Working with photos...

It's astounding how complicated publishing photos to my blog from the same editor I use to write the text of my blog can be. I've finally found a freeware (Ed. Note: err... shareware, apparently) editor called Ecto that seems to do the trick and publishes my stuff to flickr at the same time that it shoves it on my blog. To prove the point I'm publishing a bonus photo (YAY!) from China.

(Below: A baby with a 'doo on a bike.)

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Nic's Current Location: Classified. Somewhere South of North and North of South.

We've got a bit of catching up to do haven't we?

As the title of this post suggests, I'm finally getting off my ass, proverbially at least, and writing a bit of an update about what I've been up to for the last... err... 16 odd months. It's hardly an excuse, but my time in China behind the Great Firewall all but killed my blogging momentum, and my two months in Nepal afterwards, with internet connections slower than anywhere else in the WORLD (seriously) pretty much killed what remaining enthusiasm I had for the endeavour.

What I'm hoping to do now is to write and publish a series of catchup-posts over the coming weeks to bring everyone who's curious up to speed with what I'm doing and where I am now. For the less patient among you, the short answers to those questions is "Heading South and East" and "In Bali" respectively, though I've had one or two interesting adventures on my way here. Having said all that, I guess it's time to start cluing you guys in to what I've been up to:

Following my late-August 2007 departure from Mongolia I made a proverbial bee-line from Ulan-Bator to Beijing by train and hell-car (aka "sleeper bus") ... I still haven't figured out WHY they're called "sleeper" buses, as I have yet to manage to get a single wink of sleep on one. Anywhere. Ever. A week(-ish) in Beijing and it was off to Dalian, in the north, and then onwards to South Korea via a ferry from Dalian to Incheon, just outside of Seoul, where I spent 5 days enjoying Korean life and catching up with some old friends from BlackBall (The ferry company that runs the MV Coho from Victoria to Port Angeles; Selling Coho tickets was my first "real" job at the end of high-school.). After Seoul I hopped onto a KTX high-speed train for the ride to Pusan in the South-East of Korea, where I spent another few days sight-seeing.

I got bored of Pusan after a couple of days and, longing for something new, hopped a ferry over to Fukuoka, Japan on a whim... Given the amount of time I was actually in the country for, Japan was actually a rather eventful place for me. I met a great girl and spent a couple of weeks wandering around the country with her. I also managed to spend a few days in Nagasaki and Hiroshima to have a look at the A-bomb memorials and sites; my curiosity about the two locales stemming from my time in Chernobyl, Ukraine.

That's all you're going to get out of me for now, though I'll do what I can to write a bit more in a few days.

(Below: A back-street in Beijing very, very early in the morning.)

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Nic's Current Location (at time of writing): Seminyak district, Denpassar, Bali.

Just a test...

I've decided to make another attempt at resurrecting my blog. We'll see how this goes, but I've managed to find a rather handy offline blog editor which will (hopefully) let me write stuff offline and then just post it quickly and easily when I've got an internet connection...

This is just a handy-dandy test post to see how the burst-transmission end of this works, and whether or not I like the formatting... Hopefully there'll be a bit more to come...

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It's official... I suck at keeping my blog updated...

I'm well aware that it's hardly an excuse to abandon this damn thing for so long... I lost most of my posting-momentum while I was in China, where, as per the wisdom of the government, blogging is illegal.

Since my last real post in Mongolia I've ... well... covered a lot of ground... My route took me through China, via Beijing and a northern city called Dalian, through South Korea (Seoul and Pusan), Japan (Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Tokyo, Yokohama and Osaka) then back through China (Shanghai and Beijing again)and deep into Tibet via the new high-altitude train run from Beijing to Lhasa. I got to breathe oxygen from a tube for half a day in the comfort of a compartment shared with 5 other people... Sounds like fun? You Bet!

My time in Tibet was somewhat limited as I was in the area illegally. The Chinese government was imposing a crackdown on foreign travelers and weren't too thrilled to have a 6'3" red-bearded white guy wandering around... ... C'est la vie...

From Lhasa I crossed the Himalayas to Kathmandu by jeep, an endeavour that took several days with stops at Shigatse, Gyantse, and Everest Base Camp (Tibet)... The trip also included one mild concussion and a visit to a Tibetan "doctor's office" where I was helpfully informed that I'd only imagined hitting my head and passing out... Gee... Thanks doc...

A planned two-week stay in Nepal evolved into two months, and included two solid weeks of white-water rafting, trekking in the Himalayas, my first flight in a (hanging from a) paraglider, and wandering the slums of Kathmandu at dawn. All amazing experiences, and none of which I have the time to go into at the moment. I promise I'll write a longer post when I'm in England (more on that in a few minutes)...

