects us all. From Couchsurfing, whose ethos of cultural exchange, friendship and a place to rest your head has long been awarded our respect, to Ger to Ger, whose Mongolian expeditions showed me that authentic travel sometimes means eating an offal lot of goat, it is already clear that going local is becoming global.

Here at Loco2 we’re not just about conserving CO2, and while we’re prone to a little soap-boxery when it comes to opting for lower emission transport, we’re also keen to emphasize that overland travel makes the journey itself part of the adventure. There’s no better way to engage with a country than travelling through it: be that on foot, bus, bicycle or train. From my own experience of surface travel through three continents I can tell you that you’ll never get a clearer perspective on a people, their culture, humour and eating habits, than by being with them every step of the way, not just at the airport and hotel check-in.

Think sharing walnuts with a Mongolian poet on a train in the middle of the Gobi desert, getting a percussion lesson from a band of toothless Tahitian buskers while taking a break from hitchhiking, or sharing photos of your family with a Vietnamese cyclo rider, these are the experiences that travel should be made up of. Forget finding yourself at a Thai beach party. It might be fun, but once the glow paint wears thin you’re left with nothing but a hangover.

The Local Travel Movement means engaging with people and places in a more meaningful way. We believe that travelling overland is the best way to embrace this great concept: share food and drink on a train, hop on the bus, walk through markets, rent a bicycle and get stuck in a traffic jam. Forgo the in-flight meal, and air conditioned taxi; talk, sweat and laugh with the real people of your destination and you’ll not only be going Local, but you’ll be going Loco too.

After the success of the Harmony Express – a new line which boasts an average speed of over 250mph and has slashed journey times between the cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan by an incredible 8 hours – the Chinese are looking West for their next project.

The proposed Sino-European rail network is exciting news for low carbon travellers, and while we may have to wait a decade to see its completion I’m already thinking about booking my ticket. Negotiations are under way to build new tracks across Europe, through Siberia to China, Singapore, India and Pakistan. And with the rapid development of high-speed bullet trains, this project poses a real alternative to eastbound flights from Europe.

Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese academy of engineering and a senior consultant on the domestic high-speed project claimed that there is still a lot of work to be done, and we may have to wait ten years to see the project in operation. But his aim to build “trains [that] run almost as fast as aeroplanes,” is music to my ears.

Read more about it here.

Photos: ockam

Now Google have teamed up with Russian Railways, to offer the ultimate in virtual travelling: a trip on the Trans-Siberian railway!

If you have a spare week or so but can’t leave your computer because you are addicted Facebook, then why not open this in another window, and you can have the best of both worlds.

That’s right, the entire length of the track has been filmed and embedded into a Googlemap so that you can experience the whole journey. Not only can you watch everything you might see out of the window, but you can listen to light-hearted tidbits like the whole of War and Peace by Tolstoy.

If you’re wondering who on earth Russian Railways are, it is relatively self-explanatory, but if you want more info then I’d watch this video interview with the cheerful chap who heads up the company. In his words (and I quote): “Yearly, we are carrying like one billion three hundred million passengers”. Blimey.

I personally would prefer the real thing, especially as at the end of the week I’d be in Asia, rather than still sat in front of my computer. But it’s a cool idea, and here at Loco2 the journey-planning tool we’re releasing soon has some similar features in terms of helping you know what to expect on a long rail-based adventure.

Photo credits: Brostad, Denis Tang, Magical World

We began the final leg of our adventure from Mongolia totally saturated with dairy products and severely bruised thanks to ten days on horseback. To the Trans-Siberian… oooohh, aaaaah, the very mention of this journey makes people swoon. An epic journey over thousands of miles, from one continent to another, from the mighty and powerful West to the erm…mighty and powerful East.  Across Siberia with the company of vodka swilling Ruskies, and views of snow-swept tundras and reindeer herders. We imagine a beautiful train. Maybe it’s got velvet curtains, and mahogany panelling or oil burning lamps à la Orient Express. Dream on suckers. This is a former Soviet train.

Let me just clear this up, once and for all. Yes it is an epic route, you can watch incredible landscape whiz past the window and it’s wholly satisfying to know that you have crossed the biggest country in the world, and passed from one continent to another by rail. However, this is a four night, five day journey…on a train and it ain’t got no mahogany! Now I love trains, you probably won’t find a bigger fan when it comes to long journeys (the bus can take a running jump of a large cliff!), but five days is an awfully long time to be sitting on any kind of vehicle non-stop. So perhaps it isn’t necessary for me to say that we became a little bit bored.

We looked out the window a little: trees, mostly alpine, some deciduous; towns, mostly industrial, definitely gray; people, mostly Caucasian, probably Russian. What shall we do now? Cue the fanfare, light the torch…so begins the Trans-Siberian Olympics; an opportunity to do all the things you’ve ever wanted within the confines of a train. Can I fit in the luggage compartment? Yes. Can I get back out of the luggage compartment unassisted? No. Can I fit an entire boiled egg in my mouth, whole, without breaking the shell? Affirmative. Press ups between the bunks? Bring it on. Stand on one leg on the wobbly bit between carriages while the train goes around a corner at 60km an hour? In your dreams Andrews! Somersaults down the aisle before you are busted by the carriage attendant? Three. Well that took about an hour, only 119 hours to go.

Once these activities were exhausted we decided it was time to venture out of our carriage. Maybe there are other small spaces to squeeze into. To be honest I was borderline obese at this point due to boredom induced over-eating so didn’t have high hopes – pot noodles, instant porridge and boiled eggs are a Godsend on this kind of journey but will eventually lead to lardiness of first year student proportions. Put down the fork Kate.

Ours was the first carriage on the train so getting to the restaurant car was an adventure in itself. Eight sets of doors, each with a pre-door door and a post-door door, all guarded by humourless Russian railway employees who clearly hate their job and are suffering from the aforementioned Trans-Siberian obesity crisis. Once you’re through the doors you have to walk down the aisle, all the while being accosted by crazed Mongolians chasing you with the dairy product lunchbox they’ve brought from home (run for your lives!!), and the Russians who look as though they want to stab but probably want to drink vodka and sing along to The Eagles.

