From June to August 2008 Clyde and I teamed up with Brendon and Charlotte to form the BAM Line Blues Band for a tour of China, Mongolia and Russia.

China was overwhelming as expected. The building above mightn't look like much, but it took 6 photos to cover - the man pushing the wheelchair gives some scale. The Great Wall was one of those 'must see' sights that exceeded all of my expectations. It is enormous, and runs over the steepest and highest ridges possible for a long, long way. The manpower and emperor-power that went into it is almost unimaginable. Same with the Terracotta Warriors. Amazing what can be achieved with 1 million slaves.

The visit to the Great Wall was part of an awesome road trip out of Beijing with Richard and Sophie. Thanks guys! We walked about 20km of the 'Simatai' section of the wall, which is in varying states of restoration. We also stayed in some random villages, ate lots of fantastic food, and got well and truly lost a few times.

This motorbike was one of many extremely funny things that we saw on the journey - along with a rotary street brusher being used to clean spotless, empty roads in the middle of nowhere; and a man asleep in his car at a red light, who Brendon woke up when we thought we should check if he was dead! Clyde found a lot of lion friends, but after the first week Charlotte was sick of my sense of humour...

So what about the environment? Well, certainly the numerous challenges for the future were obvious, but also China put NZ and many other places to shame on many simple things like having recycling bins everywhere. With many translations...

Some public bins also had separate battery disposal, and I saw even someone swindling people out of their empty bottles at the 'Reverse Vending Machine'. Despite all this there is a long way to go from the state of rivers like the one below, and windfarms like this one on the Mongolian border are certainly in the minority against coal power. Yet the potential for rapid change is strong, and could quite possibly be enacted faster than in sluggish Western countries. Watch this space.

Our main Mongolia trip was to the north of the Gobi Desert with an organisation called Ger to Ger. While the trip is organised, it is to the minimum possible, and you camp out with Nomad families who then take you on to the next family each day. The nice thing is that the next family doesn't know you are coming until you arrive. So it's pretty low key. The people were amazing, and we had some great laughs learning Mongolian customs, games and way of life - communicating with our phrase book and the expanding repertoire of the BAM Line Blues Band.

In preparation for our first album release, we took the opportunity presented by the mindblowing locations to take some promotional and CD cover band photos. The trip also coincided with our first online release, our remix version of the traditional Mongolian classic 'My Father is a Horseman'. This song made us so many friends. Thanks Ben!

The destination of the trip was the incredible Ih Gazriin Chuluu, a rock outcrop range about 20km long in the middle of the desert and site of some magic bouldering. We strode, rode and sang our way across the desert dodging more thunderstorms. Doing some bouldering on the fourth night one of the kids was so baffled by our pointless behaviour that he ran back to the ger to fetch a rope which he dutifully threw down to us from the top of the rock! Classic.

After the desert trip we headed north-east from UB with Mongolia's 'spiderman' to do a day of face climbing. It was a bit of a random day, with another big storm and flakey rock, but another amazing place. Brendon and I 'rocked out' for a while, and and we put the superb echoes to work with a jam session long into the night. The next day we recorded our original song 'Mini Mongol Khel Mash Muu' or 'My Mongolian is Terrible'.

While out in Terelj we missed the post-election riots that sadly happened back in UB. Brendon's tee was rather appropriate, and we had a farewell cup of tea with Tsoogi enroute to Russia and finally the BAM line itself.

Train from Mongolia to Irkutsk, hydrofoil up Lake Baikal to Severabaikalisk, BAM Line train trip to Tynda, Komsomolsk-an-Amure, and eventually to Vladivostok.

Monuments and preserved machines are the thing in Russia. This band photo was taken on the hammer and sickle of Tynda, BAM headquarters and highlight of the trip, in the Russian Far East. Here we were treated to a fabulous tour by locals Victoriya and Igor who we met in the street - ending with an amazing Russian meal with Victoriya's grandma. We also had a full page article on our journey published in the Tynda Teleport newspaper! We were stoked to have actually made it there, and then to be so warmly looked after. Fate for the BAM Line Blues Band, I think so.

After the epic train trip we made it to Vladivostok and were finally able to record our band-name-defining blues song - The Chinese Visa Blues. The whole trip was underscored by Brendon's frustrations with the Chinese Visa process so a fitting subject for our last chart-topping hit.

As the BAM Line Blues Band dispersed to different corners of the world, I headed to visit friends in North America.

 

Then Meg and I went 'State Bagging' on the East Coast to try and see everything I wanted to see in under a week. Delaware beaches, Philadelphia raves, 24 hours in New York where Jamie helped us to see more of the city in that time than is technically possible. But still the highlight was coming across a key stop on the Rotunda and Band Shells Tour! "Julius Caesar played here in 1953. Imagine that."