I recently happened to travel to this city of Harbin, the provincial capital city closest to Russia/Siberia. True to what was told me, this place lived upto the expectation of being the coldest place i have ever been in. I witnessed extreme temperature of -40 C (the days are warmer, and mind you, warmer here means -30), was walking around on a completely frozen river with cars parked over it, and had a peek at the spectacular international ice festival, for which by the way the trip was planned.
I recently happened to travel to this city of Harbin, the provincial capital city closest to Russia/Siberia. True to what was told me, this place lived upto the expectation of being the coldest place i have ever been in. I witnessed extreme temperature of -40 C (the days are warmer, and mind you, warmer here means -30), was walking around on a completely frozen river with cars parked over it, and had a peek at the spectacular international ice festival, for which by the way the trip was planned.
Well, it was quite an experience. I am learning more about China and getting used to live in this country which used to be strange to me. In the last year or a bit more i have spent here, i have understood a lot about it and have become comfortable enough now to move around on my own, though that would be very difficult, considering the fact that i am still poor at my Chinese. However, i got lucky to have the company of Suraj, Ramya my Indian friends, and the wonderful friend/tour guide/translator/host and so many other things...Shelley. To the right!
Well, it was quite an experience. I am learning more about China and getting used to live in this country which used to be strange to me. In the last year or a bit more i have spent here, i have understood a lot about it and have become comfortable enough now to move around on my own, though that would be very difficult, considering the fact that i am still poor at my Chinese. However, i got lucky to have the company of Suraj, Ramya my Indian friends, and the wonderful friend/tour guide/translator/host and so many other things...Shelley. To the right!
So we started off on from Dalian with a thought of being on a train experience in China rather than being in a flight. And a flight would just take an hour, but a train also gives the option to sleep off a night in a China train. Now, thats new for me!! Well, my suggestion of taking the bullet train was discarded owing to the safety fears of Shelley. So there i was, on the train, finding myself in a compartment surrounded by all strangers looking at me because as it happened to be, all four of us were separated. While Suraj and Ramya were lucky enough to be in the same compartment, i was separated and i happened to be in the 14th box while Shelley was in the 5th. So the job of negotiating with someone to swap off the seats was left to Shelley because check 1 2 4, i cannot speak Chinese and most others cannot speak English. Indeed no one where i was standing! Lucky for me, Shelley did find a sweet college girl to swap off the seat. Of course, i did not want to spend the night surrounded by unknown alien faces staring at me i the dark so i was glad enough. Somehow the sweet girl who agreed to swap the seats had a lot of luggage, and the next thing we find is moving her luggage all the way from the 5th to the 14th compartment. If you ask me, it isnt easy walking inside a movig train with a heavy bag. All sweat in the chill walking inside the train, tired halfway, i stepped on some random girls' toe somehow. And lucky i was a foreigner, to a Chinese she would not have been so polite as to say "Meisha, Meisha (Its ok)" when i said sorry. Too much to say when you step on someones bare foot wearing the brand new, super heavy, made for the cold shoes!
Finally i do find me with Shelley, comfortable enough and we decided to pay Suraj and Ramya a visit. We were taking a couple of pictures while we saw two train conductors, a very sweet girl and a heavy guy saying "Nihao" to us. (Nihao==Chinese Hello"). I think we might have been looking too strange or something, because they wanted to take a picture with us. And so we did :). The rest of the train journey was pretty much about sleeping apart from the fact that me and Shelley actually talked for an hour in between the cars and Shelley drew something on a frosted glass!
That's quite too much to write just for the train journey! The next two days were freaking cold. But more about it later.
