The Introduction

I’m not used to write in English, so maybe there will be lots of mistakes here. Though I think that I should write this one in some international language, because the information of such tours are interesting to those who plan to do something similar. Last time we thought that the writing will be easier in Latvian and we will translate afterwards. But you can surely guess how it turned out. No post was translated as we had no time or were too lazy. So, let’s start in English from the beginning.

This blog will be about me and my friends who are going to watch the Total Solar Eclipse of 2009 in Shanghai. We will go there by train starting in Riga, Latvia, which is the city where we live, work or study. And by plane back. The Eclipse takes place in 22nd of July, 2009 and will be visible from India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh China and Japan isles. The wikipage is here and the NASA official page is here. There are lots of maps in the latter.

Yet there are 3 possible routes – through Mongolia, through Kazakhstan and through China around Mongolia. We are not sure of timetables for Almaty-China train Zhibek Zholy as there are unclear information in websites, so I have asked some people from couchsurfing.com to find out it at Almaty railway station. They haven’t responded with timetables yet though.

Meanwhile we are trying to spare money as the journey is not so cheap and we are not millionaires also. Actually it would be much cheaper to go by plane both directions. But – what’s the fun flying by plane. I mean, we will do it when we will be 80.

That’s for now. I hope to give details in later posts. :)