Travels with Kathryn

First thing first, exciting announcement – I am writing this from Xi’an. I have arrived! And the blog works! However, I am getting ahead of myself, and perhaps you would like me to actually share something of my journey.

Everything did manage to fit in the bag (as demonstrated below) and I set off looking all bright eyed and bushy tailed at 7.30am on Wednesday morning.

Easy enough journey to Gatwick (I do enjoy the Lizzie line into Farringdon), and I requested and was allocated an aisle seat for my flight to Shanghai. I had been slightly concerned that as it was a 3-3-3 configuration, and as I could not check in online that I would be stuck with the middle seat. However, one slight concern is although I was flying with Air China for both legs, I would have to clear immigration in Shanghai, pick up my bag, and re-check in for my domestic flight to Xi’an. I would have 2.5hr to do this, so I genuinely didn’t think I had a hope in hell…

I then had sufficient time for a “light” breakfast in Gatwick:

It’s a 12 hour flight to Shanghai, and I watched what I felt was an appropriate film: Mulan and then napped off my huge breakfast.  I had read a number of rather negative reviews of Air China and other than the fact that it was a bit turbulent (particularly over Russian air space!) and as default the seat belt signs were left on which I had to learn to ignore, the seats were a decent size, the food was nice, and the crew were constantly offering water and crackers.

We landed in Shanghai an hour early, and guess what – it was incredibly easy taking a grand total of 1 hour to get off plane, go through immigration, collect bag, find departures, check in, find gate and settle down to wait. I worried for nothing. From memory (and this was 6 years ago), the Chinese have certainly streamlined the entry process, and there was also far more English sign posting than I remembered. There is also no longer the requirement to go through the health check (which was required even before covid), which took some time.

A short flight (3 hours) to Xi’an and walked straight off the plane, collected my bag and as I exited arrivals there was a man with a sign with my name carefully written on it. Hurrah!

The drive from the airport into Xi’an reminded me of one of my main observations of China on my last visit – there is this mix of confident modernisation (Xi’an airport is huge and surrounded by construction) both in terms of government projects, but people really embracing capitalism, balanced with ancient China and a people who are really proud of their culture and history. I am sure more musings on this will continue…

I was able to check into my surprisingly fancy hotel:

As some of you know, I am very much an Intrepid Travel devotee but to do the itinerary that I wanted to do for the Chinese leg of the Silk Road I have travelled with a company called Wild Frontiers. They still have that emphasis on environmental credentials with local sustainable travel, but if this hotel is anything to go by, this may be a slightly fancier tour than I am used to…

I’ll be honest, by the time I arrived at the hotel on Thursday I had been travelling for 22 hours and I was so tired I was actually dizzy. I therefore had a shower (as we all know, aeroplanes are horrible) and went down for a substantial nap.

5 hours later, I decided I needed to actually go out, do some walkies, and maybe find some food. The hotel is inside the city walls, and a short walk away is Lianhu Park, which I walked through and into the Muslim Quarter. This is 7pm by this point, and it’s still really hot. It’s going to be 35 degrees tomorrow, and I worry a little, I may melt.

Walking through the park is a great insight into Chinese life, there was the odd person having quiet time (on a rock, a bench, doing some tai chi) but the vast majority of people were engaged in some kind of group activity – dancing, badminton, walking arm in arm, and two elderly ladies doing what looked like a workout to Gangam Style. I was also turning a few heads as a huge westerner walking around on my own – Xi’an is one of my more touristy stops on this trip so I am surprised that I have not seen more non-Chinese, but perhaps they’ll be out and about tomorow in groups?

I have now returned to my hotel for a bowl of noodles, to write this, make a plan for tomorrow, and rather surprisingly get an early night (how am I still tired?).

Quick update on the Great Chinese Firewall – as we can see I can access this (hurrah!) and my emails (double hurrah!), but my vpn is only managing to connect intermittently so I got a quick WhatsApp blast and then nothing. Certainly no connecting to anything Meta or Google related, and most Western news outlets are banned. Although the housekeeping lady had to come into my room to adjust the air con (which turns out she can’t as its cerntrally controlled), but she was very quick to put the TV on the only Eglish speaking news channel so I can see what Trump has done now…

Anyway, that is probably it for today – I promise the full history of Xi’an, the Silk Road, and far more interesting photos in my next posts. But for now: