Travel - China

Day 1
The plane is a slightly battered, rear-engined Ilyushin with bus-style overhead racks, shrieking jets, and a carpet that appears to have been purloined from a Leicester curry house in 1973. On board we're served the largest airline meal I've ever seen, our trays overflowing with typically mediocre airborne slop, but the flight itself is smooth, the stewardesses are attentive and friendly, and copies of the English-language Pyongyang Times bring us news of Kim Jong-il's latest exploits, offering on-the-spot guidance to the faithful. It's gripping stuff.

After passing through customs and immigration without fuss, we're separated into groups and meet our guides. Ours is Mr. Lee, an elegant North Korean with a sharp suit and extravagant nasal hair, assisted by the pretty but prim Miss O, a language student obviously nervous at the prospect of spending the best part of a week ferrying irresponsible foreigners about. We clamber aboard the bus, driven by another local, this one with a big smile, negligible knowledge of English, and a peculiar resemblance to Christopher Walken. On the short drive into the city centre Mr Lee gives us the welcome speech, telling us about Pyongyang and how global warming has led to a ten-degree increase in the average summer temperature. We all nod our heads politely in deference to this particular revelation, and get used to the idea that not everything we get told on tour will tally with what we're led to believe by meteorologists back home.

Our first stop is The Grand Monument, a 20-metre high bronze statue of Kim Il-sung that sits proudly atop Mansu Hill. Kim stands in front of a mural of Mount Paektu, his arm outstretched to show the way forward for the Korean nation, most of whom appear to be queuing up to pay their respects at the foot of the statue.

Soon it's our turn, and we find ourselves gazing up at the Eternal President in all his bronzed glory, revolutionary music wafting across the dusk, and pay our respects. It's an uncomfortable moment given the Kims' reputation in the West, but most of us seem quite happy to do as expected, not wanting to cause offence in a place obviously considered sacred by the locals. When in Rome, etc.

Very quickly we're ushered back on the bus for one of the highlights of the tour, the Arirang Mass Games, taking place this year for the first time since 2002.

It's extraordinary, an Orwellian wet dream choreographed by Walt Disney, a festival of brilliant colour, outrageous gymnastic skill and breath-taking discipline. Thousands of school children cartwheel, tens of thousands more control an ever-shifting mosaic stretching from one side of the 150,000 capacity May Day Stadium to the other, motorcyclists ride tightropes across the sky, soldiers parachute in from the roof, and athletes perform extraordinary acrobatic feats across the arena floor.

After ninety minutes it's over, and we're hurried out of the stadium and back to the hotel. We visit the shop (among the items on sale are North Korean biscuits and a motorbike) then retire to the bar to sample the local draught, an almost black, malty affair served in proper pint pots. Everyone is breathless with excitement, discussing the first day's events and the following day's plans. It's difficult to believe that we're really here - it genuinely feels like we've landed on another planet - but the beer tastes good, the group is beginning to gel, and I'm not even bothered when the girl drinking next to me starts rattling on about Sting's charity work.

Well, maybe a little.

Day 2
We're being taken to the mausoleum of Kim Il-sung. We quickly learn that this isn't going to be a straightforward visit. We're asked to leave anything in our pockets on the bus - wallet, keys, cigarettes, lighters, pens etc - and check our cameras at the cloakroom before passing, one by one, over a short conveyor belt that brushes the soles of our shoes. Then it's through a metal detector and up an escalator, joining an airport-style travelator at the top that slowly and gravely carries us towards whatever's next. Pyschologically speaking (there's something I've never said before) it's a brilliant piece of design, moving hundreds of people about the palace in complete silence, helping to maintain the eerie, reverential atmosphere. After 500 metres, we turn a corner to finally be confronted with whatever's next: another travelator, another 500 metres. The tension builds further.

Finally deposited at the end of the walkway, it's up a red escalator, around a corner, and into a vast white marble hall, completely empty apart from a colossal statue of Kim Il-sung bathed in peach and purple light. We stand in lines, four across, and solemnly march the length of the room to stand briefly in front of the sculpture before being beckoned into another room. Inside are a series of pods, one of which we step through, cold air blowing onto our clothes to remove, one presumes, dirt and germs from outside.

Another corner, and there he is. The Eternal Leader. The atmosphere snaps with near-religious intensity as we circle the glass casket, awkwardly bowing on each side as custom dictates, armed soldiers keeping a close eye on our behaviour, muffled sobs from some of the visitors disturbing the silence. Within a minute we're in the next annex, the walls covered in a three dimensional panorama showing the Korean people's reaction to Kim's passing in 1994. There's an audio commentary accompanying the exhibit, with an increasingly hysterical British voice relating how 'the tears of the people fell to the ground and turned to stone' on hearing the terrible news, etc. Next up is a room where thousands of diplomas, doctorates and medals awarded to Kim during his lifetime are kept on display, generally from tinpot regimes and cowboy governments in Africa, South America and The Middle East. Oh, and France.

And that's it. This afternoon we'll be heading south to the DMZ, the somewhat heavily-militarized demilitarized zone, the area Bill Clinton referred to as "the scariest place on Earth."

