End of the Silk Road : Prostitution Street

Getting to Xi'an was a shock - humidity, heat, noise and traffic rivalling that of Beijing. An unslept night, the hard seat on the newer trains having less room than that on the old. I got off and proceeded to walk out when a man came up to me:

"You looking for a hotel?"

"Ahh... yeah."

"Dormitory, 40 yuan, ok?

"Sorry, the most I've ever paid for one's been 25."

"40 ok?"

"No, I'll find a cheap place."

"30 ok?"

"No, 25's the most I pay."

"25 ok?"

"Ok."

Well, it's in a dingy basement, but at least it's cool, and I've had the whole place to myself for 2 days. The shower is hot. The location... uh, central.

The first thing that happened as I walked down towards town was being invivited by about 10 "hairdressers" into their "salons". Since then, I've been approached by male pimps, female pimps, even the old women at the convenience store I bought a beer at were asking if I wanted a girl. Still, I'm getting better at saying "no" politely - I can even manage eye contact and a smile as I refuse.

With 7 million inhabitants, the city is one big mess with no PT aside from busses. What was once the centre is enclosed by an ancient wall. Slum, condominium, shopping mall, pagoda, bell tower - it's all there... as well as the first McDeath I've seen in 4 months. Nothing interesting has happened. Met a nice guy from the UK and some Irish women, but most of my social interaction involves telling prostitutes to go away.

The best thing about this city seems to be the street food in the mornings - 1 yuan pancakes full of vegetables and tofu. Internet has been difficult to find - took 3 days of walking in fact. The first place I asked involved the girl telling me it was 3 yuan (too much), then after some frantic behind the back hand gestures from her pimping arsehole of an empoyer, 10 yuan.

Oh, and I saw the Tarrcotta Warriors. Not worth the effort unless you're an archeology fetishist.

Time to leave.

Lanzhou

Improved weather, a 3 million city, no plan and two days to make the most of it. Did what I do best - caught a random bus and went for a walk. The place has no real center - only occasional concentrations of multi-storey ultra-modern malls and hence people. Underneath all that there's muslims cooking corn cobs and other delicacies - some stalls showcasing cooked sheep head. Miraculously, found some fried potato and kept walking to the Yellow River. It's a actually a deep red. Incredibly strong current. People strolling around in the park near it. Ate deep fried crap once it got dark then went back to the hotel for a bout of the fiery cyclops as a consequence.

The following day started at a net cafe where I met two Chinese girls. Pearl had been studying for her PhD in Wisconsin and had come back for the first time in three years. Her cousin was studying English at a local university. We were going to see a movie together, when it turned out that it had been dubbed into Chinese. Decided we'd meet up at 2 anyway and do something. I went to the station, got my ticket and settled for a beer under an umbrella, having nothing to do. Some guys waved me over to sit with them.

Peroxide hair, cool clothes, I thought they were in a band. Turned out that they were hairdressers. Insisted that I they should give me a haircut for free. I went along with it. At first I thought that the girls at the salon were less than impressed. But after a 20 minute "hairwash", that was in fact a head massage, I was no longer so sure. The haircut took five minutes. Unfortunately, my hair doesn't yield well to Chinese pretty boy hair-do's, but anyway - the stuff keeps growing.

Pearl and Quin needed to go to Pearl's parents' house to retrieve her I.D. to collect some free movie tickets from a newspaper. Thought I'd come along. Pearl's father wasn't impressed with his daughter when he woke up - "Why aren't you cooking him a feast?! He is your guest!!" I had to be diplomatic, commenting on the quality of the watermelon.

The newspaper office involved a number of women sitting around old computers in a musty high rise building. The photographer rocked up and wanted to take pictures of me. Went along with it. Should have asked him if he could get me a modelling job...

We ended up at a local park with a large Buddhist temple, admiring the mineral springs which had since turned to stagnant ponds. Then they took me out to dinner - "but we pay, it is Chinese tradition and you must accept it." The highlight of Lanzhou food ended up being a very simple dish of thick local noodles, coated in mustard and chilli. Awesome.

Xiahe

Third most important monastery town after Lhasa, I thought it was worth a visit, only being 6 hours away from Lanzhou.