Having fought off the various assaults on our progress we made our way towards the end of the train, and then heard the sweet sound of fellow tourists, who we immediately coerced into joining us in the restaurant car. The remainder of the journey passed easily. There’s nothing like a few beers and some board games to pass the time, and there were enough characters on that train to write a small play. There was a batty old English lady who commended us for our first rate mingling: “there aren’t enough young people these days who know the true value of mingling” she said, and then proceeded to talk at length about how they make clotted cream in Devon, and on the role of the potato in international cuisine: “you just can’t go wrong with a potato”. Later we were joined by a pair of 6ft 7″ South Africa twins who challenged us to a game of Scrabble and went on to insist that ja was a legitimate word, “ja bra, it is, ja”. Translation: yes dude, it is, yes…hmmm I think not, but entertaining all the same. And then came Jim from Canada (I am forever meeting Canadians called Jim, have they no imagination!?) who was so happy about finally achieving his dream of doing the journey that he did little else but look out of the back window at the retreating landscape and smile to himself.

The border crossing was an interesting one. Note to self, get a new passport. I have long known that my passport photo isn’t the best likeness. I was sixteen, blurry, and appear to be wearing some sort of heavy eye make-up on (damn you teenage Kate), and roll neck jumper (curse you 90s fashion). The curious effect of all this is that I somehow appear, in the words of one fellow traveller to look “like a small Indian child”. Little wonder that the Russian border guard eyed me suspiciously for what felt like hours.

During those tense minutes I considered pulling out another coconut pun: so I hear that Russians are responsible for numerous deaths on tropical islands as they fall from palm trees…maybe not. This one was among the hardest, and thus most coconutty of all the Russians we’ve met and in retrospect I’m glad I kept my mouth shut. Vicki later informed me that in a recent survey of Russian border officials, over 75% were found to be mentally unstable and inappropriate for any kind of work involving fellow human beings.

Once I was sure we were safely in the country and not going to be flung into Siberia from the train window I was able to relax, get stuck into a book, and a few more pot noodles, and before we knew it we were in Moscow, a little fatter but as happy as ever.

An unmarked van dropped us at the border; we stayed in an empty hotel above a bus station, and in the morning we were driven by a toothless maniac, through no-mans land to the edge of the Gobi desert. We were glad to see the back of Mao, and even happier to wave goodbye to a billion queue jumpers.

Mongolia was our heart of darkness. Yaks, gers and Genghis Kahn had been the topic of our conversation for months, and this portion of our trip had been booked far in advance. From one extreme to another: overnight we passed from one of the world’s most densely populated countries to one of it’s most barren. Mongolia’s vast countryside is home to fewer than 2 million people and the horse to human ratio is 13:1.

We were to spend the next fortnight living alongside some of Mongolia’s many nomadic people, sleeping in tents, riding yaks, milking horses, and slaughtering goats. So of course we were terribly excited. Not only that, but we’d heard that the Mongolians were great fans of cheese.

I love cheese, am fond of butter and used to carry a spoon in my handbag for the express purpose of eating yoghurts. In fact, one might say that I am a fan of milk and its many derivatives. So when I heard from a fellow traveller that Mongolians were keen on dairy products I salivated at the prospect. Cheddar, Brie, Gorgonzola; I knew I was going back to Europe for something. Kraft cheese slices in Tonga, Laughing Cow triangles in Laos, I definitely can believe that this yellow paste isn’t butter. Bring on the deli counter…

Never has a person been so misled. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suffering from calcium deficiency, dairy products are plentiful. You might even say that the country is rife with them. That’s right, rife. In the last week I have eaten an incredible number of things made from milk; cream, fried cream, sour cream, cream cookies, hot milk, hot milk with salt, milk tea, butter, yoghurt, soft cheese, hard cheese, cheese curds, milk with rice, milk with meat, dumplings in milk, and a few questionable hard curd-like things which defy definition. In fact, I have eaten some sort of milk derivative for every meal of every day for what feels like an eternity.

Not only that, the culinary tomfoolery doesn’t stop there…oh no! There’s not only cows to contend with in Outer Mongolia, don’t be fooled. What about some delicious yak milk? Would you care to suckle that hairy cow? Or maybe you’d like some mare’s milk? That’s right, it’s a lady horse. And wouldn’t it be a nice idea to let that mare’s milk ferment so we can all drink refreshing, delicately flavoured sour milky champagne? Or shall we go totally crazy and make vodka out of milk, doesn’t that sound yummy-yummy in your tummy, with it’s totally unique gone off milk aftertaste? Scrumdiddliumptious! Sarcastic, me? Well read it as you will.

Maybe I enjoyed it; maybe I’m going to hang out near dairy farms hoping for warm weather to sour the milk so I can bathe in it. Or maybe I wanted to cry every time I approached a ger and sensed the imminent dairy coming my way. I’ll let you be the judge.

And how do you think I feel about offal? That’s the “culinary term used to refer to the entrails and internal organs of a butchered animal”. It’s probably just peachy isn’t it, since I’m a “culinary adventurer” as I have often described myself. That’s karma for you. Brag about scorpion eating, regale you with tales of snail tasting and cricket munching, and then what happens? That’s right. Offal. Insert turbo pub here: I tried to eat the goat’s organs, but they were just offal. Boom boom. That’s the sound of a comedy drum.

Just to clarify I’ve mostly been eating intestine, blood sausage, lungs, liver and a medley of others animal innards. Maybe chuck in a little face for good measure, boil it up, et voila! Goat Surprise. The surprise is it’s 100% goat. If you can get it off the carcass it’s going in. And I ate the lot. As the non-vegetarian it was my duty to take one for the team. Vicki’s not going near it, she doesn’t even like chicken flavour crisps for God’s sake.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger they say, so let’s assume I’m stronger. Please let me be stronger, otherwise that’s a whole lot of offal for nothing. On the plus side I have remixed the classic Peter Andre hit and have paid Vicki back for her abstention by singing “whoa, whoa, whoa, mysterious meat, I wanna get close to you…bring your offal close to mine” at every opportunity. I’m pretty sure that she loves it. Although right now she’s ignoring me so I’m not totally sure. Just kidding, it’s a hit!

Photos: Kate

It seems this was a good introduction to Hong Kong. It’s a rich man’s Asia; all sky-scrapers, bright lights and Imax cinemas. Far fewer filthy guesthouses for $1 a night complete with cardboard walls and cockroach infestations. You could still buy a faux-lex, and sit at a roadside noodle house, but if you want to stick to budget here you’ll have to work a hell of a lot harder.

With that in mind, we boarded the immaculate metro and took ourselves to Kowloon in search of budget accommodation. Our Lonely Planet seemed a little thin on the ground when it came to cheap and cheerful in Kowloon – $15 a night!? You’re having a laugh. And so it was that we took ourselves in a backpacker’s paradise, the infamous, and ironically named Chungking Mansions.

