Goodbye Nepal, Hello China!

The Chinese love to climb! This is what we have found out from our two days so far in Beijing. At any photo opportunity they start climbing, so much so that we regularly see signs telling people 'no climbing please'. Naturally these get ignored…

We were supposed fly out of Kathmandu on March 31^st but Air China had other ideas for us as we found out when we arrived at the airport and our flight had been cancelled, for about a month without us knowing! The next flight was in two days so Air China kindly paid for 2 nights in a 5* hotel, all our food and a taxi back to the airport. I had steak for breakfast two days in a row!!! The hotel was a world away from the noise of Thamel and had electricity all hours of the day! It did cost 30 times more than our original hostel though so you would expect something good for all that money.

When we did finally catch our flight we flew via Lhasa in Tibet and we were both worried we would need a permit just to transfer planes which you cannot attain unless you go via an organized tour. Luckily everything worked out fine and the views on the plane were phenomenal! We saw Everest and there were no clouds over Tibet so we could see the barren, rocky red landscape with crystal clarity.

We arrived to Beijing after 3 flights and caught the subway just before it closed to our hostel at the dead of night where we pretty much went straight to sleep. The next day we wondered around Tiananmen Square and had the obligatory photos taken with the giant portrait of Mao (when in China do as the Chinese do!). Mao is a much revered former leader of China who the Chinese love! We sidestepped the Forbidden City as it was a Sunday and crazy busy with Chinese tourists and instead went to the Ming Wall ruins where the cherry blossom festival was taking place. Whilst wondering around we began to realize just how big Beijing is. Especially compared to Nepal where we could (and did) walk to every sight!

Today we went to the Forbidden City which had lots of ancient gates, temples, very pretty gardens and Chinese tourists climbing everything for a photo! A nearby park with good views where we watched pensioners practicing Tai Chi, dancing and playing shuttlecock hacky sack, it looked great fun! The Drum tower, Bell tower and the Lama temple which had a MASSIVE Buddha 28 meters high carved out of a single piece of Sandalwood!!! It's in the Guinness book of records too!

Tomorrow we have booked onto a Great Wall tour where we'll be taking in the Mu tianyu section of the wall (little bit renovated, little bit crumbling down). We will also be seeing the Ming tombs and the Olympic stadium aka 'The Birds Nest'!

We found out that our blog is banned in China so hopefully this post will work!

Love K&C