Our Adventures on the Trans Mongolian Railway, Nepal, South East Asia, and Beyond.

In 2018, my partner Beejal and I embarked on an ambitious journey to go from Europe to Asia mostly by land. It was a fantastic trip, and I shared the highlights of this journey on a now-defunct blog. I'd like to revive these travel stories here, for myself, to share with family and friends, and hopefully to inspire some strangers.

This article was originally written and published on August 12, 2018, and it was completely fine to travel to Russia or China back then.

I. The Trans Mongolian Railway

We are following the Transsiberian route up to Irkutsk, and then south toward Mongolia on the Trans-Mongolian railway.

The first leg of our journey, in Russia:

• Flight from London to St Petersburg on August 16. Visiting and enjoying the city, first steps in Russia. 4 days.
• Train from St Petersburg to Moscow on August 21 (3h).
• Moscow from August 21-25, visiting the great Russian capital
• Longest train ever from Moscow to Krasnoyarsk, leaving at 11:00 am on August 25 and arriving on August 28 early morning. 4000km in 68 hours!
• August 28-31: Krasnoyarsk and Stolby Nature Reserve for 3 days. "Stolby" means pillar, and this is a famous climbing spot in the middle of Siberia.
• Train to Irkutsk (20h) on August 31, arriving on September 1st.
• September 1 - 6: Irkutsk - Lake Baikal - Okhlon Island. Irkutsk is the only city around lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world containing 25% of the world's surface freshwater reserve. We'll spend 4 days on Okhlon island, the biggest island on the lake, enjoying living in this frontier place.
• September 6th: Train from Irkutsk to Ulan Ude, the capital of the Buryatia republic the center of Russian Buddhism.
• Finally, we'll take a bus to Mongolia on September 7. Why the bus and not the train? It's much cheaper and actually faster to take the bus, since rail tracks gauge are not the same in Mongolia and Russia. 12h drive.

Mongolia, steppes, and yurts

• Arriving in Ulan Bator on September 7.
• Find a tour and head to the Altai in the west, the Gobi in the south, or Khovsgol lake in the north. From our research online we decided against booking a tour in advance, and booking once in UB, as apparently, the guesthouses that cater to foreigners can help arrange a tour to different parts of Mongolia. We should expect to pay around $50/day/pers for a guide, a jeep, and food.
• On September 23, we'll take the train from Ulan Bator to Beijing, China, reaching the end of the Trans Mongolian railway.

China, Golden week and the Yunnan region

• We'll arrive in Beijing on September 24 and we'll leave on October 21 from Kunming, Yunnan flying to Nepal.
• We realized relatively recently that we'll be in China for the Golden Week, a massive 1 week holiday that most Chinese people use to visit their family or travel in their country. I even found an article saying that 700 million people traveled last year during this week.
• The original plan was to spend 9 days in Guanxi, around Guilin, Yangshuo, and Guiyang, then move toward the Yunnan region and the cities of Dali, Lijiang, and Kunming.
• We actually may have to spend the whole of the trip in Yunnan and escape the Golden Week by going to a more remote area of the state
• Flight from Kunming to Katmandu, Nepal on October 21.

II. Trekking the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal

We want to be in Nepal for the trekking season in October - November and we want to trek the Annapurna Circuit, a 180km trek, from 1500m up to 5400m, which should be doable in 2 weeks.

Once we have done this amazing hike, we'll probably spend 1 or 2 months in Nepal enjoying nature, good food, and a much slower pace of travel.

Ever since I left the gorgeous state of Himachal Pradesh in India, I've always wanted to go back to the Himalayas. Even though Nepal is not India and there will be many differences, I'm really looking forward to revisiting this part of the world.

III. To Warmer latitudes

Once we finish our adventure in Nepal, we are planning to head to South East Asia. We've been talking about getting our PADI in Thailand (spoiler from Jules from 2023: that was a fantastic idea).

I've been wanting to visit Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines for while. These countries are massive, so we might have to settle only on one region in one place. Once we are either tired of the trip or we ran out of money, we'll head back to the Old continent.

Here's the first chapter of these adventures.