After a few admin days in Bishkek sorting our visas and permits for Tajikistan and Uzbekistan we headed off to one of the places we'd been looking forward to from the time we started planning our trip. Song Kol is simply beautiful. We stayed two nights in a yurt, which was warm and comfortable and which we had to ourselves. Did some horse riding, for which I'm still paying the price every time I sit down, walked kilometres, and for the rest of the time laid about in the sun, for which I'm also still paying the price after burning my belly - I'd forgotten how strong the sun is at 3000m elevation. For perhaps the first time on this trip we've found somewhere we'd like to come back to in the future to do some ... read more

The China / Kyrgyzstan border is an odd one. The distance between the first Chinese checkpoint and the last one is ~140km, then there's a bit of no mans land until the first checkpoint in Kyrgyzstan then another few km until the actual immigration post. It made for an interesting day that had high highs, low lows, a lot of frustration, and some stunning scenery. The executive summary is that despite another example of Chinese organisational incompetence / indifference - for example you need a different taxi from the first checkpoint than the one that takes you to it and the last checkpoint closes for a 3 hour lunch break - in the end everything worked out better than we could have wished for. Once into Kyrgyzstan before we'd even got out of the immigration car ... read more

The train from Hami stopped quite abruptly in the middle of the desert, we're guessing it was because of the wind because once we were at a standstill the train and electric wires were swaying all over the place. Apparently it's a common problem that they've tried to fix by building a wall along the north side of the line. To steal and bastardize the quote from Jaws - they're going to need a bigger wall. It's unbelievably hot here - over 40c in the shade in the afternoon and not lower than the mid 20s at any time of the night. Like the other places we've stayed in western China it also has a weird daily rhythm and routine. Because the whole of China officially operates on one time zone out here it's dark until ... read more

We've made it to Jiayuguan, the mouth of China and the westernmost point of the Great Wall. This is the 2nd of our slightly longer stops, this time for it's longer for immigration reasons. We're going to be in China for ~40 days so need to extend our visas which are only valid for 30. This is a fairly straightforward, if Big Brotherish, process that works much more smoothly and quickly in small towns than big cities, that was certainly our experience here - applied on Tuesday afternoon picked up new visas Friday morning, we're now OK until late August. The sights here are a mixed bag. The Wei Jin Tombs are smallest and least popular but were our favourite, while the two biggest and most crowded - the Jiayuguan Fort and the Overhanging Great Wall ... read more

Xiahe is just under 3000m above sea level and even in the middle of July it's cold at night or when the sun isn't shining. It was quite a shock getting off the bus from Lanzhou where it had been 30c when we left a bit over 3 hours earlier. Apart from the cold and wind the first thing that struck us was the similarity in looks and dress between the Tibetans living up here and the Andean peoples we'd come across in South America - it's startling to see how alike two groups of people separated by half a world can be. The Labrang Monastery is the must see place. It's one of the six major Tibetan monasteries of the Yellow Hat Sect. It has 1800 monks and nuns and spreads over quite a big ... read more