The next two plus weeks of my latest adventure can best be described as a series of contrasts – a visit to a modern metropolis with tens of millions of people, indulging in a life of luxury, while on the other hand, sleeping at gers/yurts in the middle of the Mongolian desert, where holes in the ground serve as toilets and livestock outnumber people.
I'm normally a backpacker, but my girlfriend Alexandra joined me in Beijing to celebrate my 50th birthday, insisting on treating me to a weekend of the high life.
Alexandra selected a suite in a 5-star hotel, where we enjoyed the best the city has to offer and visited many of Beijing's most famous sights –
the Forbidden City,
Tiananmen Square,
the Great Wall,
and the Summer Palace.
We could have easily spent a week in Beijing alone, although the smog can be a bit overwhelming. You'll notice it in all of these pictures. Before I left on my trip, many of my Chinese students warned me to take masks to reduce respiratory problems.
The population of Beijing is more than 11 million.
In contrast, the population of the entire country of Mongolia is just around three million, with 45 million livestock.
That's where we headed next aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway, a 27-hour trip across barren expanses seemingly stretching on forever with little evidence of civilization.
The train was quite comfortable, especially since I paid a little extra for a two-person sleeper car.
I've always loved train journeys, and on this one, I had a first. About nine hours into the trip, we arrived at the border and had to switch out the wheel assemblies on the train, since China and Mongolia use different railway gauges.
Hydraulic jacks literally lifted the train cars off the ground,while workers changed the wheels. A couple of hours later we were back on our way.
With the border crossings, the train maintenance, and the length of the trip itself, it's been a long night. I'll have more details when we arrive in Mongolia's capital of Ulaanbaatar.