It's 160km from Pyongyang to Kaesong and the DMZ, soon we arrive at Panmunjom, a few kilometres beyond Kaesong, home to the most intense concentration of military personnel on the planet. US troops used to be based here, but withdrew in 2004, leaving the Southern soldiers face to face with those from the North. Despite all of this, the atmosphere is surprisingly carefree, the military guide showing a scale model of the area before clambering on board our bus to guide us further into the DMZ. It's here we learn how the two sides are still officially at war - an armistice was agreed in 1953 bringing a temporary halt the bloodshed, but a peace treaty was never signed.

Another kilometre into the DMZ finds us at the Joint Security Area, where North Korea comes face-to-face with America and the southern 'puppet army'. Until recently tourists could enter one of the three small blue huts that straddle the demarcation line, circling a table and technically crossing into the Republic of Korea, but we're disappointed to learn that the Americans have apparently put a stop to this, simply by putting a padlock on the door to the hut. Never let it be said that warfare in 2005 isn't a high-tech affair.

Day 3
After an early morning breakfast we're back on the road. It's one of the most important dates in the North Korean calender, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Worker's Revolutionary Party, and all of Kaesong has turned out to pay their respects to yet another statue of Kim Il-sung. This monument towers above the town on the peak of Mt Janam, the Great Leader relaxed in all his bronze magnificence as the multitudes climb the hill to acclaim his Godliness.

Then it's up the highway to Pyongyang, stopping only for a photo opportunity at The Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification.

Arriving back in the city, we're driven to Puhung subway station for what turns out to be one of the highlights of the trip. Descending an enormously long elevator (it transports passengers to a vertical depth of 100 metres and takes several minutes to do so), we're confronted by an enormous cavern hewn out of the rock, cloaked in marble and adorned by a set of extraordinarily ornate chandeliers. On the vast platforms commuters huddle round display copies of the local newspaper, studiously noting the contents, while trains slide quietly in and out of the station.

Day 4
Back on the bus, we're taken to the Arch of Triumph, built in 1982 and (as we're repeatedly told) three meters taller than its more famous Parisienne counterpart. The construction is dedicated to 'the home return of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung who liberated Korea from Japanese colonialism'. To be honest, there's not much that this fella didn't do.

Lunch is served at the non-revolving revolving restaurant atop Pyongyang's TV tower, from where the three North Korean television stations are broadcast, each packed with shows proclaiming the superiority of the DPRK and the shameful behaviour of her foes. The view is glorious, and we're handed binoculars with which to examine the city sprawled out below.

The next stop, as it happens, is the Juche Tower, monument to the guiding philosophy behind North Korea, an ideology formulated by Kim Il-sung (who else?) emphasising self-sufficiency; in a nutshell, that the country can only rely on itself. Juche is such a part of the nation's fabric that even the calender is affected - this year is locally known as Juche 94, year one marking the birth of Kim in 1912.

Our final moment of sightseeing is Kim Il-sung Square, 75,000 square metres of granite, where enormous paintings of Marx and Lenin sit side by side, opposite an equally huge portrait of Kim Il-sung adorning the facade of the Korean Central History Museum.

At one end of the square young Koreans are seizing a photo opportunity, clambering on board a rather forlorn, moth-eaten replica donkey. I'm wondering if the animal has any special significance, whether Kim Il-sung rode one during one of his tours of the nation, but in the end I think it's just a donkey. Not everything here means something.

Day 5
And then it's the dash for the border. We're leaving the country by train.

It's the best part of a day to Beijing, and different people have different ways of spending the time. Some catch up on much-needed sleep, others head to the dining car to get drunk, getting slowly stewed under the watchful gaze of the two Kims. I've done border crossings before in this part of the World, and experience tells me that the last place you want to be with a full bladder is trying to get into China when the train toilets have been locked, so I settle back with a book for the duration.

The journey is mainly uneventful, the border crossing at Sinuiju generating the only real excitement. North Korean border guards board the train first, taking our passports and searching our bags, before we're let out to stroll along the platform. Beer and snacks are available to purchase from a stand, but there's little to do except to stare curiously at the locals milling around while they eye us in return.

Back on board, the train grinds it's way out of Sinuiju, the last few hundred metres of the town cloaked in complete darkness, and creeps onto the Sino-Korean friendship bridge that straddles the Yalu River. From here we can see China, and the difference is immediately apparent - neon everywhere, brilliantly lit skyscrapers, and search beams soaring unnecessarily into the air. It's as if the Chinese have a message for their cousins across the water: you don't have enough electricity? Look at us! We have so much we can afford to waste as much as we want!

By breakfast time we're in Beijing. It feels alien after what we've been through - busy, noisy, dirty, and completely in-your-face. There are adverts everywhere (in North Korea there's virtually no advertising, apart from a few billboards extoling the virtues of the Whistle, a car built using Fiat parts in a joint venture with South Korea's Pyeonghwa Motor Company), and the familiar shop fronts of McDonald's and Starbucks are omnipresent. There's obviously nothing for it but to throw ourselves straight back into a western lifestyle, so we head to Steak & Eggs, a restaurant where no amount of pleading will ever prompt a plate of kim'chi or a bowl of dog soup.

And that's it.