When we first began discussing our 4 1/2 month around the world trip with our family in 1999, we wanted to get away from everyday life, experience the world, be with our daughters (12 and 10 at the time) and learn something in the process. However, planning it and actually making it happen were anything but that.
We are now flying over the Atlantic in the midst of a 30+ hour odyssey home, which is comprised of four flights: first to Nairobi, then Brussels and Chicago, before the final leg to LAX.
We are now in a small town in the state of Sikkim, India called Yuksom. It is the jumping off point for our six day trek in the Himalayas.
We left Beijing’s West Train Station at 12:45pm on Wednesday to begin our ten hour journey to Luoyang. We were able to get hard seats (for about $12 each) on a ‘K’ train, which is an express that makes very few stops.
It is Thursday night and we are in Luoyang, which is southwest of Beijing. We arrived here late last night after a 10 hour train ride in “hard class.” Hard class is not necessarily the seats (they were padded) but it refers to the cheapest seats of travel – one the Chinese use.
