The Long Journey Home: Snapshots So Far

‘A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.’ – Eudora Welty.

Feeling Guilty

If there is one thing I have discovered while I’ve been on my current travels, it’s that I often find it hard to digest and absorb everything I am seeing and doing at the time. This goes some way to explaining why I’ve been so pitifully bad at posting anything about our Long Journey Home so far.

Yes, it is partly the fact that I’m enjoying myself immensely and don’t necessarily want to sit down and write it all immediately. However, it is also to do with my inability to regurgitate everything immediately after it has happened. I am finding that I need a few days (weeks, months…) to put my thoughts and feelings about our trip into words.

However, I have been feeling guilty about not blogging. Guilty because I promised to share this journey with my readers and guilty because I do actually love blogging about my adventures. I’ve been feeling as though I’ve been letting the side down a bit lately.

Snapshots for Starters

Since I am finding it hard to come up with words, I’m taking the fail safe option of posting a photo blog to kick things off. Some of my favourite pictures from our trip so far. Rest assured, I will write the stories from this trip. Until then, enjoy the snapshots from the journey so far.

Blossoms in Beijing

The walls of the Forbidden City in Beijing were hidden behind pretty pink blossoms. Beijing was better than I expected (apart from the toilets) and I enjoyed my time in the city. It’s vast, constantly busy and you nearly get run over every time you cross a road. For all that it’s not intimidating and I felt safe there. We walked and walked this city – pounded the streets until my knee was in agony. Then we would relent and find a coffee shop somewhere to relax for an hour or so before going again. 

Golden Glow, Beijing

One of my favourite parts of Beijing was the Olympic Park and the massive recreational park that lay beyond it. We stayed as long as we could, going home long after nightfall. This is my favourite picture from the evening. We wondered and wondered what this strange, UFO-like building was. There were no signs indicating its purpose at all, despite the fact that there were signs everywhere else explaining what other things were. When we got home we Googled it but didn’t find a satisfactory answer. It will forever remain a mystery! If you look closely, you can see P in the bottom right hand corner.

A Day Out Riding

We ate lunch this day in the middle of the steppe. U hobbled the horses so that they couldn’t wander far. We ate vegetables she’d cooked before we left with hunks of dark bread, both taking big mouthfuls. I was hungry after riding for three hours. My grey horse grazed on the rough brown grass while we finished our meal with apples and water and got ready to go again. There was still three hours of riding to go before we would reach our final destination! 

Sunset on China

As the light faded on our final evening in China, we were on the train bound for the Mongolian border. This fiery sunset was a fitting farewell to a lovely six nights in China. As a country, it had both surprised me and bothered me. The windmills added perfect silhouettes against this backdrop of red, gold and orange as the train sped north into the night.

The Colourful Steppe

One thing that surprised me the most about Mongolia were the colours. Not on the steppe, which was a bleak, barren, brown landscape. No, it was the colours on the houses and buildings that made up the cities and towns that we passed through. It seemed that no colour was off limits. From lilac to turquoise to burnt orange to bright yellow, all colours had their place! I loved how they made the towns look like toy towns and how they made the houses stand out against the bleak backdrop.

Mongolian Sunset

When P and I came back to Mongolia, we stayed one night in a ger with a family. We were encouraged to spend time with the family, despite the fact that we didn’t speak Mongolian and they didn’t speak English. They offered us food, alcohol, tea and biscuits and despite the language barrier, there was no hiding their kindness and vast generosity. While P and S were still eating, I stepped outside to take this shot as the light hit the hills further down the valley. I can honestly say I barely touched this in post-production. That light is all real and natural with no filters or touch ups necessary to make it more beautiful.

The Eye of the Horse

By far my favourite horse riding experience in Mongolia was on this horse. While I rode him, I called him Billy. Mongolians don’t tend to name their horses and I felt he deserved a title! He was fun, eager to please and best of all, he wanted to go, go, go! We cantered, galloped and careered across the vast open steppe, enjoying our all-too-short time together. Afterwards, when we arrived back at the gers, I took this photo of him.

Ice on the Lake

P and I awoke to find our train traversing the southern edge of Lake Baikal. The landscape was completely different to anything else we had seen from the train window before. We ate breakfast and took countless photos as the train wend its way slowly towards Irkutsk. Occasionally we cursed the dirty window for ruining our photos, but luckily both our shots of the ice on the edge of the lake turned out fine.

Terelj National Park

We travelled to Terelj National Park after a busy day of sightseeing. This was my second time in the park and I was grateful that the light was better. I could take some improved photos of the strange rock formations that are all over the park. It was late in the day. I was tired and ready to get to our ger, but not before we visited the monastery to take photos of the colourful prayer flags there.

Prayer Flags in a Breeze

Although the entire monastery was beautiful, these colourful prayer flags were by far my favourite thing to photograph. They fluttered and flitted in the soft breeze, rustling gently against each other, ceaseless movement. Their frayed edges caught and tangled. Some knotted around one another, others, like these, stayed free, able to fly in the wind. I took nearly sixty photos of just these flags before I followed the others up to the monastery itself and indulged in the beautiful artwork and paintings there.

Cottages in the Snow

It snowed upon our arrival in Russia. Despite looking a little rundown, these log houses are surprisingly warm and cosy. I am sitting in one as I write this and have been sweating it out throughout the evening! As our train continued north, the snow faded away until we could see the ground again. However, it was still an exciting way to begin our time in Russia! I can guarantee that there’ll be plenty more photos to come of the beautiful wooden houses with their colourful window shutters – I think they’re stunning!

Trees Through a Snow Storm

Another picture of the snow that greeted us as we woke up on our first morning in Russia. The landscape looked wild with its soft coating of white powder. We half expected to see a pack of wolves or a bear appearing out of the trees. Small huts with smoking chimneys would surprise us just as we thought we had reached the remotest parts. It was onward to Irkutsk to start our Russian adventure proper…