http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/goneforawhile2007/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from goneforawhile2007 en-us Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:55:56 +0000 Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:55:56 +0000 Boarding the plane to Hong Kong and knowing to be back on the road soon felt really good after being home for almost 3 months. Arriving back in Kunming made me instantly feel like coming home. The heat the crazy traffic and life just about everywhereAfter acclimatizing for a couple of days I soon realized that apart from having put on weight most of my fitness was gone. And so the first days http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Cambodia/blog-295614.html Left Guiyang following the Motorway. Which is legal in China if there are no minor roads in place e.g. for routes leaving a major town. But sooner or later all slow traffic is meant to leave or made to leave. Not this time which enabled me to enjoy 140km this day on excellent smooth road with very few traffic and just occasional climbs. The first part of my itinerary took me along a nice rive http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Hong-Kong/Kowloon/blog-264610.html Northern Yunnan proved to be almost the best part of Eastern Tibet Tibetan culture spectacular sceneries and friendly people Reaching ShangriLa was another milestone being back to civilisation and the first and best place to get a desperately needed visaextension. Got another 2 months without any problems stayed there for 3 days pretty relieved enjoying western food and the company of http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Guangxi/blog-221428.html Left Lhasa after 13 days. Planned to stay five or so but caught a cold with a strong cough which I had to cure first. The cough was persistent but I decided that there was no point in hanging out for a nother week or so hoping it would go away. Don't get me wrong Lhasa is a great place to hangout except for bedbugs and some nutcases in dorms... and I could have easily stayed for another month http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Tibet/blog-213898.html Reached Lhasa on Sept 19. Left Kashgar together with Imma Pep the crazy Catalans and Joe from Switzerland. On the 2nd day out of Kashgar a few kms after Yarkant we met the Yakman Claude Marthaler and Nathalie. We were just talking about broken rims as I discovered that my backrim was broken as well I didn't like this decision but I was so close to Kashgar so I decided to go back to g http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Tibet/Lhasa/blog-204482.html One oft he greatest headaches so far I finally made it I managed to take the ferry from BakuAzerbaidjan to AktauKazakhstan where I am now. Taking a ferry doesn't sound all too difficult does it Well this is a special one. This ferry is mainly a cargoship rollon rolloff which also accepts some passengers. The first problem with catching this ferry is that there are no schedules. The http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Kazakhstan/blog-161023.html LEAVING TURKEY... was a bit odd. Since Diyarbakir it seemed I was struck by bad luck. First I tried to continue to Lake Van being stubborn and cycled all day in the pouring rain ending up being soaking wet catching a cold. Decided to skip Lake Van and go straight to Erzurum by bus. Unfortunately the guy sitting next to me was even more sick than me and probably transmitted some of his germs to m http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Azerbaijan/blog-158003.html Yes I know there is no officially recognized country by the name of Kurdistan but hey travel to SouthEastern Anatolia and talk to some locals So here's my personal Kurdistan Experience From the West the part of Turkey with high kurdish population roughly start east of the Malatya Adana Highway going all the way up to Erzurum until the TurkishGeorgian border. Having travelled from http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Southeastern-Anatolia/Diyarbakir/blog-144330.html Due to the server outage it might be that all my blogging is lost For obvious reasons I will not continue for the moment. Sorry 'bout thatHeading for Tibet on Thursday.CheersAndy http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Xinjiang/Kashgar/blog-97571.html