India thus far has been... Interesting... I've spent most of my time in the North-East and North-West of the country and am still trying to figure out exactly what all the big fuss is about... People keep telling me that the South West is "different", but thus far most of the country, with very, VERY few exceptions (though they do exist), seems to be one large, smelly cesspit full of people who would gladly knife me in the back to take the 10 Rs of change I have in my pocket... I've seen more thefts in the last two months than in the rest of my life combined, and have, for the first time in my life since junior-high, actually engaged in something resembling a fight; an activity I don't particularly enjoy doing, to say the least...

My time in India has been broken up by detours to Bangladesh and Bhutan. The former was an enlightening, if tiring, experience. The latter was very, very expensive and over-rated, but still worthwhile... I've just arrived in Delhi after two weeks in Western Kashmir (currently under 2.5 meters of snow!) and am getting ready to fly back to England for 10 days of sanity, sanitation and... good beer... before hitting the road again through SOUTH India and on to Singapore...

Once again, my apologies to my readers for leaving things so long. Getting back into the blog-posting groove after a forced month-long absence from it is a challenge that I, apparently, wasn't up to. I apologize as well, for the crudeness of this post. I'm throwing this up on the net without my usual editing or photos in the hopes that having THIS done will be enough motivation for me to get back into the groove and write a bit more while I'm in England (having real internet access helps as well!)


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Nic's Current Location: Pahar Ganj, Delhi, India.

-:My GPS died an ugly, painful death 5 days into a rafting expedition in Nepal. You'll have to live without my specific whereabouts for a while until I can replace it.:-

Nic can't post right now because of the Great Firewall

Nic can't post right now because of the Great Firewall

This is Ian posting to Nic's blog because he's in China and can't post right now - For more information on the Great Firewall - visit Wikipedia - Article Here Once he leaves China controlled internet, I'm sure we'll hear from him sooner or later...

So, my nine-day tour of Central Mongolia, including Kharkhorin, the ancient capital of the Mongolian Empire and a three-day horse-tour of the 8-lakes region is complete. Within two hours of arriving back in Ulan-Bator I began gearing up for a 9-day trip to the South Gobi... I leave at 8AM tomorrow morning and will be back in UB late on the 22nd, just in time to get a good nights sleep in a "real" (i.e. Hostel dorm) bed and hop on a two-day-long train/sleeper-bus connection to Beijing that leaves in the evening of the 23rd. It's 12:30 right now and I still need to finish packing... I'll do what I can to fill everyone in on what I've been doing for the last 2 weeks...

My "tour group" which included myself, Miquel, a Spaniard, Dan, an American, Carlo and Liat respectively Italian and Israeli, on their honeymoon, and our driver, Sagi, a local Mongolian from Ulan-Bator (UB) whose wife was in hospital about to deliver their first child on the day we left UB. (*NOTE* I still can't figure out how to spell Sagi's name. It's pronounced "Sahg-ee")

(Below: (Left to Right) Myself, Dan, Miquel, Carlo, Sagi and Liat. Out-of-focus photo taken by some poor soul at the hostel who was awake for our 5AM departure.)

A few of our adventures along the road included climbing a Mongolian "Mountain" to take a look at some wild horses in Hustai National Park, hanging out with a young boy on the side of the road who had "caught" an eagle, spending three days on horse in the 8-lakes area (Note: Mongolian horses are very, very small. I walked a lot.), having my tent attecked (read: trampled on and eaten) by a herd of Yaks at 5AM, and having our van break down more times than I can count.

(Below: Miquel looking very much like Indiana Jones. The Tilley hat is mine and I'm quite upset that it looks better on Miquel then on me.)

(Below: A boy and his eagle. Touching really. Shortly after this was taken a two van-loads of Chinese (perhaps Korean?) tourists showed up and swamped the pair with cameras and flashes.)
(Below: Miquel's comment: "They are Yaks." Do I need to say more? (Miquel is the one on the right.))

(Below: A view from the same campsite as the Yak attack. It's not all bad.)

(Below: You don't want your van to break down here. Ours did.)

(Below: A taxi-stand in Tsetserleg, a regional capital several hundred km due WEST of Ulan-Bator.)

This is posted, again, with apologies for such a short update, but I figured a short update was better than none at all.

This... This could be interesting...

This is just a brief note to let everyone know that I won't be posting for a couple of weeks. I've arrived safe and sound in UB (though managed to nearly get myself deported from Mongolia before I even got off the train... All's well that ends well though... )... Anyway... a few friensd and I are renting a van and heading deep into the Western Mongolian wilderness. We'll be gone for at least 9 days. Following that I may, or may not, be heading South into the Gobi... The short version is that I won't have 'net access for quite a while, but I *WILL* have some interesting updates for you guys when I get back.

For those interested in doing more research, I'll be heading into the 8-lakes and White Lake regions, almost due East of Ulan-Bator.

[2007-08-13:CORRECTION: The 8-lakes and White Lake areas are due WEST of Ulan-Bator, not due East, as stated. This is what I get for rattling off a blog post at 6AM on only two hours of sleep...]