An unfolded mystery: Tajikistan

Good evening hardcore followers!

As you are starting to read this blog post right now, you know that we have survived our trip from China to Tajikistan. It was quite a tough ride but we are happy that we got into the capital of Tajikistan without too much problems. This may sound to have been not much of a challenge but actually, it was. The day before yesterday was the day we posted our last blog during our train trip to Tajikistan. The day after, we had to travel another full day to get from the eastern border of Tajikistan to Dushanbe, located in the western part of Tajikistan.

During the way too long bus trip, there were two major elements that we will never forget. In the first place, the nature. We were travelling through an enormous chain of mountains. Some mountains had peeks of over 7000 meters height, belonging to the largest mountains on earth. During that trip, we have seen some of the most breathtaking panorama’s that we will see in our whole life. There was also a negative aspect during the trip, poverty. As the trip went by, we crossed some enormously poor villages. You can actually hardly call them villages. Just some huts and wooden houses together. The people there had not much clothes and they looked far from attractive. Our bus driver told us an important fact about Tajikistan: it’s the poorest country of the whole Asian district.

Before we entered this country, we knew practically nothing about the country Tajikistan. The only thing that came up in our minds when hearing the name was Tzatziki, the famous Greek dish. So this morning, we were quite motivated to explore this country and the city of Dushanbe, more specifically.

During today’s forenoon, we decided to visit the Jewish Dushanbe Synagogue. Tajikistan is actually a country that strongly believes in the Islam but there are also still a few Synagogues in the country. The Jewish society in Tajikistan is far from large so one synagogue per city is enough. The strange thing about this synagogue that it was built twice, once in the 19^th century and once two years ago. In the past, the Jewish society was way larger than now but after the civil war in the nineties everything changed. The new leader wanted a complete reformation of the country and the Jewish society was not part of that. After years of much national and international protest, the building was finally demolished begin 2008. Though, the Jewish communities over the whole world didn’t give up and one year after the demolishing of the building, there was an agreement to rebuild it. Unforeseen, there was a mass about to begin when we arrived and we decided to attend it. That was a quite nice experience since the methodology of a mass is completely different as in our Christian masses.

In the afternoon, we didn’t really know where to go but finally we decided to visit the Dushanbe government building. About our visit itself, we can be very briefly as we got hardly anything to see. When we arrived, we were only allowed to view some parts of the domain and all that was under strong, armed surveillance. Though we have gathered some nice facts about the Tajikistan Government. To get straight to the point, the Tajikistan government is as corrupt as it can get. This country should be led by a traditional republic but actually, the ruling authority gets re-elected all the time and that’s not a coincidence. The main reason of the corruption is to be found in the country’s large drug-traffic industry. To give you some facts, Drug trafficking delivers some people of the government a lot of revenues as they are part of it. Also, Tajikistan is the #1 country when it comes to producing and transporting heroin. The situation may improve in the next decades as the economy is growing quite quickly again after the civil war. If the legal economy keeps growing, there is a chance that the drug trafficking will decrease or disappear completely. Let’s hope for it!

So that was short description about how we have experienced our second day in Tajikistan. We do not plan to stay here for a long time because our main impression of this country is not quite good due to the poverty and the scarcity of cultural elements. We already know what our next destination will be but we won’t reveal it yet. The chance that we will post another blog about some adventures in Tajikistan is rather small so we hope to write again in a few days!

Reviewing the country: China

Good morning everyone!

At this moment, we just got on our train that will bring us to the border of Tibet (West China). Once we are there, we will have to look for a place to spend the night because tomorrow, a bus will take us over the border to Tadzhikistan. As you guys can probably imagine, we will be spending the whole day on this train because it is actually a very long trip.

To kill the time, we have decided to provide you of a round-up of our experiences regarding China. It is impossible to give a specific review about China because we have seen way too much. Though, we will try to express our most important feelings about China, treating different subjects.

The cities in general
Generally, we can state that all the cities we have discovered have mostly the same elements but in different proportions. Hereby we mean that there are industrial, economic and touristic aspects in every city. A remarkable thing that we have discovered that there still is a difference between Eastern and Western China. Eastern cities look more like our Western society. The streets are very busy and the booming of economy of China is omnipresent out there. There are still some authentic Chinese districts but they are in the minority. The cities in Western China and Tibet look way more authentic and old than in the Eastern part of China. There is also a lot of unspoiled nature over there and the people seem to have a more relaxed mentality.