Took a bus to what I thought was the right bus station (there's about 4). Wrong station. Took another bus - the wrong way, it turns out. Eventually got there, to be told that I couldn't get a ticket. Ah, of course - Gansu prefecture has a policy of compulsory insurance for foreigners, which insures the prefecture from being sued by the foreigners in the even of an accident. Who pays? The foreigners. Bought insurance for 20RMB.

Finally got some breakfast - sour-tasting vegetables, but at 3RMB (50AUD cents) for 3 kinds of vegetable plus rice, no complaints.

Made it to the bus 20 minutes early to find the whole bus waiting for me. Got the back seat, knees pressing against the hard plastic seat in front. The driver was a maniac. Once the decent highway degenerated into village road, it was a number of near misses whilst overtaking donkey carts, trucks and other busses. Landscape - dry sparsely-vegetated hills, ramshackle Hui villages with mosques.

Once the hills got a little greener, I saw my first pagoda... or what I thought was a pagoda. In fact it was a minaret, and what looked like a Chinese Buddhist temple was a Hui mosque. More followed. Everywhere, villagers threshing wheat. Then a village that came across a unique concept : let's leave the wheat in the middle of the road - that way the cars will do the job for us.

But things soon got more Tibetan, with hillside monasteries surrounded by villages. And the road got worse - everyone being periodically thrown half a metre into the air, as the driver refused to ease off the accelerator. One interesting thing you see around these parts are goat carcasses strung up from bridges.

After the quaint roadside villages, Xiahe was a let down. Firsty, rickshaw attack - "taxi mister! taxi! Tara hotel?! Good hotel." Kept walking up the road. Something was wrong - the first Tibetan town where I wasn't getting smiles or "Tashi Dele"'s from the locals. Eventually, made it to the Labrang monastery guesthouse (10RMB). The guy there couldn't understand my Tibetan... but it turns out they speak a different dialect here. Ended up sharing a room with a Chinese engineer from Lanzhou uni. Strange guy, but friendly.

Soon I realised why the town was messed up - the whole place was crawling with old western tourists. Was craving some bland food, so I was forced to visit a restaurant that served western fair. 6 Dutch people in there, the owner bending over backwards to kiss their arse. When it came to dealing with me, I was treated like dust.

Started the following day with a kora of the monastery. The few beggars there, almost started salvating when they saw a foreigner walking past. I gave them nothing. Met some Tibetan students. They were nice. We strolled around the streets and talked about random stuff. Eventually made it to the monastery and got invited by a monk to his room. Nice guy. His brother was a nomad living in the grasslands, had some great pictures from there.

In the end, I decided to pay the obscene 40RMB admittance fee and see the monastery's halls. It almost felt like an obligation... I've seen so many things, and in the end I wonder whether it was truly worth the admittance fees, which probably don't go so much to preservation, as the support of nasty regimes. What makes travel worthwhile, and what separates it from tourism, is taking pleasure from ordinary life - observing it, or ideally participating in it. Should I travel again, it will be with a road atlas, a phrasebook and no plan.

That evening, monsoonal rain came. By morning, it was still there. I packed and left.

Golmud - Lanzhou

Arriving in Golmud was something I didn't want to do. Decaying concrete and toilet tiles in a desert light, a taxi ride with the driver trying to charge triple, train ticket chaos... wandering around the streets trying to find tomato and egg and internet. In the end it turned out well - Itamar and I ended up at a set of deep-fried skewer stalls, under an umbrella with beer and a pile of greasy fish, octopus, potato and cauliflower, reading out poetry. Then a drunk policeman turned up to practice his three phrases of English with us: "Welcome to Golmud," "My name is...," "I like you." And he bought us beer.

We went on another walk. Played guitars in a music store. Ended up back under the umbrellas. The guys next to us decided to buy us pints and force us to skull them in a toast to God-knows-what. No more beer after that.

The hard seat train carriage wasn't nearly as chaotic as I'd expected. Everyone had seats, there were trays for rubbish and people actually used them. Smoking was forbidden. Attendants would walk by with a broom every few hours and clean up. The music stopped at 11pm. Despite the desert cold, I slept well. The guy in front of me slept with his head on my lap. 17 hours later we were in Lanzhou. Upon getting out of the station we were approached by a girl who told me I had beautiful eyes. Unfortunately she didn't.

