After seven weeks in China, my VISA had all but expired, so I head for a small city called Kaifeng, a four hour bus-ride from Luoyang, in hopes of getting an extension. Unfortunately, because of the Olympics, 2008 is China's 'Special Year' and VISAs are hard to come by. In Kaifeng they could only give me a 10 day extension from that day - not much point when I still had 13 days left on the current one. I book a train ticket to Nanjing, the old Capital of China, but it leaves me two days to kill in Kaifeng. I [View Full Entry]

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I say for a couple of nights in a town called Liujaxia, where they obviously don't see many Westerners from the looks I got, and caught a boat up the Huang He (Yellow River) from the huge Dam, 60km to the Bingling Si Buddha caves. An enormous seated Buddha has been carved from the cliff face. At 27m high and 1600 years old, it's an amazing thing to behold (though not the biggest in China by a long way) and some of the other carvings there are both old and beautiful, a bit like me. I took a half hour walk [View Full Entry]

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I stay a couple of nights at Pingliang, possibly the world's most boring city, but visit Mount Kongtong, a Daoist monastery, perched precariously on the top of a cliff. It's quite a walk up the mountain, but absolutely worth it and looks just like you imagine China to look like, with little temples and Pagodas clinging to the tree-lined slopes. When you see these stunning views, it becomes immediately obvious why religious shrines and places of worship were sited here. [View Full Entry]

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On to Xi'an, which served as China's capital to 11 dynasties over a period of 4,000 years. Best know for the Terracotta warriors, it's position at the very Eastern end of the Silk Road turned it into a busy metropolis and merchant town. During my stay I visit the magnificent Drum and Bell towers, (present in all of the major, ancient Chinese cities) and watch performances on both instruments, cycle around the top of the city walls - a 14km round trip, at 9m high, giving great views of the city - and of course, visit the Terracotta Army. Not discovered [View Full Entry]

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I visit the Zhongwei Gao Temple near Shapatou to see the strange representations of the Buddhist heavena and hell. Spooky! Also near Shapatou, on the banks of the Yellow River and surrounded by towering sand-dunes, I try out the Chinese equivalent of an adrenalin amusement park. There's rafting on the river on a raft made fom inflated sheep-skins, a zip-wire,from the top of one of the dunes, across the river, a small bungee-jump and sand-toboganning down the dunes. It's good fun, but after the adrenalin sports in Africa, a little tame. [View Full Entry]

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I travel to Datong, passing through the huge industrial areas of Northern CHina. This is where much of the country's coal comes from and hence where many of the massive power-stations are. They're a blight on the landscape but, in such a growing, power-hungry country, they've got to put them somewhere. Just West of Datong are the Yungang caves, a huge site of over 51,000 Buddhist carvings in a sand-stone cliff-face. Work began here in 453AD, when Datong was the province's capital, and much of the big stuff has survived well. From here I head 40 miles South-East of Datong to [View Full Entry]

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I arrive in Chendge late in the evening and the town has been quite badly flooded. Fortunately, most of the water has subsided by morning and the weather brightened a little, but the streets are still covered in mud. I visit the Imperial Palace and Summer Villa, and stroll around the very beautiful park and grounds. They have deer running wild that bite if you get too close (take my word for it...), ponds FULL of goldfish and some amazing pagodas, with many tiled rooves. In the afternoon I got to the Puning Si, a Tibetan style temple containing a 22m [View Full Entry]

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I pay my second visit to the Great Wall, this time near the far Eastern end, and to the more modern parts, built of stone during the Ming dynasty. The plan is to do a 10km hike along a stretch of it (thus accounting for 0.1% of it's original length). I set off at a brisk pace, as we're being followed by women with big bags trying to seel us tourist tat. It's quite a hot and humid day and the wall is incredibly steep in places, but these women do this professionally. Although I manage to get my particualr follower [View Full Entry]

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I visit the Eastern Qing tombs, where several members of the Qing dynasty, (1644-1911) including the tomb of the Empress Dowager Cixi (who controlled the country by using her very young relatives as puppet emporers). The underground palaces containing their coffins are dank and spooky places, eerily lit with green halogen lamps. I begin my obsession with photographing chinese rubbish bins... [View Full Entry]

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I made it! I crossed a continent! The world's largest continent lays behind me, but it takes a little while to sink in. Three and a half months of pretty constant movement, through strange lands and cultures. I know I'll need to stop for a while at some point and filter through all the things that I've learned and experienced so far, but my mind is saying, "What's next?" [View Full Entry]

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