The people
Physically, the people are incredibly small. In our little country, people measuring more than 1.85 meters are the most common thing in the world but here in China they are a rarity. That’s one of the reasons why Chinese people all look pretty similar. The people here also seem to be very disciplined. We have passed quite a lot of time here but we have never had any noticeable conflicts. People seem to respect the law in here. The incredibly chaotic traffic is the exception that confirms the rule. There don’t seem to be any traffic regulations in here. People just drive quickly and dangerously but it seems to work out pretty well.

Nature
To be honest, during the first part of our China trip we didn’t see a lot of beautiful nature. As we mentioned before, cities were the most important over there. Also, within the cities there was hardly any nature. The ‘West Lake’ in Hangzhou was nice though. The beautiful part of China, when it comes to nature, is to be found in Tibet en Western China. There are more mountains, there is fresh air and a lot of green.

Culture
We are tending to believe that culture in China is all about religion. We have seen a large amount of different temples and cathedrals, you simple couldn’t look next to them. The most important religions that we have seen here are Taoism, Islam and Buddhism. We are not saying that there is no art, humour and stuff like that in China but it’s just subordinate in comparison to Religion.

Food
The food was generally really spicy in here but that was nothing more than we expected. Also, we have also visited McDonald’s a few times because we just need some fries and some hamburgers now and then. We can give you guys one golden advice when it comes to food in China. Never ever order a dish in China of which local people say it is spicy because it’s unbearable!

So that was our little review. Now we will try to get some more sleep on our train. We will probably be back in a few days to describe our adventures in Tadzhikistan.

Cheers!

Tibet - It rises above all... !

The Tibetan flag

Hi dear followers, 

As promised we travelled more south-west towards Tibet, After a couple hours driving we arrived in Tibet. Tibet is first and for all the highest region on earth, with an average elevation of 4,900 metres !! So you can say that Tibet is a big, very big plateau located northern of the Himalayas. the right picture is the Tibetan flag also known as the snow-lion flag, it was first introduced by the Dalai Lama. The flag is used to symbolise the pro-Independence that Tibet wants to achieve. The flag has been adopted as a symbol of the Tibetan independence movement, and has become known as the "Free Tibet flag". The dominant religion in Tibet is Tibetan Buddhism, though there are Muslim and Christian minorities.

The Tibetan economy

The Tibetan economy is mainly focused on subsistence agriculture, this means the farmers focus on growing enough food to feed their families. luckily tourism has become a growing industry in Tibet. But to return to the subsistence agriculture, it's really sad to see how people have to put everything they have together to be able to have enough at the end of the month. Most of the farmers use livestock such as sheep, cows, yaks and dzo ( kind of yak ). If they however decide to grow crops, they'll grow wheat, buckwheat, rye, potatoes, and assorted fruits and vegetables. luckily tourism saved a lot of poor families, the Tibetan handicraft (hats, jewellery and wooden  items) became very wanted by the tourist and made this poor area slightly more wealthy.

Tibetan culture and their religions

Because the Tibetan are really religious people we couldn't leave their culture and religion out this blog, first of all Tibetans when you come in to any random house in Tibet you will always find a picture of the Dalai Lama. Their believe in the Dalai Lama is enormous , you could even say the Dalai Lama rules Tibet. The Tibetans believe that the Dalai Lama can't die, but when he dies  his body will merge into a young child his body and live on. (Reincarnation) 

Religion is extremely important to the Tibetans and has a strong influence over all aspects of their lives. In Tibet they have 4 main traditions linked to their religion;

• Gelug(pa), Way of Virtue, 
• Kagyu(pa), Oral Lineage.
• Sakya(pa), Grey Earth.
• Nyingma(pa), The Ancient Ones

Mountain Biking

We decided to do a very sportive trip and so we moutainbiked from Lhasa to Kathmandu.

Traversing the high road between Lhasa and Kathmandu and including the 4-day off-road excursion to the Rongbuk Valley, beneath the stunning north face of Mount Everest. This trip was really magnificent, we first flew to Lhasa which is the capital of Tibet and did a litlle sightseeing in the village and then started to mountainbike from Lhasa and Kathmandu travelling over 6 major passes.

It was a really nice and refreshing experience which we all shared very happily. After a day of resting and relaxing we decided to move on. Thats all for now, we will keep on updating you all about our numerous adventures here and hope to hear you all soon !!

Greets 

The travel crew :)

Chengdu: near the border of Central China

Hi guys!

