Pete & Rach's Big Trip: We travelled over 2,750 miles across China on trains...

Security levels are high. All bags are scanned and you have to pass through metal detectors and sometimes get frisked on both underground and overground trains. Police are everywhere.

The stations are as busy as King's Cross at rush hour ALL the time. The waiting rooms are huge and packed with people, like departure gates at an airport. Trains are so oversubscribed that some popular routes/dates sell out in minutes when they go on sale 18 days beforehand.

You are only allowed to board the carriage you have a ticket for, even if the train leaves in 2 minutes and you have to run the length of the train. There are often no platforms so you have to climb up onto the train from the ground.

We rode the bullet train from Beijing to Taiyuan (2.5 hours at 300km/hour).

From the train windows, we saw beautiful mountains and farmers tending the fields, contrasted with coal mines, power stations and seriously grotty tower blocks on the outskirts of towns. There is a lot of grimness in China!

An overnight hard sleeper ticket only costs about 20 pounds.

8 hours overnight on a hard seat from Pingyao to Xian...

Numb bums after 20 minutes did not bode well for this journey! The train was lively - in fact it was quite rowdy and chaotic - with people packed in, some sitting on the floor, all talking and joking with each other (polar opposite to at home where people think you're a weirdo for smiling at them) and there seemed to be a lot of hilarity and card games happening down the carriage. It appeared to be no smoking unless you stood near the end of the carriage. Weirdly the train guards would occasionally come down the aisle shouting and trying to sell various random items from bendy toothbrushes (complete with demo) to spinning tops and headphones. We were again a form of entertainment for the other passengers, who were very friendly and offered us food. It was an interesting experience even though we didn't sleep for more than a few minutes at a time (bit of an ordeal towards the end!)...but at least we didn't have standing tickets.

Sleeper trains...

Hard sleeper carriage

Our first hard sleeper (6 berth open compartments) was the 16 hour ride from Xian to Chengdu. We expected it to be a bit arduous, but it was actually so good and relaxing to just lie down for 16 hours! We could have stayed in those tiny bunk beds all day, reading, napping and eating our 'European cakes'. Reckon we could do 24 with ease. We had conversations with our bunk-bed neighbours via the good old Mandarin dictionary and there was much amusement to be had (and photos!) over us eating our cup noodles. We HAVE eaten noodles before ;-) Cup noodles are the food of choice for train journeys in China (often preceded by a starter of vacuum packed chicken feet) and every carriage has a boiling water dispenser. It is regimented 'lights off' at 11pm and on again at 7am (why so darned early?!) and if you have to get off the train before then, the guards will wake you up with a bashing to the legs. During the night, the train jerks and jolts and brakes suddenly and now and again the carriages run into each other, waking you up thinking there's been a crash, which was slightly unnerving... Also, we noticed that people book sleepers for long daytime journeys e.g. 1pm-9pm. Never would have thought of this, but what an idea! All plane and train journeys should be undertaken from a horizontal position!

Rach and Pete x