After two years on the road I finally find myself back in an environment that should be comforting, reassuring and familiar. But it is not. Suddenly, after two years of discovery and exploration where conversations more often than not were about new things we had seen or learned, new ways of living we had experienced, new concepts and ways of thinking we had never known existed before, I am trying to fit back into a society where people talk about ordinary everyday topics. My friends, such familiar faces that I was so happy to see again, have lived utterly different lives from me for the last two years. After so many extreme experiences I will take me time to settle back into normal ways of thinking and living. These feelings, combined with the facts that I ... read more

Most of the time the only signs of civilisation were the wheel ruts on which our eight-seater Russian 4x4 bumped and bounced for hours on end northwards across the otherwise empty brown plains that stretched as far as the eye could see. Occasionally the barrenness, to which the sparse, crunchy, unhealthy grass was insufficient to lend even a hint of colour yet enough to nurture the odd herd of camels, cows or flock of sheep, was interrupted by a group, usually between one and three in number, of gers, the white felt tents in which half of Mongolia's 2 million-strong population live. On even rarer occasions we passed villages, tiny collections of ramshackle wooden houses and gers, forlorn outposts of the settled way of life in this land of nomads. On the morning of the second ... read more

"Where are you from?" came the first English words we had heard from anyone other than each other in several days. Turning to my right I saw two young, suited Chinese men walking next to me. "England," I replied, "and you?" "We're from Kaili," one of the men answered. We had been there a few days previously having taken the train fifteen hours to the east out of Yunnan province and into Guizhou. A few days spent visiting markets and villages on our way between there and here, the town of Conjiang in the south of Guizhou, had earmarked the province as one seriously worthy of exploration, possibly more so than Yunnan. Around twelve hours total had been spent on buses on the road south and during most of that time my eyes had been firmly ... read more

An hour and a half's bump, jolt and grind down the road from Yuanyang brought us to the fifth ethnic minority market we had visited in as many days (see previous blogs). The hill folk appearing at this market were less colourful but no less visually impressive than at any of the previous ones. As well as many members of the same group to be seen at Yuanyang's market, there were others here dressed entirely in black and wearing tall hats like those of the ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, their sombre outfits starkly contrasting with the enormous multi-coloured turbans that many of their children wore. While the streets of the village were lined with stalls, there was also an enormous, separate, earthen-floored area where the mountain tribespeople sold food, wood, clothes and much more from wooden ... read more

Having visited a market in a nearby village I decided to have a look at the one in Yuanyang itself. The nearby one had been a visual feast, a kaleidoscopic array of colours worn by the local tribespeople who come down from the mountain villages to buy, sell, barter and socialise; to my delight I found more of the same in Yuangyang town itself. Click this link for advice on independent travel in Yunnan Province ... read more