I’d seen him from a short distance, twelve months previously, he travelled alone aboard a plane to Moscow. He wore a dark tracksuit top zipped over a light t-shirt, and loose pale green shorts covered the knees he cradled by his chest. His hair sprayed out in loose brown curls beneath a khaki cap, highlighted by scribbles of grey. His pale thin lips lined a shallow smile, and his early morning eyes seemed glazed with relief. As his homeland slipped beneath a thin veil of cloud, he lifted his cap and ran his fingers through his hair, his lips parted just once to release his farewell thoughts: Let the journey begin, my friend. Today, he lay upright on the rippled white sheets of a double bed, in a simple, homely room on the island of Bali. Continue reading ‘A Thousand Glorious Times’
Archive for the 'Trans-Mongolian Railway' Category
A Thousand Glorious Times
Published July 4th, 2008 in Russia, Trans-Mongolian Railway, Tibet, Singapore, Indonesia, Mongolia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, China and India. 6 Comments“Excuse me Sir, you are stay here?”, I turned slowly around, beads of sweat dripping feverishly from my brow. Somehow I’d wound up in the lobby of the imaginatively named, Beijing Hotel, a five star marbled metropolis catering for the rich and famous, and seemingly not the sick backpacker I currently portrayed. An hour earlier I had shunned the suggestion of Peking Duck to my Austrian friends - still with me since Mongolia - and admitted defeat to my impending sickness, under the watchful eye of Chairman Mao on Tiananmen Square and was attempting to find my way back to the hostel. Beijing Hotel was merely the stage to obtain some yuan to begin the long and shaky road home. Continue reading ‘Feeling Peaky in Peking’
Trans-Mongolian; it’s right down my street.
Published July 8th, 2007 in Trans-Mongolian Railway, Russia and Mongolia. 4 CommentsDumdum-De-DUM, dumdum-De-DUM, dumdum-De-DUM. It took me the whole 5 days from Moscow to Ulaanbaatar, to decide how I would portray the drum of the Trans-Mongolian train I alighted this morning. Say it with me, dumdum-De-DUM, softer, dumdum-De-DUM, emphasise the capitals dumdum, De-DUM, one-two, three-four, dumdum-De-DUM. Never has a journey left me so relaxed. To my right are a set of antelope horns, the hostel foyet is filled with lounge music and all I want to do is hug the keyboard, close my eyes and drift off to dreams of faraway places. Dumdum-De-DUM. Continue reading ‘Trans-Mongolian; it’s right down my street.’