Described by Wikipedia as “a centre of drugs, and a refuge for petty criminals, scammers, and illegal immigrants” – a reference I found while finding out exactly how many rooms have been crammed into this seventeen story death trap (one thousand nine hundred and eighty) – it seemed like just the place for us, and at $5 a night, much more our style. Not only that, but after weeks of cultural homogeneity in China it was a pleasure to be surrounded by people from all over the world for a change. No longer were we the lone foreigners amid a sea of staring Chinese locals, the Mansions were home to people from all corners of the globe, and it was buzzing with energy.

The Mansions are full of dodgy dealers, curry houses, pirate DVD salesmen and exposed electrical wiring. We fit right in. Vicki and I are well practiced at shooting down unwanted offers of tailor made suits, stolen watches and marriage so we felt right at home, and wasted no time in digging into a superb meal of daal and chapattis before going out exploring. We hopped aboard the ferry to Victoria Harbour and found ourselves in a different world. One country, two systems my arse! Hong Kong city is another kettle of fish entirely.

My initial reaction to Hong Kong was one of disdain. Granted, getting my hands on a veggie sub after weeks of mystery meat in China was a treat at first, but when I realised that fast food was all we could afford I suddenly longed for the bargains and culture of the Asia I’d lived in for the last 3 months. Where were the roadside beers of Vietnam, the deep fried locusts of Laos and impromptu dance-offs of Cambodia? All these polished floors, bank managers, and hotel lobbies were getting me down.

We strolled through the pristine network of pedestrian walkways, and looked at well-mannered drivers through Perspex windows. We window-shopped in Dior, and got lost in Gucci. We ate dim sum in a café staffed by men who looked like butlers; and even caught a funicular railway up Victorian Peak to pose alongside a waxwork of Jackie Chan, but somehow I wasn’t quite satisfied. It was all too shiny for me. I felt like I was trapped in a parallel universe somewhere between Milton Keynes, Harrods and China town. So we took ourselves back to the dodgy side of town and approached some men outside Chungking Mansions. By appearance I would say that they were probably petty criminals, drug dealers and illegal immigrants, but who better to ask about a good night out when you’re on a strict budget.

That is how, dear readers, we found ourselves at Hong Kong’s most exclusive bar, club and restaurant alongside hundreds of other revellers. Beers for a couple of bucks, music, dancing, neon lights and more snacks than you can handle. They had beer, Pepperami and Quavers, all for under a fiver. What is this über-cool secret underground hangout I hear you cry; the Milk & Honey of Hong Kong, the Mayfair Club of Kowloon? Why it’s the 7/11 of course! That’s right folks, the convenience store we all know and love has risen to a new level in Hong Kong. No longer an afterthought to a big night, a stop-off on the way home, here, the 7/11 is the destination. And what fun we had.

We awoke the next morning with hangovers worthy of a very expensive night out and patted ourselves on the back. Who needs top shelf spirits and waiters in uniforms when the cashier will open your beer for you at the counter? There was life outside of  Dolce & Gabbana after all, you just have to know where to look. Funnily enough, after all my worrying about leaving my creature comforts in Australia, it was the grittier side of Hong Kong which excited me. The lowlights were my highlights. We were happy to wave goodbye to the land of HSBC, SONY and the world’s only Feng Shui Disneyland, and boarded one of the twice-weekly trains to Beijing. Overnight this 21^st Century space shuttle train would shoot us 1350 miles in the blink of an eye, and take us from one grossly overpopulated city to another.

Despite the sensory torture, Vicki and I were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, having rocked up at Kunming station at 5am that morning with a vague notion of catching a train. I wouldn’t normally advise this sort of reckless behaviour, but one of the major problems with Chinese train travel is that there isn’t really a central booking system. While it’s possible to find timetables and get an idea of price from places like this (they have an excellent map), it’s rarely possible to buy tickets except at your point of departure.

Besides, our well-rehearsed routine of pointing and jumping (stick man on stilts, telegraph pole, dance party) only just got results in person so we didn’t fancy our chances of explaining 桂林 over the phone. We’d got lucky this time and managed to secure a berth on a train leaving that day, what a result.

The train was packed – as with everything else in China – and our hard sleeper berths, while not “hard” per say lacked in the way of headroom, so we ventured to the restaurant car for beer, a game of cards and a little nǐ hǎo. Here we made a handful of new friends, and sparked all manner of animated conversation among the railway staff, before retiring to bed for a blissfully peaceful sleep. This is where low carbon travel really pays for itself; where else would you be invited to play dice with old men over a cup of suspicious mushroom tea, or help an aspiring Mongolian poet improve his English vocabulary before retiring to a bunk where the train rocks you to sleep like a little environmentally friendly baby? I may not need to say it, but I am a fan of the sleeper train.

At 7am we were rudely awoken by the music once more – “I’m strong to the finish, cos I eats me spinach”, grrrr. I’ll admit that this part of bus and rail transport in Asia can be somewhat painful on the ears. But we consoled ourselves with a breakfast of fresh mango and spicy noodles (all Chinese trains have a hot water urn) as the train pulled up in Guilin station. Guilin is another “small” town by Chinese standards, with a mere 1.5 million inhabitants. I know I keep hammering this point, but China really is massive and full of people. I am from a small town, so I know one when I see it, and Guilin ain’t small. Because of this Vicki and I didn’t take the time to explore, but chose instead to board a bus at the railway station and continue our journey to Yangshuo on the Li River. Compared to it’s neighbour Guilin, Yangshuo is a mere dot on the map, and a lovely dot at that.

Surrounded by dramatic limestone peaks (karst if you’re into your topography, and frankly who isn’t?) Yangshuo looks like something out of Lord of the Rings, and though not populated by elves it was nearly as exciting. Chickens strapped on to the back of bicycles; eels, toads and dog on sale in the market, hundreds of bamboo rafts complete with sun umbrellas floating down river, a canal network running straight through the town. Granted there was ample neon, rip-off DVDs and novelty phones but we’re still in China afterall. I loved it.

From family dinners in an exceptionally friendly hostel and late night games of beer pong, to cooking lessons, and bikes rides, this 300,000 community was by far my favourite place in all of China. We had barely put our bags down before a member of staff burst in to invite us to float down the Li on some old inner tubes, before dragging us up to the rooftop bar to challenge the proprietor to a drinking game. We saw local boatmen dozing on their narrow boats with their domesticated cormorants, clambered around caves and had a mud fight in an underground pool. Vicki took to the skies in a hot air balloon, while I mastered the art of Liar’s Dice. I was having so much fun that I barely slept in 3 days, but the Russian visa was looming ever nearer and we were going to make it the 1000 or so miles to the border, we’d need to get our skates on. And so to Hong Kong.

