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Report 1777: Seven Weeks Across Asia - Part 1, Siberia

By Eleanor from UK, Spring 2008

Trip Description: Trip report of a journey starting in Siberia, through Mongolia, across China and over the mountains into Kyrgyzstan from April to July 2008

Destinations: Countries - Russia

Categories: Hotels/B&Bs; Day Tours; Sightseeing; Walking/Hiking; Independent Travel; 2 People

Large areas of Siberia are covered in forest

This originally started as a grand idea to catch the train from Scunthorpe to Beijing. We’d always been intrigued by the Trans Siberian Railway. Rather than fly to Moscow for the start of the journey we thought there might be a bit of one-up-manship in doing it all by train…

We then began to think that this would be a long time sitting in a train and time could be better spent seeing more of China. We would fly to Irkutsk and start from there as Michael had always been fascinated by the thought of Lake Baikal.

We would then catch the train into Mongolia for a few days before going into China. The plans grew as we added Tibet, the Silk Road and across the mountains into Kyrgyzstan.

We booked through Audley Travel who we use for all our major trips. We spent several hours talking to their country specialists and after a bit of tweaking came up with a seven week itinerary.

Fly to Irkutsk
Trans Mongolian Train to Ulaan Baatar
Train to Beijing
Train to Pingyao
Train to Xian
Train to Llasa
Train to Lanzhou
Fly to Dunhuang
Train to Turpan
Train to Kashgar
Car across Torugart Pass into Kyrgyzstan
Fly from Bishkek back to London Heathrow.

In the end we didn’t get to Tibet as it was closed to foreigners after the riots. We ended up driving the length of the Silk Road instead.

I have presented this as four separate trip reports as it covers such a long trip. This is Part 1.

Mongolia is covered in Trip Report 1778
China is covered in Trip Report 1779
Kyrgyszstan is covered in Trip Report 1780

All can be found in the Resources section at the end of the report (link to the right).

Trip Report Pages

Background to the Trip

Trains and Border Crossings

Irkutsk- General Impressions

Irkutsk Sights

Taltsy Museum of Architecture and Ethnography

Listvyanka and Lake Baikal

Lake Baikal Railway

Car Rental	Hotel Booking	Flight Booking	Train Tickets	Books, Maps, Events
Europe Cell Phones	Long Distance Cards	Luggage, etc.	Travel Insurance	Classifieds

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Report 1777: Seven Weeks Across Asia - Part 1, Siberia

Page 1 of 7: Background to the Trip

Trip Report Pages

Resources

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