Less words, more pics. Shanghai backstreets around Old Town and some evening impressions, check it out ...
We're heading for French Concession district now, trying to capture the more modern and stylish Shanghai. Tonight we take the train to the mountains ...
KIKI
After a heavy day of shooting on Friday we wanted to relax a bit on Saturday and took the Metro out to Summer Palace in the Northwest. Actually we first went to a different park with kind of a flower scheme, we just realized after a while that we were at the wrong place. As I am using the tablet to navigate in foreign cities I had to experience that GPS doesn‘t work in China sometimes and you find yourself struggeling to navigate like in the old days of paper maps ;-) Oh well, in the late afternoon we managed to be at the Summer Palace. The windy day had blown away all the clouds and we had a beautiful blue sky. Climbing up to the main building was worth it as its colours sparkled in the evening sun. We had the worst meal of the whole trip in a quite cozy teahouse at the lake. It came in plastic bowls right out of the microwave :-)
Yesterday was Carmen‘s birthday and therefore we did a trip to the Great Wall. It was really great, the landscape beautiful and the monument simply stunning. We went to Mutianyu, a part that is particularly picturesque and we managed to walk from tower 4 to tower 14 before we had to return to the starting point. The way back down to the bus we took the bobsled run, which was a lot of fun. Back in Beijing the afternoon we climbed up the Bell Tower and had another Hoegaarden on the roof top terrace. After that we took the Metro and had a last glimpse of modern Beijing around Wangfuijing Road. It was quite boring, shopping malls like everywhere else in the West and the main road indistinguishable from those of other big cities.
We had dinner in one of our favorite restaurants around the corner, with the weirdest food by now, sweet potatoes thickly caramelized, sweet and gross ;-)
We took the bullet train this morning to Shanghai, it only took five hours for a 1.250 km distance, impressive. Shanghai is much more modern than Beijing but I will try to capture normal life in the older neighborhoods tomorrow morning ...
KIKI
The great thing about travelling is, whatever you read before or whatever you had in mind, when you're actually there it's a completely different experience. I don't really now what I expected from Beijing but being here it just seems to be a very nice city. People are friendly and the guys in our hostel are so helpful. After a day of relaxing I packed my gear on Friday to capture normal Beijing life. I was wandering around some older neighborhoods and I really found a lot of people to take portraits of.
I pretty much used my 50 1.2 most of the time, even when I was in the Forbidden City the late afternoon. It's a great lens for separating subjects from the environment and it gives you a bit of working distance not interfering with people as much as you do with wide angles. The 50 is a great focal length for portraits for me as I still like to be close to the subject. I had lunch in one little street restaurant with the locals and the noodles were delicious. In the evening we had Free Dumpling Friday, typically Chinese, and it was nice, too. I haven't quite figured out where to head today, we will be at the Great Wall on Sunday and we booked our train rides down up to Guilin, leaving for Shanghai on Monday. We might take the plane from Guilin to Hongkong at the end of the month as we already spend two nights on the train, China is really huge :-) ...
But have a look at my images from yesterday in Beijing first ...
That's Part 1, more Beijing to come the next days ...
KIKI
Approaching Beijing ...
Yesterday was a long day travelling. We took the plane from Bishkek to Ürümqi at 9:30 in the morning which only took two hours. But we had to wait at Ürümqi Airport for our connecting flight for four hours and the plane to Beijing couldn't take off right in time, so after boarding at 5 pm we arrived in Beijing only at 9:30. It was a beautiful sunset during the flight, though, and appraoching Beijing I could enjoy the 19,3 million capital illuminated from above. I only had my little Lumix at hand, so the picture is neither blur- nor noisefree, but still quite a nice capture.
After a half hour taxi ride we arrived at our very centrally located hostel around eleven at night. Today we were just casually exploring the neighborhood and had a long walk along the Northern tip of the Forbidden City and, stopped for a lunch and coffee in one of Beijing's upcoming Cafés. Then we walked through ancient Hutong, which was pretty touristy, up till Drum and Bell Towers and enjoyed a Belgian Hoegaarden beer for sunset on one of the rooftop terraces nearby. On the way back home we walked along a pretty cheesy but quite pretty illuminated canal district and had Chinese dinner in one of the restaurants around the corner, very tasty.
Tomorrow I will get up early, I want to document normal street life in Beijing and try to keep it in the older parts of town. We will also book our ongoing train rides tomorrow and will visit the Forbidden City and maybe the Temple of Heaven Park. Exciting!
