Planning my trip to Russia, Mongolia and China

Posted on 1 February 2011

Holiday planning is a funny thing. I am not usually too phased and tend not to think about where I’m going next until inspiration hits, and usually it’s sometime in the first half of the year I travel… which is clearly why I tend to travel in the second half of the year. The only one that’s been in the pipeline longer than that was Peru, and even then, only in the sense that I knew I was going. It’s been on the list of places-to-visit since 2005, when my then-boyfriend & I scrapped it because it was too expensive and picked Thailand as a cheaper option. Funny thing is, knowing I was going to go to Peru in 2010 actually made me very slack in the planning of the actual trip and I booked barely a month before I flew off. Rather an exciting way to do things, honestly (usually I’m terribly organised about everything!)

But, this time round, I find myself in a new situation: I picked 2011’s holiday destination before the year had even begun. Which, I guess, is lucky because once I started to actually do some research, I realised I wanted to travel in April/May (also to combine all our fabulous South African public holidays around then!).

So, how did it start? Well I dunno exactly what triggered it but one day, in mid-December, I decided to investigate another trip that had been on my short-list before (in 2008): the Trans-Siberian Railway and China. As I started my investigation, I began to realise that it was a very real option for 2011. There have been 2 fantastic websites I’ve used for investigating the Trans-Siberian Railway (and helped me realise that what I actually wanted to do rather was the Trans-Mongolian Railway trip): Seat61 and Real Russia. They had all the information I needed to actually cost that leg of the trip and after further investigation and after picking dates, I’m actually booking to do a tour with Real Russia so that I can have a few days exploring Moscow before the train journey – seems a bit of a waste to go all that way and not spend the little bit extra and do it properly, honestly.

Then it was onto thinking about China. What did I actually want to do there? I already had visiting The Great Wall and The Terracotta Army on my Life List, and very soon after I started investigating, I realised I would be a fool to not add the Giant Panda Bears to my must-see list. I had actually originally also included Hunan Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, which is where they filmed part of Avatar (not my reason for visiting it though). It has quite unique, tall spindley cliffs. Clearly though, the film’s success was too recent for it to have been included in any tours yet, so it fell off the list pretty quickly. Once I knew what I was looking for (as a bare minimum experience-wise), I hit all the top tour operator websites and had a look for any trips that suited my time frame (the rail-trip is 7 days, so I needed something roughly 2 weeks long).

So far I’ve only found 1 trip that suited me perfectly, with Intrepid. It does the 3 things on my must-see list, it’s 15 days and starts in Beijing on a Tuesday, the day I’ll be arriving on the train. Perfect! But, the tours have limited start dates and I only just found one to suit me perfectly and it’ll mean I’ll be climbing on board Train 4 in Moscow on my 31st Birthday. What a great way to celebrate!

The biggest worry for me with planning was not any of the above, though. It was (and still is) the visas (typical!). I’ll need a visa for Russia, Mongolia and China and after some investigation, I discovered that there is NO Mongolian Embassy in South Africa, AT ALL! If I want to take the Trans-Mongolian train, I’m going to have to ship my passport off to the UK to get a visa.

With this in mind I began to research alternatives. There is a Trans-Manchurian railway that doesn’t cross into Mongolia, but it would arrive in Beijing on a Saturday and I’d have to hang around there until my tour started on the following Tuesday. A waste of money, I think, since my tour starts with 2-3 days to explore Beijing.

I began to think I may have to cancel this entire trip for 2011 and come up with a new fabulous destination. But instead I came home one afternoon in mid December and spent a few hours doing a full costing, with flights (flying via Dubai seems best price-wise as well as stop-over- and flight-length-wise), both tours, visa costs and dhl shipping costs (a fortune!). Amazingly, it is still within an acceptable annual holiday budget for me.

Another thing that I’ve had to consider quite carefully (which I’ve never had to think about before) is how my flight combinations affect my baggage check-in. This is not a simple trip flight-wise because I need to arrive in Russia and leave from China. And as far as I am aware, they will only check your luggage straight through to your destination, if it has been booked on one ticket. This required some serious consideration for my flight home since I have to change airlines completely. Also, I’m continuously amazed at how using a travel agent to book flights as one ticket can add R2000 or more to a flight price that you could just book yourself online! Horrified.

On a quick aside, I found a very handy site (http://www.southafrica.to/) to use when trying to figure out all the various potential half-way points between Joburg and Moscow. It made figuring out which were the best options for flights so much easier! Now I am on the cusp of actually booking, paying the deposits and booking the flights. And then in late February I’ll start applying for my visas.

I’ll be honest, I’m very nervous, even more so than usual. It feels like there are a lot of little bits all hanging on each other here. But I am determined and I know the excitement will begin once everything is booked and ready for me.






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