Here we are once again. You may not believe it, but roughly three days ago we were still Wuhan describing our adventures and now we are already in Chengdu! Actually, the funny part is that we have already finished visiting the rather unknown city of Chengdu. I know, probably we travel way too fast to really see enough of all the places. We travel so quickly because we have a time limit and we try to cross as much countries as possible to experience as much different cultures as we can. Below, we have described some of the interesting we did past two days in Chengdu.

Chengdu is a booming city very close to the border of Central China with Tibet. This city is situated in the province Sichuan which means that we had to travel quite a lot to get here from Wuhan. Three days ago, we took ourselves a whole day to travel to here, as we did that by train and it actually went fluently. The evening we arrived we did nothing anymore as it was already late. We were tired from travelling and we went to bed.

The morning after, we sat together to discuss about what things we were going to visit in the next two days in Chengdu. We have a laptop with us so we can easily look up some interesting things. We decided to visit some Taoïstic and Buddhist temples, the panda centre, one of the biggest golf clubs and a tour through the industrial and financial centre of Chengdu.

The temples…

Rather unfortunately, we can’t tell you a lot of entertaining stuff about the tempels. We visited one Taoïstic and one Buddhist temple but to be honest, they were looking quite the same as the previous ones. We’re not trying to say that these temples are not interesting and so on, but we have just nothing new to tell about them!

Save the Panda!

Yesterday in the afternoon, we have visited a quite unique centre. As you might know, Panda’s only live in specific Asian regions (around China) and they might extinguish in the future for several reasons. The Central Chinese government built up a nice initiative to save the Panda’s. They have created a special centre where Panda’s can live in peace with each other without have to suffer from human threats. We were able to visit the centre and it was really nice to see some Panda’s in real life as most of us had never seen these animals before.

After this long but interesting day, we went for dinner somewhere near the centre of the city. Once again, the food was really spicy. This time it wasn’t even funny because it was just too spicy for us Europeans. The dish we ordered was called ‘Dan Dan Mien’ but it was just too spicy. Even the Chinese people admitted that it was spicy so that says enough. Some of us ordered another dish and in the end everything turned out to be fine!

Golf!

This morning, we went out to visit a local golf club. To our surprise, golf is a quite popular sport in China as there are over 500 major golf centers in the whole country. We visited the most famous court in Chengdu, named the Luxehills International Court. In exchange for some money, we had the chance to test our skills with a golf stick. We can assure you that golfing is way more difficult as it looks as we all sucked pretty hard.

Financial and Industrial centre of Chengdu

This afternoon, we took ourselves a Guide to lead us quickly to the financial and industrial centre of Chengdu. As it is a booming city, the city is a nice mix of authentic, scenic little streets and new, giant skyscrapers. Chengdu is known to be one the best cities in the world to invest in. The reason why Chengdu has such a nice industrial and financial part is to be found in the second World War. Chiang Kai-shek, a Chinese leader at that time, had to escape to this region because the Japanese were quickly invading eastern parts of China. Kai-shek took a lot of engineers, workers, businesspeople and academics with him and that group started to build a nice industrial and economical center in Chengdu. We also saw a lot of green in the City centre actually and our guide confirmed that Chengdu is by far the most green city in China

To conclude, Chengdu is a slightly different city compared to cities like Shanghai in eastern China but they also have a lot in common. Now, it is already evening and we are at our Hotel room, writing this blog to you guys. We have planned to leave Central China tomorrow to visit a part of China that is slightly independent, Tibet.

Stay tuned at this page to miss nothing from our adventures!

Greets from the Travelers!

Wuhan - The center of Central China!

Hi dear followers,

After passing some lovely days in Shanghai and ZhengZhou we decided to travel more to the center of China, to Wuhan. Wuhan is the former Capital of China and the current capital of the province Hubei, it's also the most populated city in Central China.

The Yellow Crane Tower

After spending some time just walking around and asking to numerous people what is really worth seeing, we decided to pay a visit to the Yellow Crane Tower.This tower was build 223 AD and stands on top of the Shesan ( the snake hill ) at the banks of the Yangtze River. The tower is also considered to be one of the Four Great Towers  of China. We had all ready talked to several locals and they told us the Yellow Crane Tower is really worth seeing, and we surely can confirm it's amazing. The views are incredible, the structure of the building is really really magnificent, the authenticity and how the building was safeguarded is just amazing. There are also several legends talking about the YCT for example Wang Zi'an (王子安) would have rode off a yellow crane from Snake Mountain. 