Lanzhou is a forest of chimneys followed by a 30km high-rise sprawl alongstside a river. For some reason I'm becoming fond of it. Went to the first "cheap" hotel in the LP, they told me 90RMB. I told them "thank you", bought a Pepsi and asked the seller about cheap hotels. She pointed across the road. I went there and the woman just said, "no." Asked her about cheap hotels. She pointed down the road. Eventually, I stumbled across a young guy who led me up some stairs. 25 for a clean single with TV, phone and shared bathroom. Not bad.

Spent the day wandering around looking for greasy food stalls, but it seems that they only open up at night. Ended up eating delicious tofu and eggplant that cost next to nothing. Parted with Itamar over a beer. It would be nice to travel together longer. Inshallah. A Chinese guy from the hostel in Lhasa rocked up, and so I drank more and as he bitched about the local people - apparently uneducated and dishonest, and his uni course - the professor ordered him back from his holiday.

Walked around Lanzhou's neon-lit streets for several hours in a drunken daze. Met an old dude who wanted to emigrate to Australia for the sake of his son. Ate skewered octopus and vegetables. Went back and slept.

The Road to Golmud

Itamar is insomniac, so he offers to buy the tickets to Golmud. 210Yuan ($30AUD). We meet at Tashi 2 Restaurant which opens late, monsoon rain keeping everyone in bed. I also want to have my last bag of Lhasa-fried-potatoes, but the vendors aren't open yet. An uneventful trip to the bus station, we get on and wait as a huge row erupts between the driver and a group of random.

In the bunk next to us is Wayne, a Chinese-speaking American. He explains that the driver sold an old man a "ticket" (at a discount price), the woman with the legitimate ticket got on, asking the old man to move out of her seat. He said that he wouldn't move unless the driver refunded his money. The driver refused.

The whole bus joins in the argument. In the end, the old guy ends up on the floor. Wayne asks the woman in front if she could move one of her kids to the eisle opposite, so that he can stretch his legs out. I paid 50yuan for this floor space, I have a right to it!" She starts screaming at him. The driver tells her to move the kid. She keeps screaming. The driver tells her he will throw her out unless she shuts up. She shuts up.

The road is good. The bus is fast. Wayne has been travelling for 30 years. Aside from teaching, he writes and paints. Has a very negative view of the Chinese: they first care about themselves, then their family, then friends, after that they have no empathy whatsoever. I try to prod him in regards to the Confucian and Buddhist traditions. Says that Mao destroyed all that. I'm not convinced...

We stop at a set of roadside restaurants. I ask a few people if we can eat, they say "yes". In the end, the driver slurps down his noodles and asks us to leave half way through our meal. A few more people get on the bus. I now have a Hui Muslim girl next to me in the eisle. Wayne can forget about stretching his legs.

The landscape is wonderful, crystal-clear lakes, glaciers sliding of mountains. We stop at a 5200m pass. I have some amazing conversations with Itamar: travel, philosophy, religion, Zionism... we get on well.

Leaving Lhasa

My last day in Lhasa is marked with one thing: the obligation to shop. The morning brings rain and grey skies. I sit around wasting time, talking to whoever is around and find an empty room having slept the night on the floor of a dorm. Not many people are around though - my entire dorm had left at 3 a.m. to go to the Ganden Thangka festival. In the end, the Chinese kids staying next to me invite me out to a Tibetan tea house for tea. 3 jao for 1 cup (5AUD cents). The dude with a perm turns out to be a mountain guide from Sichuan. Tells me that it's a lot more beautiful than Tibet.

In the end it clears up, and I begin my first consuptionist kora of the Jokhang. The stall owners aren't particularly pushy, except for one Tibetan girl who physically grabs me and won't let go. Bargaining is hard. I probably get ripped off on 50% of the things I buy... which isn't such a bad ratio, considering the area. The prayer flag dealers are the worst. On my third kora I make the mistake of looking at "antique" thangkas and become mesmerised by one particular Cherensig (Avalokiteshvara) with White Drolma (Tara) underneath... but the guy's asking price is $100USD. There is also a lot of crap, in particular amongst the new thangkhas.

In the end, I sit in front of the Jokhang and watch the people passing by. There is an immense ethnic mix - women from Amdo with tiny braids, strong Kampa guys with red yak wool through their hair, monks, nuns, western tourists. It's mesmerising, especially looking at this through a camera lens, trying to get good pictures.

