After Mongolian steppes, I crossed the Gobi where I could spot some camels in the evening sun through the windows of the transmongolian train on the way to Beijing. The shadow of our train looked like a caravan. On the border, they changed our bogie, the rails have a slightly different size in China, originally to make sure, the enemy could not enter so easily into the country. in China, I could see so many infrastructure projects, in one go about 30 high rise buildings with apartments were being built, wow. If in Moskow things looked big to me, China’s dimensions were huge and all very fast growing!!!
A new city to explore, Beijing. Very interesting, lots of life in the streets, public parks turned into dancing, music or tai chi meeting spots where everyone was welcome to participate. I also met my friend Sonja who recently moved to this city and ate many very tasty dishes and chatted about life in such an enormous metropolis. People treated me very good and were always to have for a spontaneous smile. After the training in body language in Mongolia, I could make myself understand in most cases also in this country.
This was also the place where I met my fellows for the trip to Kathmandu. We were five people in the group and were guided by John, our CEO (Chief Experience Officer). It was a nice group and we enjoyed the two-day train ride to the Tibetan High Plateau, the roof of the world. Our cars were provided with oxigene as soon as we reached high altitude (went over 5000mum).
The highlands were wide and high and the people live traditional culture and practice religion. Lhasa, the main city of the Tibet was beautifully located with views to high peaks, autumn colored trees. We were joined by a local guide and a driver who would show us more of their “country”. It was very interesting to learn more about Tibetan buddhism, history but also to see how controlled everything is and how the Chinese are building infrastructure and are imposing their culture. In the business world I would call it an unfriendly takeover…
After ten days of visiting most stunning monastries and passing through endless, dry and remote landscapes, we could finally spot the peak of the Mount Everest!!! Great!!! In fact, if weather would have permitted, we would have hiked a bit to reach the base camp…unfortunately, this was not possible and so we had to take what we’ve got – a view in the evening and in the morning light of the highest peak of the world from about 60km distance. After that, we crossed the Himalayas and crossed the border into Nepal. Suddenly, from 5300mum we went down all the way to 700mum. What a difference! More life, more water, more trees, different faces, new music and dresses, different smells and tastes, yes we could smell the green leaves in the air, the tropics!
So much to discover again, everything was new again – amazing!
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