Yellow Crane Tower by night , a really incredible view 

Wuhan is not only known for the Yellow Crane Tower also the Wuhan war is a very known historical event, it was the longest, largest and one of the most significant battles of the entire Second Sino-Japanese War.

After the YCT we decided to take a boat trip and enjoy some touristic views, the Yangtze River is a large river running accros Wuhan. Their are 6 bridges over the Yangtze River and 1 tunnel under the river, but the only vehicules running over the bridges are trains. This is the main reason why you see a lot of public transportation; trains, metro and one airport 

(Wuhan Tianhe International Airport)

After a rather tiresome day we still decided to have a taste of the nightlife in Wuhan, first we visited a local restaurant to enjoy the local specialities. we enjoyed a very good and friendly served meal, we ate duck's neck (Ya Bozi),hot and dry noodles and soup dumplings. After a fine meal we went to Ji Qing Jie street, it's incredible how the street changes when it gets past 9 in the evening, students begin to come out and the nightlife really kicks in. We heard a tourist guide say that Beijing has the most bars in China, Shanghai has the most graceful bars in China, and Wuhan, the most unique bars in China. Well we can confirm that, we just walked in a random bar and started talking with some people and half of the people there are students the other half are just having a drink after-work. Yes after-work around 9 because people just invite business contacts to spend recreational time together to create a better bond with each other.
But you can divide the nightlife in 3 big compartments , the more popular bars where you see the most business people with live-performances etc. . The white collar bars here you find well educated workers serving all kinds of drinks in several bars and clubs also alot of tourists come here. The third kind of pubs are called the student' stage, as the name itself says here you'll find a lot of local students and mostly these bars are situated around universities.

After a rather tiresome night we just went back to the hotel, and all fell asleep as soon we lay down, that's about all for right now.

We will be letting you all know how we are doing...

Greets 

Frederic

Shanghai knights

Hello everyone!

It almost has been a week since you've heard from us. As you know we are travelling through China and because we want to see a lot in the time we are here, we don't have a lot time to keep you guys up to date. Time passes by when you are having a good time. But since we owe you a full report of China, I'm going to describe what we've done one Wednesday and Thursday.

The second stop on our tight schedule was Shanghai, the most crowded city of the country.

We already had decided to visit this city in the preparations of our journey. We knew Shanghai is a wealthy city because of its flourishing economy and its industry. So we knew we were going to arrive in a rather touristic part of the country. Still, it seemed interesting to us because we hear a lot about the strong and upcoming economy of China so we needed to check that out. We hoped to have a complete view of China after our lodging there so that includes fashion and finances as well. Too bad we didn't have a lot time but we did the possible to see as much of the city as we could.

The first part of the day we decided to act like real tourists and we visited the touristic center of Shanghai. Soon we noticed why the city is one of the most prosperous in the world. The city looks very modern and even a bit futuristic. Gigantic buildings with illuminated signs, just as other enormous cities like New York. Shanghai really has a cosmopolitan character. We couldn't help it to take a look in the big shopping streets and shopping centers. Everywhere in the city, you see shops and financial institutes. Business and economy are everything in Shanghai. After a half day of shopping, we had lunch in a nice restaurant. In the afternoon, we decided to go visit some of the eccentric buildings in the financial district. The city has set up a complete financial institution including commercial banks, securities companies, insurance companies etc. A well known area in that district is the Pudong, home of several financial institutions including the stock exchange. It's also well known for its beautiful skyline with the symbolic Oriental Pearl Tower. You definitely have to see this skyline at night! Shanghai was worth the visit, too bad we already had to leave after one day.

On Thursday morning, we packed our bags and took the train to ZhengZhou, a city not that far from Shanghai. Zhengzhou is totally different compared to Shanghai. Most of the buildings are more traditional but off course there's a modern city center as well. Wednesday was all about economy, finances and the modern way of life. Thursday, we learned more about the tradition and culture of China. We visited the Shaolin center. The temple is not only a Buddhist shrine but also the ancient center of Chines kung-fu. The Western world knows the monastery from the martial arts but its also part of the UNESCO world heritage. In the past, the monastery has been destroyed and rebuilt several times. We've heard a lot of anecdotes about the Shaolin and their monks but I've remembered one to tell you guys. The anecdote is about the spreading of the Shaoling kung-fu and the martial arts in general. After one of the many attacks on the monastery, five monks had to flee. In order to stay alive and save the monastery, they needed to recruit some new fighters. In that way, the Shaolin kung-fu has spread trough the country and later on, even through the world.

