We shared our train cabin between Beijing and Xi’an with two young Chinese men, one of them had an interview in Xi’an and the other was accompanying him for moral support. They were interested in hearing what brought us to China and what we would do whilst in Xi’an, they recommended a few things for us and were very friendly. We enjoy our train journeys, it forces you to relax, there is often no internet, we don’t have to worry that we should be sightseeing and making the most of available activities, instead we can read, rest and chat with other people in our cabin. Over the course of the next month we had trains booked from Beijing, going around the country and ultimately ending up in Hong Kong (stopping in Xi’an, Xining, Tibet and Shanghai on the way). This covers a total of 5,984 miles, which is more or less the same as the approximately 6,000 miles we covered going from St Petersburg to Beijing by train. Our total train travel of almost 12,000 miles is almost half of the distance of going around the entire of our planet earth (which has a circumference of approximately 24,901 miles), which is quite staggering!

In Xi’an, we were staying in a nice hostel, which had some authentic Chinese features, in terms of building, but has also been modernised somewhat making it comfortable for Western travellers to stay in. Oh, and they had a resident cat.

One activity that had been recommended to us was to cycle around the wall that surrounds what was the ancient capital city of Xi’an, it is one of the oldest, largest and best preserved Chinese city walls.

In all honesty, the wall itself isn’t particularly interesting to cycle around, but the distance of 8.7 miles is a nice length for casual cyclists which fancy getting a bit of exercise and not having to deal with the traffic down below (and after our experience of being ploughed into by a police car in Beijing, we aren’t queueing up to cycle on the city roads). That said, some of the buildings on the way around the wall were interesting and at several points, we stopped to look at the view over the city either side of the wall.

The Bell Tower and Drum Tower are also popular tourist attractions in Xi’an for which you can buy a combined ticket. The Bell Tower was originally built in the 14th century, however, it was later moved in the 16th century and has been damaged multiple times including from bombings by the Japanese in 1939. It has since been repaired and preserved and stands as a key cultural relic, protected by the Chinese government.

The Drum Tower has remained in its original location since construction. As tempting as it is, visitors are asked to view but not touch any of the drums, presumably, this warning had to be put up after prior incidents.

The star attraction that draws the majority of tourists to Xi’an is the Terracotta Warriors, discovered recently, in 1974, they date back to the third century BC. It is incredible to think they lay hidden underground for such a huge amount of time, it is like having access to a time machine and being able to transport back to over 2,000 years ago. The farmer who accidentally discovered the warriors got a very small amount of money and little did they know at the time it would turn out there were thousands of warriors made of terracotta buried underground (currently they guess there are around 8,000, but work is ongoing to painstakingly dig up and repair the warriors). If one goes forward in time by 40 years, perhaps they will have finished, but for now, a visit to the site means seeing the warriors in various stages, from pits with fragments in.

To the fragments being pieced together.

To a line up of restored warriors.

We were told that whilst the warriors are more or less colourless now, that wasn’t always the case, so Steve took one of the photos and boosted the colours and details a little, to try and get a little glimpse into what they once looked like.

Although take that with a pinch of salt, Steve used some guesswork to try and get an interesting looking result which hints at the extra colour and detail, by boosting what is already there, but likely doesn’t do justice to what they originally looked like.

From Xi’an we took the train to Xining, a location we picked specifically to get acclimatised ready for Tibet where we would venture to altitudes of 5,500m (Xining is 2,275m so a reasonable stepping stone). It is the first time either of us had stayed at these sorts of altitudes for any prolonged period of time and we were both a little shocked how hard it was to operate, just walking up the stairs for a flight or two can leave you breathless. However, after travelling for five months, we welcomed the opportunity to have a few days off in Xining without any specific plans of what to see and what to do. We used this opportunity to plan future parts of our trip, in particular: Malaysia and Indonesia (where Gemma’s friend Jen would be joining us on our adventure for three weeks!) and Australia (where we decided to book a tour of the East Coast which involved lots of activities and would be something different to everything else we have done on our trip this year).

We were getting a little sick of the budget Chinese food options we had been exploring (mostly very chewy, oily and fatty – nothing like we had experienced in the UK) we felt, for the first time in our trip, we needed some Western basics like Pizza Express (where we enjoyed the pasta) and Pizza Hut (where we enjoyed the Pasta, broccoli, salad and even a pizza). But other than planning on eating, we did walk around Xining which honestly isn’t the prettiest city we had seen but did have little pockets of beauty and colour.

Feeling a little more rested, we boarded our next train, bound for Tibet, looking forward to seeing something, unlike anything we had seen before, or so we hoped at least!

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