I love railway journeys. We've done a few long Chinese trips now, and I am firm in my opinion that they enable you to experience distance in a way that is totally impossible up in an aircraft, as well as being a lot -- a LOT -- more comfortable.

Our trip from Shanghai to Xining took a little less than 25 hours. You're not rocketing along at HST speed, but you're definitely not picking daisies either. At one point we fell a little behind the timetable, but we made the time back up again, and arrived practically bang on schedule. After it dropped us off, the train was set to travel another 15 hours to Urumqi.

It's a very smooth ride, so you get to sleep pretty well (in fact, the gently rocking motion means the challenge is more to stay awake, even during the daytime, when you had plans to use your train time to do all sorts of stuff).

You can eat in the dining car (we wandered along for brekkie, which consisted of simple but tasty things like steamed buns, pickled veggies, hard-boiled eggs, and rice porridge), or you can pick things up from the regularly passing carts.

If you tweak back the camel-patterned net curtains, you get to see a huge amount of scenery.











And it's not at all bad value. For about 1400 yuan (roughly 860 ringgit or 300 Kiwi dollars), two people can travel halfway across China in the comfort of a four-berth compartment (six-berth ones are cheaper, but they can feel a bit crowded; seats are cheaper still, and though I'm totally not man enough to attempt 25 hours in a seat, at least you still have the option of moving around...).



Admittedly, curmudgeon that I am, I would have preferred not to be covering a large part of the journey in the company of a small child, even though I have to admit she was pretty well behaved. I also think they should ban smoking completely, as fumes from the smoking area inevitably get into the compartments.

These reservations aside, it was another epic Chinese railway journey. It's so the way to travel.