After we had visited the Shaolin center, we anticipated the rest of the day to walk in one of the five sacred mountains of Taoism in China, the Mount Song or Song Shan. Mount Song is the home of the Shaolin temple and considered to be the birthplace of Zen Buddhism. In that way, the mount represents Buddhism as well as Taoism, another Chinese religious path where they focus on nature. That's not surprising of you see the nature around there.

We walked 1500 meters above sea level and the nature was really thrilling. Everywhere around the mountain, you find Buddhist and Taoist temples and tribes amongst the beautiful trees and vegetation.

Thursday was a tiring day and we were glad when we made it back to the hotel. In the morning, it was already time to leave this beautiful city as well...

China: The climax of our trip?

Hi there once again!

Tonight, we don't feel like doing too much so we found it the right time to update you guys once more about our travel adventures. As you could have already deducted from the title of this blog, we are on the area of China right now. Before the start of our trip, we already had agreed together that we would definitely be visiting China. Because it is such a large country with a lot of different cultural and natural aspects, we will stay in China for about ten days, which is longer than any other counry we will visit.

To make things clear, now we are finding ourselves in our room of a little hotel in the city centre of Hangzhou, a well-known city in China. We had quite a nice day so we provide you of a little summary below.

Hangzhou

At first, our idea was to travel by bus from Laos to China but someone told us that we could experience some troubles at the border so we decided to, once again, travel by plane. Because Laos is located southward of China and because China's major cities are located in the eastern part of the country, we decided to start our trip in Hanghzou. After visiting hangzhou we will march on northward to reach other cities. We have found a nice train route so we will not have to pay plane-tickets anymore in China. After our arrival Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport early this morning, we took a taxi very quickly to our hotel in the city centre. After we were installed, it became clear that we would definitely need a guide for today. The combination of a big city in a country that we had never been in before with an unintelligible language made it impossible to travel alone. The receptionist at our hotel told us where to find a tourist centre where we could fix a guide. We asked the guide to visit some of the most special places in Hangzhou today and we ended up with two activities. In the forenoon, we would visit the 'Immaculate Conception Cathedral', one of the oldest catholic churches in China. In the afternoon our activity was to take a look at the 'West Lake', the most attractive touristical spot in Hangzhou.

The Cathedral

It seemed really interesting to us to compare a Chinese catholic cathedral to the cathedrals we know in Belgium and Ghent, specifically. From outside the building looked completely different from what we know. It was quite a low building with two colors: blue and white. The inside of the cathedral was rather comparable with the cathedrals we know so that's at least something that catholicism has in common all over the world. Our lovely guide gave us a lot of explanation about the birth and the history of that cathedral but that's secret information that we will not be sharing here.

When we completed our visit to the cathedral, we took a bus to move to our next destination but on our way, we would hold on for a minute to eat something. During the bus trip, I was personally surprised about the fact that Hangzhou seemed to be a pretty prosperous city. I didn't see any signs of poverty. Moreover, the city was a maginificent mixture of modern skyscrapers and typical old Chinese buildings. As we had planned, we stopped at a restaurant to provide ourselves of some energy to complete the day. Surprisingly, the food was not spicy but it had a very soft and sweet taste. We also got some tea to drink. It was not just a random drink since it was 'Longjing Tea', a local speciallity that worked refreshing and relaxing.

West Lake

This lake was announced as the major touristical attraction of Hangzhou so we were quite curious about what to expect. The most awesome thing about this lake is that it is surrounded with breathtaking nature and rest. Alongside the lake, there are numerous authentical Chinese buildings refering to old Chinese leaders and things like that. The fact that the lake is not one of the largest with its 6.2 square kilometres gets completely compensated by the beauty of the sightseeing on the boat. This lake delivered us a nice variation between wide, open spaces with nice panoramas and small, cosy passages through Jungles etc. We can conclude that visiting West Lake was a very nice way to finish our day in Hangzhou, despite the fact that it was not how we had expected it to be.

It was a beautiful day for us but we have yet to discover what China really is about because we have only been here one day, in one city. We plan to move on to our next destination tomorrow or the day after tomorrow so make sure you keep your eyes focused on the screen to miss nothing of the action!

Greetings,

The Travelling Team