Check back soon
KIKI
On Sunday afternoon we met Mai again, my Japanese friend who works in Kyrgyzstan for two years. We got picked up by her host father Maku Abba and drove to their village Tasma near the Kazakh border. We arrived around five in the afternoon and what we experienced the following two days was just incredible and hard to put into words.
As the main reason for this trip is photography I did my best to capture life on the countryside as good as I could and the Kyrgyz people where just wonderful to us. A big рахмат (thank you) goes to Mai‘s family, their lovely kids and all the people who have been so welcoming. It was really one of the greatest times I ever had and I‘d love to come back at some point.
For now let‘s just see how it‘s going on the countryside ...
Thank you again, Kyrgyzstan, you've been wonderful! жакшы and рахмат!
Tomorrow morning we take the plane to Beijing with a stop in Ürümqi, so no facebook the next two weeks, but I will try to update the blog at the weekend with first impressions from China.
See you
KIKI
We've been to the animal market this morning and once again, it has been amazing, have a look ...
In the early evening we will go to Tasma village, the real countryside, together with Mai, our Japanese friend. No internet the next days, probably only when we come back to Bishkek on Tuesday evening.
See ya
KIKI
Today was landscape day. The father of our host drove us to Yeti Oguz, a little village in the mountains south of Karakol. We walked into the big gorge up until we reached a plateau with few settlers and some yurts. Lighting was pretty good and became even better after we had a little rest in town and climbed up the ridge overlooking the valley and the crazy red mountains. Have a look ...
Tomorrow in the early morning we will go to the Sunday animal market. It's going to be very interesting because it is one of the biggest in Central Asia.
See you later
KIKI
On Thursday we took the public bus from Bishkek to Tamchy to spend a night at lake Issyk Kul. Our hosts were a Kyrgyz family, they served us delicious food from their garden and the son played for us on kind of a Balalaika. It was a special experience, the night was pretty cold, though, and it rained heavily ...
Today we took the public bus to Karakol, it's a cheap way to travel and you get in touch with the people, very nice. Karakol seems to be a very laid-back city and once again the people are incredible! We had a brief stroll around town, light was beautiful, took a coffee in one of the local cafés and had dinner in a very delicious Kyrgyz restaurant. I had meat, but when you have a look at how animals are bred over here it's not a big deal at all, very natural ...
Tomorrow is landscape day. We will take one of the minibuses into the mountains. Hope lighting is great :-)
Check back soon ...
KIKI
There's not too much to say about our first day out with the people in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. It seems to be a really amazing country, the pictures should speak for themselves and give a good impression of how great the people are. Stirred! ...
And then we had Japanese dinner, yeah! :-)
We're heading to lake Issyk Kul tomorrow morning, countryside, awesome ...
See you later
KIKI
Phew, what a week. I started my photography trip „East 13“ on Monday, 30th September. It‘s going to be a two and a half month journey through Eastern Europe, Central Asia, China and Southeast Asia. A friend from London is joining me and apart from my usual every day life documentary I am planning to do a portrait project in Cambodia at the beginning of November.
We started in Berlin on Monday morning with the Warsawa Express and leave Moscow tomorrow morning. Have a look what happened in between, it was a lot and we met incredibly nice people on the way ...
On the train to Warsaw, our first stop, we shared a compartment with a Polish father and his two boys. We talked most of the time and we learned a bit about Poland ...
Our first stop was Warsaw. We spent the day with Ilona, a friend, and she introduced us to this very interesting city.
This is quite funny, a lottery window, look at the chestnuts placed there as well :-)
This Varsovian played the sticks on a chair, really cool ...
Then on Tuesday evening we took the sleeping coach to Kiev.
And at the border something really, really strange happened. The train stopped inside an industrial building and a bunch of workers appeared. They changed the wheels of our entire train to be able to proceed on Ukrainean rails. The whole thing took three hours. Weird!
In the morning we arrived in Kiev.
And then we took the train to Moscow arriving there on Saturday morning. We met a lot of nice people in the Hostel and Igor the host was just as welcoming as it can get. Moscow is massive and there's a lot of luxury, everything is pretty expensive but when you move out to the suburbs you see that most people are living a pretty basic life. Have a look at my Moscow footage ...
That's it! I wanna come back to Russia at some point. Tomorrow we're heading to Kyrgyzstan, very excited.
Check back soon for some more documentary ...
KIKI