So days away from booking our trip to Peru for two weeks in November weve suddenly decided to play devils advocate and see if we can find an alternative.

Were going to book Mon/Tues next week regardless of which out of the two we go for, if you had to pick which would you choose

Peru

2 Weeks, American Airlines 2 stops (London > NY > Miami > Lima, same back)

3 days at a place called the Manu Cloud Forest Lodge in the Amazon which is on the side of the Andes at 11,000 ft - you spend the 2nd day white water rafting down to 5,000 ft. Then 4 days doing the Inca Trail, 3 days at Lake Titicaca with the odd day here or there at random cities (Lima, Cusco, etc). If we can, squeeze in the sand dunes.



Beijing to Kathmandu - the 3200mile/5000km trip

London to Beijing - Emirates 1 stop (Dubai)
Kathmandu to London - Etihad 1 stop (Abudhabi)

Spend a couple of days in Beijing then get the new Qingai-Tibet Express railway to Lhasa in Tibet (2500 miles, 2 days), where we start an 11 day 800 mile journey by 4x4 to Kathmandu via the Everest Base Camp (17,000 ft)


The Beijing to Kathmandu trip is slightly more expensive (100 or so) and two days more off work.

They both sound amazing to me... wanna do both

Do the tibet option! - tis awesome

Personally Id sack off the bejing bit & the train journey (sounds a bit wank tbh...) and spend a bit of time in Nepal before instead - do a treck at altitude to acclimatise yourself a bit then fly to Lhasa - the city is over 3500m above sea level so you do feel the effects.

We went for a few trecks around 4000m before going to the base camp then camp 1 on everest. I didnt cope well with the altitude initially and spent two days in the tent with the worst headache Ive ever had in my life. - seems to affect people differently and strangely enough some of the less fit people acclimatised quicker.

You can take the road route back to nepal from tibet but dont do it the other way round as you go over some high mountain passes and it will f**k you up if youre not acclimatised. There is a big jump in the time zone at the border too which is a bit wierd & there is a strange little border town on the tibetan side where you can go to a "discotheque" mostly frequented by chinese soldiers & generally get drunk and take the piss out of them (Im not a big fan of chinese soldiers btw..)

as for white water rafting you can do this in nepal - we did a few days with a company called himalayan encounters - there are tons of them in kathmandu and it is very easy to organise when youre over there if youve got a few days to spare.

Id get a budget flight to Germany & train it to Moscow & then onto Beijing & train around a bit & fly back. You can go from calais to singapore all over land.

Id sail from China to Japan, travel south & then sail back over to Korea / Hong Kong.