Upon getting back I find a note from Itamar, with whom I'd made a plan to go to Golmud. He'd made plans to meet a Tibetan artist for dinner at 6. It's 8. Damn. Luckily, some of the volunteers from the orphanage had returned from their Everest excursion, so 3 of us go to a Tibetan place by the Jokhang for a stare-fest, as we are the only Westerners to have eaten there for a long time. No menu. The chef takes us to the kitchen - a dark labirintine affair. The whole place feels medieval. In the end, the home-made noodles and tea cost 3 Yuan each (50AUD cents). I'm seriously considering staying in Lhasa for another day, just to buy a Thangha. Janine discourages me: the Thanghkas in Kathmandu are of a higher quality at a fraction of the price.

Getting back, I find Itamar and apologise. He's going to go drinking with some Koreans. The Folk Music Cafe turns out to be one of the coolest bars I'd ever visited... instruments adorn the walls. Anyone is welcome to pick one up and play. There's an upstairs balcony, where we have our party: 4 Koreans, 3 Japanese, a French girl, and 2 Israelis. The highlight of the evening has to be our sing along of X-Japan's "Endless Rain." The drunk Japanese guys simply love it.

I make it back to my room at 2 am. My room mates still aren't there. They come about 3 am. We have a bizarre drunken conversation about foreigners in Japan, go to sleep, then wake at 5 am, as they are taking a jeep to Nam-tso.

"Arrested." Again.

It was going all too well. I ate a decent breakfast, went to the bus station, bought a ticket for the local price, caught a bus that was leaving in 15 minutes. They guy next to me got spat on by another Chinese guy who'd missed the window. Nothing else of interest happened.

Tsethang turned out to be another Chinese monstrosity of grandiose proportions. However, the people were lovely. So many Tibetan smiles and 'Tashi Dele"'s. Still, I didn't want to hang around for fear of the cops. Walked to the edge of town and eventually a lovely Tibetan lorry driver gave me a lift for a few km. Asked me about the Dalai Lama, but unfortunately I. Refused payment for the lift.

I kept walking. Passed some road workers, then jumped onto the back of a tiny Daewoo yute with 3 Tibetans. Great ride, as the river valley spread out below us with some monasteries on the hillsides. Eventually made it to the village of Rong, 30km out of Tsetang, just as the rain came in. Walked to the edge of town and took shelter by a road junction petrol station with some other Tibetans.

Was waiting when a jeep with 3 cops happened to drive by. Unfortunately, the guy in the front was a high-ranking officer, and knew the score. A few phone calls, and I was loaded into the jeep and made to wait. I decided to play the stupid-student-from-Poland-with-bad-English-and-no-money card. It worked. Soon, I'd made 'friends' with the young cop in the back, who showed me through his CD collection and even apologised for stopping me.

Half an hour later, 2 cops from the foreign affairs branch in Tsetang rocked up. They seemed pissed off, but relaxed once I'd convinced them that I was completely clueless. The officer in charge at the station wasn't so nice, but in the end they took down a report, photocopied my documents and told me to go back to Lhasa without fining me.

Got back to Lhasa at 10pm, hungry and pissed off. Turned out that every hotel was full (Checked 7). Since I'd stayed in Kirey for a few days, I managed to convince the staff to let me sleep on the floor for 15 RMB. The materass had blood stains on it. Oh well.

Circles

The Chinese government is keen to boast that it has developed tourism in Tibet. Well, it certainly has... bringing in tourbus-loads of mainly rich Chinese and charging them obscene entrance fees to all of the attractions. Potala Palace - 100RMB (15USD), Jokhang - 70RMB, Drepung Gompa - 55RMB. To put things into perspective - the average monthly salary here seems to be 250RMB. I spend under 5-7US per day - living in a clean dorm, eating good food, emailing, taking local busses.

But I found a solution : the kora. Walked 3 times around the Potala with a horde of prayer-wheel spinning grannies yesterday. Almost cried when they started to prostrate. 3 koras of the Jokhang are behind me also. A different atmosphere, given the tourist-infestation. At 10pm, a kid literally grabbed onto me screaming, 'money! money!' I gave him a hug, ruffled his hair, and said 'no'.

Sera Gompa - another kora. Drepung - the highlight of my stay in Lhasa. A young monk waved to us from under a tree, then led us through a side-entrance, gave us a tour of the place, then insisted on feeding us - all just because it was his day off (also the cops day off), and he was keen to practice his English.

