Anthony Adams tells beyondoxbridge all about his Gap Year travels, from Moscow to Mongolia to Mount Everest....

Having finished my degree in modern languages the thought of going straight into a career was quite daunting. My natural urge was to go and see more of the world. Obviously, money doesn't grow on trees and I had to save before setting off on my travels. I was lucky enough to land on my feet with a 9-month contract working as an equity derivatives analyst at Deutsche Bank in London. Banking was not exactly what I had dreamed of doing for my first job, but the hourly rate was too good to turn down.

Did studying languages at uni increase your desire to travel?

Definitely. I spent a year studying abroad as part of my degree, and got the travel bug. I think that most language students have the strong desire to see more of the world rather than settle down and go straight in a career job. I was no different and spent 9 months sitting at my desk dreaming about getting away and seeing more of the world.

Tell us about the route you took, and why you chose it...

I was determined to do something different to the standard South-East Asia/Latin America trip. The Trans-Siberian Railway also had a certain mystique about it too. If I was planning to go across Russia then why fly at all I thought? So the final plan was to travel by land the whole way, from London to Hong Kong!

How did you prepare for the trip?

The initial idea of London to Hong Kong without flying sounded easy enough, but consider the amount of countries you have to incorporate. I travelled with a friend and we had to apply for visas to get into Belarus, Russia, Mongolia and China! We went half each and I had to deal with Russia and China. Apart from the necessary Visa applications there was never really a strong plan for the trip, instead it was about making it up as I went along. The idea of drifting through each place at my own pace definitely appealed. I phoned up STA Travel a week before I was due to leave and bought a European Interrail ticket. This took care of France, Germany, Czech Republic and Poland. The advantage of that ticket was you could take any route through those countries that you liked and there was no set timetable. Anyway that was the easy part.

After that I was to enter the unknown territory of Belarus and Russia. I did a lot of research into how to obtain train tickets but everything seemed so expensive. I guess that travel companies want to take advantage of the fact that the Trans-Siberian Raliway is on the other side of the 'Iron Curtain' so to speak so they offer ridiculously expensive packages just to get you a train ticket. So, the final risky decision was to literally turn up at each station and buy a ticket on the day of travel. and it worked a treat. We would arrive in a town or city and have a look at the timetable for another place further along the route. It was so easy, tickets were easy to come by and they were so cheap. A 25 hour train journey would cost £20-30! It gave us so much flexibilty and we met so many more Russians along the way. The advance tickets through travel companies I mentioned mean that you usually spend the whole trip with other tourists. That was not what I wanted. Instead we were mixing with the Russians drinking bottles of chilli vodka on mammoth train trips.

Which was your favourite country of those you visited?

That is nearly an impossible question to answer. From standing in Red Square and Tianamen Square, to sleeping a night on the Great Wall of China and going to Tibet culminating in a trip to Mount Everest base camp there were so many memories.

If I had to choose I think Outer Mongolia has to be the winner. We left Russia via the Trans-Manchrian railway and after 30 hours we ended up in Ulaan Batur, the capital of Mongolia. After a few days exploring the city we spent 2 weeks in the Gobi Desert living with local nomadic familes. They live in gers which are felt tents. It is quite an incredible existence. You could travel for hours through the desert and see absolutely nothing and then suddenly you come across 4 or 5 of these felt tents and there is a family living in the middle of nowhere.Food was pretty basic and any meat dish came from the local livestock! I had to help kill a sheep. I wasn't really bothered about doing it to be honest. It seemed the natural thing to do for thr family, so who I am to judge? When they offered me some heart and intestines though I kindly declined! It was very interesting learning about Mongolian history too and Ghengis Khan really is revered there. Well, the most famous Mongolian vodka is named after him anyway.

Were there any hairy moments on the trip?

Russia was not easy to say the least. On our first night in Moscow we walked straight into a steaming drunk 6 foot Russian who tried to beat us up because we were foreign. Later on that night I told another Russian I was a Spurs fan and his reply was 'Judish scum'. There is certainly lot of racial tension in Russia and from what I saw they were very anti-immigration. On another occasion we were arrested by the Russian police. We entered a club and my friend had paracetamol in his bag which they immediately took for drugs. We had to spend 8 hours in a police station and pay them a bribe. It was the only way to get away as quickly as possible. They tried to sell us a bottle of vodka for $100. In hindsight it seems funny but at the time it certainly was not.

What are you doing now you're back? Do u want to go travelling again
any time soon?

I am back working in London now for a hedge fund and want to go travelling as soon a possible. I think this time I have to be a bit more sensible about it so the plan is to work for a little longer this time. I cannot return home completely broke again.

What advice would you give people considering gap year travelling?

I really think it is best to steer away from organised tours. My whole entire trip cost £5000 and the only way we managed that was through total independent travel. It made the experience so much more fun and worthwhile. The only real danger about travelling like that is that it makes living back in the UK feel so mundane. I think our generation is so lucky to have the opportunity to travel and I even managed to do it without leaving any carbon footprints. Once you get the confidence to travel across the world like that then you should not really fear much.

I came back feeling pretty humble to be honest. There are so many people on this planet the one thing this trip did was make my individual existence seem pretty insignificant.

My final bit of advice is to take photos, as many as possible.