Sunday, July 09, 2006

Back to the most capitalist communist country!

I took the long backpacker's way but i made it to China!

A first train to Sainchand, in the Gobi, where i spent two days pretty much sleeping, just crushed by the heat!
Sainchand is a typical countryside town.. with its wide dirt streets and 2 stories buildings scattered around.. the colors, the dust and the heat give it a typical Vim Vanders movies feeling.. almost Tarentino even..

The Train to Sainchand was quite an experience in itself.. As we were approching the desert, the air filled with sand dust to the point where it was barely breathable.. all the beds and the people, everything was covered with sand.. it was surreal!

After Sainchand, another train took me to Zamiin Uud, just at the border to China, were i took a cab to pass the border.. (needless to mention the doors were packed with "stuff" to get to the other side!)

From there i caught a sleeper bus to Beijing.. and after 12 hours of bathing in my own sweat, here i am in giant Beijing!

Quite a change after the Gobi!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

20 days in the Gobi! Thats 9 days longer than my last vacation through arizona... and you still have months to go... ah to be french. Congratulations on making it to Beijing in one piece. I dont think we have written since your russian incedent. Sounds like you have bounced back and are still having a great time. And we are glad you still have both of your kidneys!
You will hate to hear this but we purchased a digital SLR before our arizona trip. After enjoying the flexibility of digital pictures from the point/shoot cameras it was great to have the added control of a SLR camera. Its a little bigger but it quickly reminded us of the painful limitations of point/shoot cameras. I did bring an older film SLR that I kept loaded with only black/white film. On your trip did you bring a tripod for setting up pictures or is everything being shot handheld? We ended up with 600 photos over the 11 day period, i can only imagine how many photos you will have at the end of your trip... it is going to take you months to go through all of them. Will you develop just the negatives or maybe contact sheets? When we traveld through europe in school we used colorslide film and black/white film. You have no choice but to get the slides developed but we had only contact sheets made from the b/w negatives. Do you develop your own prints? We will have to visit you after your trip to check them out.

Anonymous said...

Hola Joune !

Ca faisait un bail que j'étais pas passé sur ton site de parts, et qu'est ce que je vois ? Que Mr se fait un tour du monde !
Tu te fais un bon trip là ! Bonne continuation et reviens nous irie :)
PS : Si besoin d'aide pour gérer ton site partoches pendant ton absence, fais moi signe ;)
Manu (Part-icipant)

J2J2 said...

Je ne sais pas si ça va être mieux en Chine, mais en Mongolie, quelle galère pour mettre la carte à jour...

Take care!

A++