Yúnnán translates rather beautifully as “South of the Clouds” and although I was alarmed to find it’s towns heaving with busloads of umbrella touting tourists, the landscape did not fail to amaze.

We started off in the region’s capital Kunming (昆明), a fairly typical Chinese city full of banks, neon lights and fast food outlets. My expectations of China had been vague, but somehow I was surprised to find myself under the Golden Arches of McDonald’s looking out onto endless swarms of people. Although I had steeled myself for overpopulation – after all there’s 1.6 billion people here – I was still shocked to find that a city of which I had never heard, and which holds no particular significance was home to a staggering 5.7 million.  Needless to say this wasn’t quite what Vicki and I had in mind having so recently escaped the incessant horn honking of Vietnam, and so after a night in a hostel and a few cheeky Tsingtao beers we dragged ourselves back to the bus station and spent several hours trying to catch a bus.

Although China has not managed to successfully resist the onslaught of the likes of Pizza Hut, KFC and Disney Land, they’re sticking to their alphabet like glue, and if you think that any of the bus drivers are going to humour your vain attempts at mastering their language…well, you’ve got another thing coming.  China was the first of a number of countries that were less tourist-friendly than their neighbours; that’s not to say that you’re not welcome, but that you have to work a little harder to get what you want. I’ve already talked about Vicki’s ever expanding symphony of animal noises, but now consider catching a bus.

“OK, it looks like a square-headed dalek trying to climb a step-ladder”, says Vicki as we walk for the forth time around the parking lot searching for our night bus to Dali. We peered at the stickers on the windows of the many buses, then back to our handwritten Chinese characters that a kindly member of hostel staff had scrawled into our book. Nothing. “Wait, dalek step-ladder is Kunming, we want headless stick man doing the splits in front of half a step-ladder leaning against a window with a bookshelf underneath…obviously”. How embarrassing. 大理. This was to be a defining feature of the next few months of travel.

The next ten days featured rather a lot of overnight travel: from Kunming to Dali, from Dali to Shangri-La, and from Lijang back to Kunming by bus, then on to Yangshao by train, and then from Yangshao to Hong Kong. Ouch. On a map this looks suspiciously like a ridiculous waste of time, and though it was at times a battle against sanity it was a fantastic two weeks of adventure. Did I mention that China is massive? By the time we reached Hong Kong we were well versed in stick men, daleks and step-ladders as a means of communication and had had an extraordinary two weeks.

My overall impression of China was that it wasn’t really for me, just too big and too busy for my appetite. But the Yúnnán province is an unsung gem, and one of only a few places that we found in China that I’d like to revisit. The town of Shangri-La had a very Tibetan feel and provided yak meat skewers and foot massages at the ‘Au Predestined Relationship Foot Bath Shop’. The walled city of Dali shone despite the rain and constant assaults on your eyeballs by passing umbrellas. And the trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge was as exhausting as it was rewarding. Despite the imposing damns and hydroelectric plants that litter the valleys, and the cavernous quarries that scar the landscape, the province is still clinging to its majesty, though for how much longer I’m just not sure.

Capitalism is alive and well in China and it’s only a matter of time until there’s a Coca Cola vendor at the top of Tiger Leaping Gorge. For now though, the beauty of the peaks that are south of the clouds is preserved, and we found a little old lady in her ancient blue suit shelling walnuts at the summit. I relished this moment of quiet reflection as we headed back to Kunming, and onwards to Hong Kong and Beijing. We would have very little peace for the next three weeks.

The next few weeks was an adventure in alternative modes of transport (I really am an advert for my own values aren’t I?) There have been buses, and boats and trains, and bicycles, and night buses, and night trains, and mopeds and motorcycles, a slow boat, a long boat and an elephant. I love it! I’ll show you airline companies, I can go wherever I want and I don’t need you, in your face! My first moped experience was a scream. Literally. And involved rather a lot of dodgy swerving and erratic acceleration. The teeny tiny Thai lady who rented me the bike didn’t seem remotely concerned that I had no experience what so ever, nor did she have any helmets.

But it’s ok, I substituted conventional safety gear with a bikini and a flip flops so it was totally safe Mum; knee pads, helmets…pah!. And I had aviators, so I was pretty much the coolest person who ever lived, maybe. You should have seen us, we surely were the pace setters of the whole island, not even remotely wobbly. At one point I went so fast that I was able to overtake a small child on a bicycle and, wait for it…a parked car!

Just for the record the moped is now my vehicle of choice, although it seems I am not alone. The very funny people at  Stuff White People Like point out that “as it stands, every single white person on earth either owns, has owned, or is dreaming about owning a Vespa Scooter…They are Italian, feature vintage design, low emissions, make the rider look more sophisticated, and they carry a little bit of risk. In fact, were it to have a liberal arts degree and a steady income,  a Vespa scooter would possesses every important quality that a white person looks for in a spouse”. So it’s decided, when I move home I am going to marry a Vespa. Lovely. But I digress.

The month of June involved lots of very interesting (even if i do say so myself) and funny (of course) stories. But as I’m often chastised for writing insanely long posts so I won’t bore you with the all details. Don’t get too excited though as I rarely do as I’m told. In fact perhaps you’d like to go and have a tea break now, and maybe a small nap, tuk tuk??! Just checking.

But just so you know what you’re missing out on there was an incident with an elephant slapping my friend in the face with its trunk, deep fried crickets, long next tribes, and a few ill advised three on a motorbike taxi rides. If you want to hear more about these stories please send a stamped addressed envelope to Kate Andrews, Room 19, A dodgy guesthouse in Asia. It’s the one with lots of motorbikes parked outside, you can’t miss it.

In conclusion Thailand was not really mine or Vicki’s cup of tea, we’re less organised tour, more see what happens sort of girls so we weren’t too fussed about waving goodbye to the beaches and getting ourselves into Laos on a very slow boat.

Images courtesy of Kate

First of all, a rather obvious point, but one worth bearing in mind: if you’re travelling via Brussels and you want to see some of the city (maybe to get an evening meal), make sure that you leave longer than three hours between trains. We only had a couple of hours, and had to settle for eating in the rather ugly and uninspiring district that the station sits in.

