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Halfway around the world in 1 year
Welcome to Sotje62 ! My blog intends to make the world a smaller place. Automatically and real-time, the blog traces Beatriz and myself's whereabouts, it might just tell you a thing or 2 that interests me - therefore not you, that's the privilege of having a blog - but read new blogs on the top and click on the pictures in the side bar to see older blogs, the blog,and Beatriz and I hope you grow a good 'travel' appetite. Sotje62 travel blog is in Vlaams (donker gekleurd) and in English (light coloured). So read what you understand and again what you like.
27-07-2009
Mongolia; ready to go to China (English version)
It's the 27th of July today and we are in Ulan Bator, back from a 10-day camping trip. We arrived yesterday by bus from the country side of Mongolia and we had a fantastic time camping (we rented a tent for 10 days), hiking, and most of all just relaxing. See it as a 'holiday without traveling' within our trip.
800 km away from UB, at the border of Mongolia-Russia, there is a state called Khovsgol. There you have a huge lake - bigger than the lake of Geneva !! - surrounded by a vast land of tundra. The lake flows into the Baikal lake (in Russia) and the water is so transparent that you can see right trough it. Hmmm, we are in the area we thought so why not go there :))
Now the pictures that we have are very nice, it is not that that keeps me from posting them, the problem is that I cannot post them. All the technology available on the internet (the free one of course :)) is not enough to get this blog working. I will keep trying and you will see the result eventually on my blog, but oh I miss my crappy piece of laptop that allows me to do whatever I want. When it worked that is... So more pictures are coming on my blog, just scroll down and have a look below this blog every once and a while.
We are organized and organized right now to continue on to China. We have our train ticket for tomorrow to go from Ulan Bator to the Mongolian-Chinese border. There we will walk (literally walk :), it is not allowed to walk over the border though, so we might have to hijack a car. we save 16 euro by doing that, we love hijacking:) ) through customs and go China. First stop Beijing. Our visa is only valid for '6 DAYS' so we need to make a move in Beijing and extend the Visa straight away. We have been screwed 2 times already by the chinese, and we are confident that the 3rd time will be as sweet as the two other times.
To end my blog I ld like to say that I am sure you are enjoying the summer, but please do write an email with your plans and what you re up to, I promise I reply :)), we talk about you all the time and we miss you. And we cannot run out of news. Have a good time, talk soon from China.
PS: This is my first Guinness on the trip! (there should be a picture coming with this blog). As happy as a Mongolian bun.
16.09.09. Half-Round the world in 1 year / Kick off. 9th of April 2009, Mumbai, India’s biggest city, is our best destination to take the train south to Goa, Kerala and Bangalore. From there we go 4,000 km by train back to north India, see Karnataka, Rajasthan, the Taj Mahal, Varanasi and Nepal. In Nepal we do small treks in the Himalayas and visit Kathmandu. Over de friendship highway, the route goes from Kathmandu to Lhasa by jeep, maximum altitude 5250m and we get to see the Mount Everest. In Lhasa we take the train through China, see the Terracotta warriors in Xi'an, and go 3,500m north to enter Mongolia and arrive in Ulan Bator. In Mongolia we camp in the Khovsgol area near the Russian Siberia, and renew the Chinese Visa to go back south. The clock says 4 months when we trained through China and see Yunnan, South China with its wonderful terraced rice fields. We enter the tropics and after 6 months travels we are in Vietnam. 2 months after that, we should have seen Angkor, the beaches in Thailand & Maleysia ...<e.d. 25.10.09. There is a change of plan after Angkor: we fly from Bangkok to Manila, we go to the Philippines!!> and on a ferry to Indonesia. From either Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok, we find our way to Sydney and work for 3 months. We will have traveled for 1 year when we are in Oz and ... and ... and ... that is how far we planned. But we were supposed to come back in 1 year but we are only half around the world. Beatriz and myself love Asia!! So much for planning ahead and scheduling. Let's just see how we get on and the more exciting our trip will be. Wish us good luck on the trip!!
