We got to in Varanasi after an longer-than-anticipated bus journey (well really it was more like a cardboard box on wheels), during which we passed lush fields, wild monkeys, street markets and a huge red setting sun, all to the sound of constant hooting horns and western pop music played at full volume on our next-door neighbour’s mobile phone. (And people complain about teenagers with loud headphones on English trains)

On arrival in India, even though we hadn’t yet reached Delhi, I was promptly greeted by a short but acute bout of Delhi-belly, which was a good start. Anyway, Varanasi was absolutely beautiful, and we found that we had managed to hit this city of Shiva a couple of days before Shiva festival itself, which is why the accommodation prices were ridiculously high – it wasn’t just the dodgy hotel manager taking advantage, as we initially assumed. So of course we changed our plans to move on to Delhi, and joined in with the celebrations. It was really a bit like Charlbury Street Fair in big, with a buffalo-pulled float parade, an elephant, lots of dressing up including a large contingent of transvestites (they have their own caste here), street dancing and music amplified by petrol generators: talk about a full-on introduction to India, but I suppose the words “full-on” describe this country pretty well anyway.

The train from Varanasi to Delhi was brilliantly efficient. It was the first time we had been in an open sleeper carriage without compartments, or even in an Indian train for that matter, but we managed to fill up our section along with four friends from Chipping Norton sixth form who had joined us in Varanasi, so we had a lot of fun chatting to the two Indian businessmen near us. The best question one of them asked us was “But you have swipe cards instead of keys to get into your houses in England, don’t you?”

PICS

• Top: Our friend Chungdra, who spent 3 weeks teaching us how to be an Indian wife.
• Middle: An Indian wedding.
• Bottom: Rupa who taught me (Verity) how to make mango chutney (I taught her how to make strawberry jam).

We don’t want to speak too soon, but our semi-permanent status of being in traveller’s limbo is, we hope, over. After a hair-raising jeep ride over the mountains from Lhasa, we almost literally “dropped out of the sky” into Kathmandu.

The last few weeks have been spent waiting, and praying, for the strikes in the Terai region to be over. We couldn’t move on because of this political unrest in southern Nepal, which seemed to coincide precisely with the time we wanted to travel. We haven’t blogged about before it because at one point we were almost certain that we would have to fly in order to avoid being in Nepal around the dangerous period of National elections. We were so disheartened by this that we didn’t want to tell anyone and, in so doing, make it real.

One advantage of hanging around in random cities with no plans is that you eventually meet people and have adventures. In this case Nima Lama, (who runs a brilliant ethical travel and volunteering company – see www.socialtours.com) and his family took us in and made us feel welcome in Nepal. His brother, Tshering, only half an hour after meeting us, whisked us away to his home village of Sermathang, which you have to trek up a hill for 5 hours (but it’s definitely worth it) to get to. When we got back to Kathmandu the strikes in the Terai had finished and were replaced with celebrations about the Government’s compromise, so we’ve made the 10 hour bus ride to Sunauli, are hoping to cross into India tomorrow, and after another 12 hour bus journey we’ll arrive in the ancient city of Varanasi.
Three Brilliant Eco-friendly Things We’ve Seen Or Done:

1. Blue and orange outdoor gyms in Beijing – cross trainers without electricity (they look like children’s playgrounds but very old people use them).
2. Illegally squeezing three people onto a motorbike in Kathmandu to save petrol. Only the driver wears a helmet and someone has to get off and walk at police checkpoints.
3. Government rationing of electricity, petrol, water and Kerosene (in Kathmandu, partly due to the strikes) so you just HAVE to save it. No-one wants to have too many freezing cold showers, even when there is water, so we didn’t always make use of it.

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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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Right, we were going to write separate blogs about the same themes to show our different perspectives of overland journeying, but some slightly more important strategic things have happened in the mean time, so we thought it might be better to tell you about those first.

At the moment we are a bit stuck. Stuck in Beijing, though, which is alright – there could be worse places. However, we have had to spend the first few days of our stay here trying to sort out a way to get to Lhasa, which means that we haven’t even seen the Great Wall yet. We’ve been sent round in circles from embassy, to hotel, to travel company, to train station and have sent many panicky emails to hostels all over China, attempting to find out what a Tibetan Travel Permit really is, whether you have to have one, or whether it exits at all.

On top of this, we are running to a deadline because we are here at the beginning of the Spring Break (Chinese New Year), a two-week national holiday when the transport industry is stretched beyond its means to accommodate the thousands of workers going home to see their families. We felt that even had we managed to get tickets, we would have been depriving someone of the only chance they have this year to be at home (in other words, stealing Christmas). We saw an example of this chaos the other night, when we tried to meet up with a fellow traveller at Beijing Railway Station, of all places. It was so crowded that you had to have a train ticket to even get inside the building and every ticket booth – of which there were about fifty – had its own ridiculously long queue.