On the night train to Berlin there were nine of us from UKYD travelling together, and we sat in a cabin drinking from a shared bottle of whisky. Inevitably given the purpose of our trip, and the common theme that tied us all together, conversation quickly descended into a full-blown and wide-ranging debate about climate change, and how realistic our efforts in dealing with it are.

When we got to Berlin the group split, with some going immediately on to Poznan, whilst myself and a few others explored the city. The central station is within easy walking distance of the main city centre, and I suggested that we join a walking tour that I had done last time I was in the city.

Berlin is absolutely brimming with fascinating cultural and historical knowledge, and the guides at the Free Berlin tour are excellent at conveying it (they aren’t paying me to write this!). Because of our limited time we were only able to catch 90 mins of the 3 and a half hour tour and when we said goodbye to the Amercian-Bulgarian guide I was touched by his humility and felt that we had had a truly human experience – taking people around monuments to Holocaust victims, the place where Hitler’s body was burnt, and the site of a Communist massacre is not a job to be taken light-heartedly. Going on the tour really brought home the value of cultrual interaction, and how imporrtant it is that we keep learning about each other, especially as we localise our economies and reduce emissions from travel.

In the evening I went for dinner with my friend Ellie in a marvelous jazz club. I need to go out to more jazz and blues and I wish there were more places like that in London. Another friend of Ellie’s who was with us made the apt observation that people in Berlin behave more like ‘provincial people’ than city-dwellers, despite the size of the city, and the community atmosphere was very evident as drinkers enjoyed the live music.

I’m now in Poznan, and I’m going to make a rather crass observation: everyone on the train looked like they were from the eighties.

Photos: net_efekt, net_efekt,

]]> http://loco2travel.com/2008/12/en-route-to-poznan/feed/ 1 http://loco2travel.com/2008/12/world-in-slow-motion-4/ http://loco2travel.com/2008/12/world-in-slow-motion-4/#comments Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:09:37 +0000 Tom and Lara http://www.loco2travel.com/?p=136 While Lara and Tom are sailing across the Pacific to the USA, out of touch from the world-wide-web and in touch with the big-wide-world, we visit South-East Asia through their eyes for the last time. To keep us going in their absence they have provided us with a ‘Dos and Don’ts guide to South-East Asia’, but first we hit the tracks from Hue to Hanoi.

Hue to Hanoi: letting the train take the strain

In Hue we elected to tackle the next leg of our route by train. We were looking forward to getting back onto the rails again, rather than onto yet another bone-rattling, leg-twisting, ironically-named ‘sleeper bus’.

The photojournalist Tim Page, who’s rattled along a few Vietnamese railways in his time, puts this better than me:

Train travel allows the mind to wander, the eyes not really focusing on the passing countryside, the heady clackety rhythm becoming white noise, a mere sound tapestry to meditate upon…On a train you actually have a sense of getting somewhere, denied the traveller sealed in an aluminium tube zooming across the sky.

Inside the small dusty waiting room, we occupied an entire row of flimsy plastic seats, our enormous bags dwarfing the slender locals hemmed in around them. I poked my head around the door to glance at the platform: it was uncomfortably quiet, hardly a soul moved, let alone a train.

As the minutes ticked by and the time dragged well past our designated departure time. Still no train.

The locals seemed unconcerned, dozing in the seats, nonchalantly sipping green tea and gazing at the traffic outside.

Finally, 50 minutes later it was action stations: a guard stirred, a tinny loudspeaker croaked out some kind of announcement and we were allowed onto the platform. People plus baggage began shuffling onto the platform. Hardly a great swarm of people like you’d have to contend with in China, more a trickle of the unhurried.

A group of men crouched down on the platform, lay a battered old briefcase on its side and immediately started playing cards. They fingered their dirty old dong notes whilst others crowded around, watching the gamblers.

A young couple strolled up and settled down on the bench next to us, resuming the cooing they had been so rudely interrupted from back in the waiting room.

And still no train.

I began to wonder what it could be that was causing such a severe delay. Mexican bandits? The wrong type of snow? Richard Branson?

Finally, an hour later than scheduled, the noise level seemed to pick up, passengers stirred and, to much whistling both from its driver and the sundry guards on the platform, a train appeared, its headlights piercing through the descending gloom.

The dusty green carriages hauled up in front of us, the grimy windows obscuring the interior. We quickly boarded, hauling our bulky loads through the narrow corridors as the rabble pressed up eagerly behind us.

Peering into our cabin we found it already occupied: a large family, big enough to fill a small village stared back at us, their grubby kids sprawled all over the beds. Cue frantic hand signals and pointing at beds and tickets before finally the guard came along and turfed these stubborn train gypsies out.

Although ‘soft sleeper’, our cabin didn’t quite live up to our expectations: it held six beds rather than four, crammed in so that each bed had about two and half foot of space between it and the one above. Grimacing as I adopted a contortionist pose I squeezed my slim frame into a bunk at the top, hauling my pack up behind me.

There was a jolt, and we started moving: ten hours through the night to the capital.

A short night, abruptly ended at 5.30am. Raised voices, doors slamming, a knock at our door: we’d arrived. Hanoi.

THE DO’s AND DON’Ts OF ASIA

Sun, sweat and scooters; trains, temples and tours; bananas, buses and lager. The tourist infrastructure in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos turns traveling into a wonderful holiday. However, alongside the tourist trade come touts and tricksters to be wary of. So to supplement your Lonely Planet/Rough Guide (delete as appropriate) here are World in Slow Motion’s top tips for S.E. Asia:

Do:

• Take a sheet sleeping bag. There is a curious lack of bedding in these parts.
• Carry plenty of U.S. dollars cash. They are a useful back-up and the currency of choice in Cambodia.
• Drink bia hoi on plastic chairs in the street in Vietnam. 20p for a glass of draught lager.
• Drink fruity drink and coconuts with a straw. You can spot a fruity drink stall by the glasses of chopped fruit to which condensed milk, coconut milk and balls of sticky rice are added and served with crushed ice.
• Eat amok. This creamy Cambodian curry is the among the best food in SE Asia.
• Take the sleeper bus. A bus with beds is a sight to behold and an experience not to be missed, but don’t expect to have a good kip.
• Have a massage at Seeing Hands in Siem Reap or Phnom Penh. These blind masseurs know what to do.
• Help out at Big Brother Mouse. Either chat with the children in English or buy one of their books to help promote literacy in Laos.
• Get up early to see monks collect alms at sunrise, a special sight in Luang Prabang, Laos.
• Go to the flag lowering ceremony in Hanoi, Vietnam. A triumphal affair every night at 9pm at the Ho Chi Minh memorial.Learn to say “no thank you” in the local language to keep the hawkers and touts at bay.
• Stay at Golden Temple Villa in Siem Reap. Excellent value and unlimited free bananas make it a winner.
• Stay at Hong Thien Hotel II, 46 Chi Van An Street, in Hue, Vietnam. Tien at reception is very helpful, but don’t book a Halong Bay tour through them (see below).

