I just came back from doing the Transmongolian Express, which is a train trip from Beijing to Moscow, via Ulan Bator in Mongolia. That was pretty amazing, endured some ridiculously low temperatures. China was quite barren, there would be villages with very old, tiny brick houses, then nothing for hours and then massive factories belching out smoke and stretching for three or four kilometres. Mongolia was even more barren, occasionally you'd see Ger camps and the very odd tree. But the closer it got to Russia the prettier it became. Rural Russia was pretty spectacular, especially around Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world. Everything was covered in snow and the wooden cottages in rural towns were very picturesque, painted in quite bright colours a bit like gingerbread houses. But you'd also see lots of abandoned Soviet era factories and other buildings which were quite surreal. Decent sized towns in the middle of nowhere, just completely empty. After that I went to Finland, Norway, Belgium and Germany. I've also lived in Japan for a while and previously visited France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and the UK.
