This is the last leg of our journey alone, before we start our 46 day marathon overland trip from Xi'an to Bangkok. The prospect of joining a group was very much on our minds as we arrived, but we had the whole day to ourselves before joining the group. We were delighted to find that our hotel for the next 2 nights, was a peaceful haven. Although very much a (Chinese) tourist hotel, it was built around a small lake with peacocks, swans and ducks all making this their home. We found ourselves a comfortable seat by the water and could easily have stayed there for the next 2 days.
We realised, however, that we were literally a stone's throw from one of the holiest Buddhist sites in China, the Big Goose Pagoda, and this was too much to miss out on. It dates from the 7th Century, and was used to house and translate sutras that had been brought back from India. The Pagoda itself is an iconic multi-tiered tower that continues to dominate the sky line for miles around, but we also enjoyed just wandering around the peaceful, monastery complex that surrounds it.
Peace for us, by the way, is already feeling like rain to the desert: Chinese streets are incredibly noisy places. Every shop seems to have someone standing outside shouting into a megaphone. Retail marketing seems to consist of shouting louder than your competitor and this has to compete with general hubbub of the streets and the constant sound of hawking and spitting, which I suspect we are never going to get used to!
But going back to the Pagoda, it was interesting that an old religious monument like this has been allowed to maintain so prominent a position in such a large and fast growing city. By most estimates, Xi'an is now home to more than 8 million people, making it a similar size to London. For such a large city, though, it retains a slightly calmer feel than Beijing. It is also very proud of its historical heritage. Our taxi driver from the station (who spoke excellent English, because he doubled as a tour guide), took great delight in telling us that Xi'an had been home to 13 imperial dynasties - compared to Beijing's paltry 2! We haven't been able to corroborate this, but Xi'an certainly has a grand history with the first unifier and emperor of China (Qin Shi Huang), basing his capital close to the current Xi'an.
Which brings us to the Terracotta Warriors, which were unearthed a few kilometres from the city and are the main tourist draw here. Qin Shi Huang demonstrated a jaw dropping spiritual arrogance, by commissioning the building of an army of several thousand life sized warriors (including horses, chariots and all the accoutrements of an army), to guard him and his position as Emperor in the afterlife. We visited the site on our second day in Xian. Whilst it is an amazing site, we had probably set our expectations too high and had already seen a small sample of the warriors at an exhibition in London in 2010. This, combined with the rather prosaic setting of the main archeological site in a huge aircraft-style hangar, left us slightly under-whelmed.
By this time we had already met our group for the next few weeks and we seem to have an interesting mix of people. Our driver mechanic Jim hails all the way from Cranbrook in Kent and has been travelling on these trips with Gino our Spanish guide for the last 2 years with barely a break and they have taken the truck all over Africa and Asia in that time. For the first half of the trip, we also have Jason, a Chinese guide. The rest of the group comprises: Brandon and Travis, 2 young South African students taking a break before university; Shay and Til, 2Australian sisters taking a career break (one is a teacher, the other an IT contractor); Geoff and Michelle, an Australian couple taking a 5 week holiday (she works for a charity, he runs the IT support for a bank); Addy, a young Dutch law graduate, taking a year's break before starting a law career; Emma, an educational psychologist from Essex taking a career break; Sara, an accountant from Trinidad also taking a year's holiday; Kevin, another accountant, this time from Belgium who is just taking a 3 week holiday and is only with us for the first half of the trip; James an Aussie construction engineer, who has been travelling for some time in Europe and whose girlfriend is joining us for the second half of the trip and last but not least John, a semi-retired Canadian, who is very sensibly skipping a hard Canadian winter in more southern climes. So, we have 9 nationalities and ages ranging from 18 upwards, which is quite a melting pot.
On our next post, we will tell you something about our mode of transport for the next 46 days and our first steps with the group.
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