Don’t:

• Stay at Greenfields in Hoi An, Vietnam. Poor value and dreadful service.
• Rely on your guidebook for accommodation and eating recommendations. Use the Web, get tips from others and explore by yourself to find some real gems.
• Go on a Halong Bay, Vietnam, tour with Tuan Linh travel agency. These tours are sold through Kim Adventures and various hostels in Hanoi. The boat is broken and the guides lousy. If your boat is called the Duy Tan Junk 02, don’t get on it. Electricity is intermittent and the motor may give out.
• Use the travel services at Victory Queen Hotel (formerly Old Darling Hotel), Hanoi, Vietnam. They take a whopping commission without telling you.
• Buy shoes at Cham H’Mong, 495 C’ua Dai Street, Hoi An, Vietnam. They fall apart within hours.
• Buy your Cambodian visa at the ‘Cambodian Consulate’ in Aranya Prathet, Cambodia, it’s a scam. Buy it at the desk once you’re through Thai immigration.
• Take any price as given – accommodation, food, things – all are up for negotiation. Pay what you think is fair.
• Sleep at the back of a sleeper bus. The bounce prevents sleep.
• Lose your temper with a local. If you cause someone to lose their temper they will lose face and make your life very uncomfortable as they try to regain it.
• Expect a peaceful sunrise at Angkor Wat, Siem Reap. You will be joined by hundreds of tourists all jostling for the same perfect sun-rises-over-ancient-temple photo.
• Wear shorts and sandals in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand. The leeches will eat you for breakfast.

We are sailing…

So, farewell Asia.

After four months on the road and rails across this mighty continent, from the low mountains of the Urals to the warm waters of the South China Sea, we will finally bidding a farewell to this huge, diverse chunk of the planet.

Tomorrow we set off into new waters…literally. For the next two weeks our new home will be the CMA CGM Hugo, a container ship sailing across the Pacific Ocean, from Hong Kong to Long Beach, USA.

Beyond the ocean lie the delights of another continent: North America?

But first we have the small matter of a large pond to cross.

Laying my trusty Michelin out last night I realised that the Pacific covers a good third of the planet. It’s going to be a long and (hopefully) fascinating voyage.

See you on the other side…

NIC SETON, The Australian Youth Climate Coalition

The Great Northern Train

Having spent the last two weeks catching trains around South-East Asia, the weather hasn’t so far changed much. Hot and humid largely describes it – the start of the wet season. The longest we had spent on trains so far was two nights, with one day in the middle and only half-days either side. Now it was time to really get a handle on long-distance train travel…

So far we had taken two weeks to cross over 9000kms. Now, in one fell swoop, we would cover over 4500km over three nights, sharing close quarters with the other four travelers, and no way to escape. Would we make it out alive? This was to be considered a warm-up to the big trip, the five-night journey from Beijing to Moscow via the trans-Siberian.

Beijing

We arrived in Beijing on the 48 hour train from Hanoi, passing through the south of a rapidly developing Chinese countryside. By some estimates China is set to build as many new buildings in the next twenty years as the entire current building stock of Europe. Walking around Beijing it is easy to see this as possible – the city stretches for over ten kilometres in every direction, the majority of it medium or high-rise development. With 3 days to fill before catching the trans-Mongolian railway to Moscow, we had a rare opportunity to take a break, and explore a bit of this sprawling city.

It was interesting to talk about the development of the city, in part because of its sheer scale, but also because of the recent attempts to ‘green’ Beijing. Apparently the city was traditionally dominated by the bicycle as the most affordable and efficient way of getting around. However, the trend towards private car ownership, largely the product of an increasing economic divide, has seen pollution in Beijing deteriorate further. Of all the ‘green initiatives’ heralded at the Beijing Olympics, the single most effective was taking half the cars of the road for two months through an even/odd numberplate system. This measure alone reduced emissions by 850,000 tons.

The ‘Ulan Baatar Incident’

The highlight of the trip to date has definitely been what will henceforth be known as the ‘Ulan Bataar Incident’ on the trans-Siberian railway (which is technically known as the ‘Trans-Mongolian’ when you travel from Beijing to Moscow via Mongolia.

The train stopped in Ulan Bataar for half an hour, and all of the overland trippers got off to have a look around. When it came time for the train to leave, only Katy and Nic were on board – the other three overlanders, Jack, Ollie and myself (Anna), had read the timetable incorrectly and thought the train was stopping for an hour, instead of the half-hour time that was actually allotted. So we were wandering around the local shops, separately, thinking we still had half an hour.

Ollie had made it back to the platform, but refused to jump on and thereby leave me stranded in the middle of Mongolia. Jack saw the train leaving, sprinted up the platform and jumped onto the train as it started to slowly pull away. At this point, I was shopping for condensed milk and ramen, not noticing the commotion going on only a few hundred metres away.

With a cry of ‘It’s insane to leave someone on their own in the middle of Mongolia!’, Ollie was still standing on the platform arguing with train officials. (Thanks again Ollie!) Jack, with his wits about him, figured that he could help this situation more on the ground than from the train, so he jumped from the moving train back onto the platform, and with Ollie, watched the train pull away, before running around the shops to find me.

Nic and Katy had delayed as much as they could, and now they were left on the train with most of our possessions (not to mention all our operating mobile phones), wondering if they would see us again before we reached Poland. The Trans-Mongolian only runs once a week!

They looked pretty surprised when we jumped back on the train five hours later, US$200 out of pocket, with a story of a -1 degree Celsius Mongolian winter, and dangerous taxi driver!

Photos: cmaccubbin, Rosa

I went out with her and some of her friends on Friday night. One’s learning English so could hold proper conversation and she’s cool. The club we went to was surprisingly good and reminded me quite a lot of Urban Gorilla (good breaks but a bit of garage unfortunately, wicked cosy venue though, female DJ, which is apparently far from uncommon).

