Population Kazakhstan: 18 million. Population density – 7 people per square km (India – 380, China – 150, New Zealand - 15).
Crossing the border into north eastern Kazakhstan from Siberia near Semey was a very slow and tiring process. The officials were friendly enough, just so sloooow.
Kazakhstan is all about wide open flat steppe with low population, high mountains...
If you are anything like us, then forget everything you know, or have heard about Siberia. The images that previously sprang to our minds when we thought of Siberia, were temperatures of -40 degrees C and colder, snow covered pine trees, frozen lakes and rivers, and stern Russians.
There is basically none of this during the summer months. The people...
The central and north eastern parts of Mongolia has fair vegetation and the countryside becomes wetter as one travels further north from the Gobi desert. With this one finds a greater concentration of nomads and their animals. The increased wetness also led to our first experience of the Mongolian bog, basically swamp located in the valley bottoms. Fortunately our blunders...
We drove into Mongolia from China, happy as Larry, the millstone of ridiculous Chinese bureaucracy and the annoyance of having a guide 24/7 in our car has been cast off. We are free to drive where and when we please. The cherry on the top is that Mongolia is a land of wide open space and is sparsely populated....
On the way to Xian, we stopped off at the 142m high Maiji Shan (mountain), which has sheer cliffs and into which numerous caves were carved and Buddhist sculptures had been placed. Apparently the first carvings and sculptures were made about the 4th century and worked continued for more than a thousand years. There are some 200 caves and...
