China was always a mythical place to us - on the vague horizon, something that we knew we'd do eventually in the trip but it was always *months* away. America passed and it was still 5 months away. Australia passed and it was still more than a month and a half away. Now, it's a week away and we had to have an emergency planning session (play dramatic drums/jingle here).

Thankfully, we've come up with an itinerary that we hope will be a cracker. It relies on the Chinese train system which we've been told can rival the Swiss at times in terms of reliability and cleanliness - very high praise indeed. This means no crazy flights, it's all going to be cross-land. I'll be a right old trainspotter by the time we get back (I may even buy an anorak.) :)

The plan is as follows. I suggest you open Google Maps to follow on, as I shall say zees onli vonze.

We leave Hanoi on the 25th of June, a little earlier than previously planned but still giving us enough time to catch the sights we want to see. Leaving Hanoi we take the train across the border to Nanning - arriving at 8am on the 26th.
Not much to see in Nanning so we take a train to Guilin then hop on a bus to Yangshuo - a popular place to do Tai Chi and wonder at the crazy Karst peaks (of which we are surrounded by at the moment in Halong Bay, but you can't have enough Karst).

We'll stay in Yangshuo for a few days before taking a bus to Liuzhou and them immediaetly onto a train towards Yichang. This is a LONG train, but covers a considerable distance we need to cover within China - and the nice thing about the train is you get to see some of the countryside as you travel.

Yichang is where we'll grab our Yangzi River cruise which takes us through Three Gorges amongst other things before dropping us off in Chongqing 4 nights later (so that should be around the 5th of July).

We'll spend a day in Chongqing before heading to Chengdu - the big city near the Wolong Nature reserve where there is a huge Panda sancturary. We'll probably need a few days to go into the Nature reserve and do a tour to see the Pandas.

Next stop is Xian where the Terracotta Warriors lie. Again, this is a long train journey (around 12 hours) but there is an excellent overnight train leaving at 9pm and getting in at 9am. Spend a day or so (not quite sure what there is in Xian) there. On the 12th of July we'll take another fairly epic train to Shanghai where the World Expo is currently running. A few days spent there will allow us to see both the show and the city.

Everything going to plan, we'll be in Beijing on the 16th of July...but if we have any spare days (maybe somewhere is dull and we decide to move on) then we'll be in Beijing for longer.
Finally, we fly out of Beijing to Heathrow on the morning of the 21st. We land in Heathrow on the late morning of the 21st (but it's still a 13 hour flight) and catch our connecting flight into Edinburgh arriving around 7pm.

This whole plan has a few days of fudge factor thrown in - and we can't book our trains until we are in the region anyway so the dates may change but I think the plan will stay pretty rigid.

Exciting huh?

Stu