Then last night I went out on my own to a drum and bass night I’d seen advertised. Some of it was good, big fat Polish man MC-ing which was quite amusing (MCing in Polish sounds quite good). The club was really cool. It’s in the middle of a park by the 3.5km sandy beach, apparently it used to be a public toilet! Grimy. Met a bloke there called ‘Kuba’ who is an actor and plays the drums so I’m going to go and discover the Polish underground with him (he was pissed off that the club we were at was going increasingly commercial).

It seems that there is a special group in Polish society (or at least in this part of the country) that calls themselves ‘artists’, encompassing people who paint, act, play music etc. The girls I went out with on Friday have disdain for them and think they’re posers, whist ‘Kuba’ loves it, and says things like “it is impossible for me to do anything with my life except act”. He wears a big tweed jacket and a stripy beanie… He’s got something to say for himself anyway so I’m going to get to know him a bit, and play his drums.

Tonight I’m hopping on the train to Gdansk to meet Agatha (what a name), the girl who is learning English and is really sound. We’re going to a party her friends are putting on with fire (assuming poi and staff etc) and music. Should be good. Have had some bloody great discussions about politics and history for those who are interested.

Agatha’s granddad helped Jews hide during the Second World War and eventually he got shot by the SS. When I was in Berlin I was reminded that 3 million Polish Jews were killed, it’s so unbelievable. And the fact that there were some non-Jews will to stand up against the tidal wave really touched me, and it obviously meant a lot to Agatha. The first shots of the Second World War were fired in Gdansk as the Nazis invaded Poland by sea, and the city was the one area in an active war zone for the longest time out of anywhere, basically the full six years.

Even when the Russians liberated Gdansk from Nazi control in 1945 they continued the destruction of the city because it was at the time called Danzig and therefore they saw it as part of Germany. So obviously after 1945 Poland was under Communist control, and in 1970 the Solidarity movement started when some workers at the shipyard in Gdansk striked. They were shot dead but the movement continued to build until in 1989 it finally executed a peaceful revolution and threw off Communism (in the meantime the late Pope, who was Polish, visited the city and offered his support to the movement).

Now (this was written in late 2006 the country is run by two twins: one as President, one as PM (the former appointed the latter). The government is a coalition and one of the parties in it, the ‘Family Party’ is deeply homophobic (linked to the high levels of Catholicism in Poland). Strangely though, apparently it has the highest levels of membership by gay men out of all the parties (this seems very odd and I want to read up on it). The majority of the population is rural and a lot of them take as gospel what is said by a very powerful priest who has his own radio channel and TV show. The country is supposedly secular but he has a lot of sway and the educated girls I was talking to are very worried about his influence. Also, the aforementioned Family Party has underground militas (not publicly linked to the party) similar to the SA in Nazi Germany, or the RSS in India (Hindu fundamentalists linked to the BJP).

I am interested in trying to get to the heart of what young people see as their political orientation, or duty, since they are the first generation to grow up in the post-communist era. There were some quite heated debates over drinks on Friday night, and in true geeky fashion, I was absolutely loving it.

Hello and welcome to Jamie’s long-awaited witty and concise email documenting his travel so far. First of all, congratulations for getting on the list, I know the selection process was tough but you all got through it.

Secondly, sorry if the email is neither witty nor concise; I have been scolding myself for weeks for entertaining the ludicrous notion that it might be and the fact that I have actively marketed it as such simply consolidates my folly. It is much more likely to be verbose and long-winded. If anyone doesn’t want to receive my intermittent rants, please reply with the word ‘Unsubscribe’ in the Subject, and include an 1800 word essay on the pros and cons of hyper-communication in a globalised world.

So I’ve been travelling for about five weeks, and have been on my own for about five days now. Here’s an an abbreviated account of my travels so far…

• Paris (one night) – Got told off in our hotel at 2am for repeating very loudly “J’habite en [insert British town in the relevant accent, e.g. 'Liverpool' in thick scouse]“
• Munich (two nights) – Celebrated my birthday in a classic stereotypical beer cellar playing literally the worst music I have ever heard (a cross between bad nineties commercial trance and Bavarian folk). The Germans at the bar were loving it (and I must admit that when I was drunk I requested Dreamer by Livin’ Joy, and sang along quite ardently).
• Prague (three nights) – The city was so beautiful that it inspired us to name my ridiculously large back-pack “Horace Twatbag”, and the associated zip-on rucksack, “Horace Twatbag’s Massive Detachable Ballsack”.
• Zagreb (one day and two night trains getting to and from it) – Me and Rich helped a Czech girl find the right train when she was stranded at Salzburg station in the middle of the night. Despite her not being able to speak any English, with the use of a tiny phrase book we managed to discern that she was a probationary officer in charge of a woman who had stabbed her kids to death in their sleep. Nice.
• Hvar, an island off Split in Croatia (one cursed night) – Oh how excited we were to get to a sunny picturesque island! And then camp on a rocky quarry that proceeded to get flooded by a massive storm, getting all our clothes muddy and us very pissed off. Needless to say we got the hell out of there.
• Korcula, the next island along (three comfy nights) – Leaving Hvar we got hit by another storm so our plans to camp were thwarted. Thankfully a sexy Muslim from Sarajevo offered us a room in the house her grandfather had built. Went to a club playing incredible music where we encountered an Australian who said things like “Do you wanna fuck me for 4.99, mate?” (I’m paraphrasing), referencing the fact that he slept with a prostitute in Budapest for a fiver. He drunkenly opened his heart to me as his relationship fell apart before our eyes. It was a definite moment.
• Orebic, on the peninsula of Croatia (six nights) – Camped ten seconds away from a lush sandy beach, looked at fish through goggles, got tanned.
• Korcula again (two nights) – Went to a hostel run by a weirdo who’d been on South African Big Brother and thought it was cool to replay the videos of himself on it every night in the bar. He looked like he was made of plastic. He told Rich that his name was “an enigma”.
• Sibenic (two nights) – Stayed in a huge city-like campsite that scared the living shit out of me. I thought I was some sort of tourist refugee, forced to live in limbo with a bunch of socially inept Germans. Krka national park however was stunning, and I spotted a snake in the undergrowth. There were also strange hanging caterpillars sent by God to test your reflexes as you meandered through the wood.
• Ljubljana (one night, two night trains around it) – Drank lots of coffee, went to a wicked ‘club’ that was more like four buildings in a carpark surrounded by cool graffiti. Played table football and felt incredibly urban.
• Berlin (four nights) – Soaked up the history like a massive knowledge sponge. Got so excited that I began repeating the phrase “I live a life of learning”. Felt bloody cultured seeing some modern jazz.
• Amsterdam (three nights) – Got very stoned but managed to hold together some conversations, consisting of a lot of bullshit.

