As you may have noticed, I have been frantically posting photos and updating the blog tonight. There is a reason for it. I’ve been in Beijing since Sunday basically doing very little. Since Beijing is my least favourite capital city in the world I havent wanted to go out… and lets face it, I have been here before so it’s not like I am missing out on anything.

My reason for being here is to get the final visa I need because I am about to embark on one of the most epic train journeys in the world – a 7621 km journey from Beijing via Mongolia to Moscow. I’ll be crossing 10 timezones, 16 rivers and 87 cities in my bid to return to London in time for the Olympics. 81% of my time will be spent in Asia and 19% in Europe.

My route… Beijing, Sainshand, Gobi Desert, UB, Irkusk, Lake Baikal, Ekaterinburg and Moscow.

During the next 19 days I will in travelling from Beijing to Sainshand in Outer Mongolia where I will be going out to the Gobi Desert for a couple of nights. Back on the train, I arrive in Ulanbaator and spend 3 days there during their biggest festival, Nadaam which I guess is a bit like the Mongolian Olympics.

Crossing the border into Russia I spend 3 days divided between Lake Baikal, the oldest lake in the world and Irkutsk, one of the largest cities in Siberia.

After that, I will get to straddle Asia and Europe at Ekaterinburg and see the site of the Romanov graves. As I did Russian history at school, I find Bolshevik history really interesting so I am really looking forward to this part.

From Ekaterinburg it’s straight to Moscow where I have 2 days before I jump on a plane back to London and the Olympics.

Over the next few weeks, I have no idea how much (if any) internet access I will have and/or how easy it will be to post blog updates hence me ensuring that I have everything updated as much as possible now.

Looking back at the last few months, I cant say I have achieved everything I wanted to do but I’ve come close. My goals were:

• Make it to 100 Countries – Well that’s done and dusted. I’m on 106 now. Mongolia will be 107 and Russia will be 108.
• Visit every country in Asia – I’m close… but no banana. Missed Brunei and Japan. Also wanted to go to each one of the major Indonesian islands and I didnt get to any of those places because I came back to London when I got sick in May.  Ah well… maybe next time.
• Visit DMZ in both North and South Korea – Have been to the DMZ but I think the goal should have been to go to the Joint Security Area not just the DMZ.
• Do the Trans Mongolian train journey – starting this 7am on Saturday morning.

See you on the flip side 🙂