Anyway, the Trans-Siberian railway was the most incredible experience. We would highly recommend it to anyone, especially in winter – we’re so glad we braved the cold. On top of avoiding the summer tourists, you also get the chance to experience some of these:

Five things that happen when it’s really, REALLY cold:

• It becomes a standard form of transport to skate along the pavements. (Maybe we should have tried to get to India like this?)
• Your snot freezes when you breathe in through your nose and it tingles, making you feel like you’re turning into an ice sculpture from the inside out.
• It becomes ‘necessary’ to have coffee breaks every half hour, just to warm up.
• Hot air condenses and freezes instantly outside, making strange furry icicles in cow sheds and next to air vents.
• Your ears go hard.

We’re actually missing life on the trains quite a lot, and we’re trying to think about why. For one thing, we met some lovely, genuine people (locals and foreigners), and had the time to have decent conversations with them. We enjoyed the peacefulness of not feeling we HAD to do anything, the result being that everything we did was a bonus. Here in Beijing we feel like we are missing out on the city if we stay in to read a book. (Having said that, being in a city where everyone is on holiday is a nice feeling.) On the trains you would glance up from your book and sometimes be greeted by a startling sunset, spot an enormous vulture-like bird, or see the same (comforting?) telegraph poles, trees, and snow that had been on a loop since Moscow.

Today we did manage to hire some bicycles and climbed to the top of a big hill (made from the earth dug up for the moat of the Forbidden City) to see a spectacular panoramic view of Beijing.

(Jamie) As I said to the girls when they emailed this latest entry to me, they are certainly having an adventure. Best of luck to them finding their way to Tibet…

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Taking you from Moscow to Beijing  and  Vladivostok – it’s a priceless journey if you’re into counting telegraph poles, soaking up snowy scenery, reading a hell of a lot, and making new cabin friends…

Emily and Verity’s 3rd night on a Trans Siberian sleeper…

Fifty eight hours in….and twelve more to go!

(Jamie) “First let me say how excellent the posts and podcasts are from Emily and Verity, and to wish them the best of luck on the next leg of their adventure. It still amazes me that it’s possible to hear from them in the middle of Siberia thanks to our wonderful friend technology.

Apart from the brilliant mental image I have of two eco-friendly Swedish architects scouring the world for the perfect sauna, I have one comment on Emily and Verity’s last post: why is the train hot?! This seems rather ridiculous and I’d like to start a campaign for sensibly-heated trains, simply for comfort just as much as the wasted energy when people are forced to encourage Siberian air into their carriage…”

Photos: watchsmart , Bernt Rostad, Bernt Rostad post thumbnail: Bernt Rostad

We can’t believe we’re here already but don’t feel like we rushed through Europe too much. We’ve been able to gauge the feeling of each city (Brussels, Cologne and Warsaw) in which we’ve stayed. We think this has been mainly to do with our couch-surfing experiences: from a chaotic Belgian barmaid who recommended beer that tasted of HP sauce, to the marketing director of Poland’s largest delivery company, ‘Telepizza’. She made us feel welcome in an initially hostile Warsaw. Tonight we are staying with a very learned, very old, French, German, English and Russian-speaking language enthusiast with an orange dog called ‘Orange’ (in Russian).

The trains so far have been brilliant. The most impressive was surprisingly last night’s from Warsaw to Moscow. The decor of our couchette included lacy curtains and Persian-style rugs and seat covers, and we were provided with our own sink and clean sheets. The female carriage attendant was dressed as we had been told to expect of Russian women – in a miniskirt and knee high boots – so we felt rather silly when we left the train in our layers of thermals. Ironically we found ourselves waking up sweating in a train we thought would be the coldest so far. Too hot to sleep, we admired the snow covered tracks outside.

We really feel like we are moving further into the unknown. It’s not just the language barriers – the people seem to be different too. We can’t imagine getting the treatment here that we got from the restaurant touts in Brussels (one of whom proposed to Emily with his “special cocktail” and refused to take no for an answer).

We hope to send you a podcast soon, perhaps including sounds of the Trans-Siberian railway.

PICS

• Top: Festive chocolate sculpture in AMMMMMAZING chocolate cafe. Belgium, of course.
• Middle: Lake Baikal
  
• Bottom: From Russia with love: The door in the bathroom of the nice old man whose house we stayed at in Moscow

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We have our first travellers embarking on a true low carbon adventure! Emily and Verity are two bright young girls who’ve been saving their hard-earned pennies since finishing their A-levels in July. As we speak they are starting to navigate the streets of Brussels, and I’m sure they’ll be glad to be on a rail network that isn’t British!

With a lot of courage and a sensible amount of organisation they will be making their way all the way to India by train and blogging about the experience here. Using a combination of couchsurfing, hostels, and homestays, the girls are certain to engage with each culture in an authentic way that only surface travel can provide.

Here’s their rough itinerary:

• Brussels
• Cologne
• Warsaw
• Moscow
• Irkutsk
• Ulan-Bator
• Beijing
• Kathmandu
• Delhi

…and their route is plotted out on this map.

As well as writing blogs, Loco2 has provided them with a phone so that they can leave podcasts from the trains themselves (fingers crossed they get signal in the middle of Siberia). So thank you to Emily and Verity for sharing their experience with Loco2 and the wider world, and best of luck to them on the first leg of the journey. We look forward to hearing all about it!