And then all my friends left me and it was just me and Horace Twatbag. I got on a train back to Berlin (very stoned) and read about how inadvisable it is to go on a night train to Gdansk, especially if alone, as there is a high risk of getting gassed and robbed in your sleep. Then I got on a night train to Gdansk, after trying to communicate with a load of scary-as-fuck Russians in uniform who were demanding my passport to try and make sure I didn’t stay in the part of the train that would take me to Russia without a visa… I eventually settled down in my cabin with a really sweet Polish Grandma and Grandson, and didn’t get gassed.

So what on earth led to the decision to undertake this huge mission in January? Like many people who choose not to fly, they are keen to dispel the myth that they are martyrs to the cause of climate change:

“We were motivated both by bloody mindedness, and a desire to prove its financial and logistical viability and reap the many rewards of slow travel. Our actions are far from altruistic, keeping out of the sky is allowing us to feel the land change beneath us. As we pass through places we have been able to far better understand how people subsist on the land, what it gives them and what they give it in return, and how this has shaped their ways of life.”

In the two months since they begun, they’ve made solid progress, and at the time of writing are in Khartoum, Sudan. Here’s a super-quick run-down of how they got there:

• Step one: Eurostar from London to Paris
• Step two: Ferry from Marseille to Tunis (capital of Tunisia)
• Step three: louages (“minibuses scheduled to leave when all the seats are filled”) and trains from Tunis to the Libyan border
• Step four: Escorted drive across Libya for €90 a day (seemingly a condition of getting a visa)
• Step five: Buses from the Libyan border to Cairo (Egypt), via Alexandria
• Step six: Train from Cairo to Luxor (still Egypt)
• Step seven: Train from Luxor to Aswan (still Egypt)
• Step eight: Seventeen-hour ferry ride down the Nile from Aswan to Wadi Halfa in Sudan
• Step nine: Waid Halfa to Abri on the back of a truck carrying cement
• Step ten: Abri to Khartoum via Dongola and Karima on unofficial buses/trucks

View Larger Map

There’s obviously a lot more to it than a bullet-point list and a Googlemap can do justice, and I’m in awe of many aspects of their journey. In particular the sandwiching of Libya in between the relatively tourist-driven Tunisia and Egypt sounds like it presented a real contrast:

“In Libya we got the full 1984 treatment for €90 per day. We had to pay through the nose for both a driver a guide who were with us all day everyday, accompanying us to deserted ‘tourist restaurants’ and officially sanctioned hotels. That is no to say we resented being there, the walking the streets of empty Roman cities, littered with mosaics, toppled pillars and pots was more than memorable, its just that there was just a bit of a weird atmosphere. Libya clearly had enough oil not to be concerned by the tourist dollar, unlike its neighbour, Egypt, of which an illustrious history of money grabbing stretching back for millennia shone through.”

Another fascinating aspect of the trip is the unique atmospheres that Toby and Stewart found on the ferries they took, starting with the “gentle introduction to the sweet coffee drinking and sweet shisha smoking” on the way to Tunis from France, and then the crazy 17-hour stint down the Nile into Sudan:

“The chaotic, stinking seven hour late, seventeen hour long ferry journey was a delight as it was in the company of Sudanese who sang, gave us tea and food, offered up their seats for us to sleep on and told us of themselves and Sudan.”

This type of low carbon travel is clearly not for the light-hearted, but it’s difficult to imagine a more incredible experience than that enjoyed and endured by Toby and Stewart so far. Regardless of the mode of transport (a cement-carrying lorry?!), the humanism of cultural interaction is valuable and timeless:

“In the North [of Sudan] the people and their surroundings lived up to expectations; we were invited into a school and onto a farm, we were chased by children, we were stalked by a man with intricate tribal scarring on his face and we spent endless hours chewing the fat with gloriously happy people … This comes to you from Khartoum, tomorrow we catch the bus to the Nuba Mountains in the South of the country.”

The adventure continues…

To delve deeper into Toby and Stewart’s amazing journey, I strongly recommend reading their blog at http://africacarbonodyssey.blogspot.com.

Post thumbnail: sidelife

We went by train of course, and it was interesting to see the reaction of my colleauges, some of whom were more seasoned to the experience than others. Unfortunately we were delayed by an hour in Paris – my longest ever delay in France – but apart from that the journey down to Bourg St Maurice went swimmingly.

On the first day we were on the slopes by 9.30am thanks to the efficiency of the boot-fitters at the luxury chalet where we were staying, and on the last day we had the luxury of snow-shoeing to a house in a tiny hamlet in the mountains in time for a late lunch (or “linner” if you will grant me the liberty to merge the words “lunch” and “dinner” in the same way as brunch does for a mid-morning feast). Getting back on the night-train at 9pm was a very relaxed affair and overall the timings were very much to the benefit of squeezing lots into the five days without getting stressed.

On my return I discovered that someone has developed a wave-powered boat! This is utter genius, and I can’t wait to find out more about it and write more here. At 31 feet, it’s a pretty small vessel, 13 feet smaller than the yacht Kate is planning to take from Mexico to Australia (more on this soon) but the concept is inspiring.

Post thumbnail: geishaboy500

We tried to do a podcast on the train coming into Lhasa, which was absolutely incredible – the best views we’ve ever seen, and so variable – but there was basically no signal from the day we left Beijing, so we recorded something but when we came to publish it, went through a tunnel and lost the connection.

The train itself wasn’t as good as the Russian trains because you couldn’t put the beds up in the daytime and there were six people to a compartment instead of the four we had got used to, (we’ve been a bit spoilt) but the journey was the best yet. We went past small Chinese hill-towns with red new year’s decorations around each door, frozen lakes in the middle of rocky mountains, terraced hills surrounding plains full of polytunnels, impressive snow-topped mountains, and flat, frozen marshes populated by thousands of Yaks and the odd Tibetan (over which we saw the sun rise; there’s only one time zone in China, apparently because the government couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of more, so in the west the sun rises at 8:30am). We couldn’t believe that every time we looked out of the window the view had drastically changed. This filled the time better than eating, which was lucky as we ran out of food on the first day of this forty-eight hour journey – whoops.

Have a look at this slideshow to see a selection of Emily and Verity’s photos. My favourites are the recycled chairs used as skating devices (absolute genius) and the condensed cow’s breath on the ceiling of the stable. I double-dare someone to make an ice-lolly out of it and eat it.

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