Today I went to the seat of the main Oracle. Very tantric temple - mostly wrathful protector deities (the 100 tooth, 100 eyeball type), pictures of mutilated human corpses. The workers patting down the new roof were the highlight - sang and danced as they did their job.

Even after Kailash, I feel that I should burn more karma. After all, I hadn't done that many evil things in this lifetime. So, I have a new insane plan - the holiest pilgrimage in Tibet. If it goes ahead, I'm disappearing for 3 weeks.

Lhasa

Two days and it's already a love-hate relationship.

I love it for the Tibetan pilgrims walking koras. I love it for the fact you can get Nepalese thali for $4. I love it for the 1 yuan fried spicy potatoes. I love it for the hot shower and clean sheets at the youth hostel. I love it for the asian tourists at the youth hostel. I love it for the fact that at 3700m I'm getting so much oxygen that I feel like I'm on amphetamine.

I hate it for the fact that it is a thoroughly Chinese city, with a few islands of "Tibetan-ness" left for the sake of a tourist industry that almost exlusively benefits the Chiense goverment. I hate it for the fact that everything has a ridiculous entrance fee (Potala - $15USD). I hate it for the fact that within 30 minutes of sitting at even the dirtiest hole-in-the-wall restaurant you will be approached by 5 beggars who won't take "no" for an answer.

Went to Sera monastery, which was closed for some reason. So we did a kora of the place with the Tibetan pilgrims. Highlight: dirty 3 y.o. Tibetan girls trying to 'fly' by hanging onto our backpacks.

This morning we had breakfast at the dirtiest tea-house and met a lovely Tibetan man working for a U.S. NGO. Told us about the TB, Hep A & B problems in rural Tibet. Must be a nightmare trying to get permits for doctors to visit villages and for the transport of essential medicines. Still, it is good that something is being done.

First Day in Lhasa

I had apprehensions about coming here, but they've partially drifted aside...

The first thing that I've fallen in love with are the hot chips street vendors - 1 yuan (20 cents) per bag.

There is still a Tibetan 'old town' - granted it's 'touristed', but it's buzzing with pilgrims and monks.

Nepalese thali for dinner - $4, but what the hell...

In order to find the thali we talked to some North Americans. The girl was working on some field recording project and was thinking about hitching into east Tibet to find some nomads to record. Might join up.

Kirey hotel is a good choice. Hot showers. Sharing the dorm with a bunch of Koreans and a Japanese girl.

Ran into the same Americans we ran into at Lake Karakol.

The road to God-Knows-Where

The bus cost 826 Yuan. The Korean girl who spoke Chinese paid 760, the Chinese geologist from Beijing who spoke English paid 726, the lovely Tibetan girl who force-fed us paid 500.

The bus took exactly 72 hours, arriving at Lhasa's obscene north bus station at 6pm today.

Highlights:

- The electricity on the bus going at around 5000m.
- Overnighting at 5000m since the headlights weren't working.
- The leaking radiator on the bus. Had to stop at every stream and lake to refill it.
- Niyma, the lovely Tibetan girl, walking 300m to a lake to fill up the radiator since the drivers were too lazy.
- People spitting on the floor, bleeding on the floor, throwing rubbish on the floor, throwing cigarettes on the floor.
- Eating at a dingy restaurant full of prostitutes and a seedy old guy trying to grope them in turn in some shithole in the middle of nowhere.
- Gong-Zhu, the most beautiful girl I've ever met (according to my definition of beauty... which happens to include self-inflicted cigarette burn marks all up both arms).
- Learning to play 'beat the landlord' (a card game), with Gong-Zhu's 14 y.o.-ish sister sitting with a mean look on her face, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, slapping cards down with some ferocity.
- Running into Dirk (the German guy who we kept meeting in Kyrgyzstan) in Lhatse.
- Breakfast in Lhatse. Decided to eat Tibetan - Tsampa (fried barley flour), Yak butter tea, Sugar. Quite a portion... obviously we're starting to look like anorexic junkies, and the old Tibetan woman took pity on us.
- PSB checkpoints - no one bothered to check our papers.

Ngari (Western Tibet)

Arrived at 4 am in Ali today having hitched on a China Post Truck (bargain at 100RMB). As lovely as always, the place was full of pink neon. Walking towards the centre we saw a couple having sex in the middle of the pavement, only interrupted by the woman's tubercular coughing. Now waiting for the PSB to open so that we can get visa extensions and go to Lhasa. Since I really couldn't be bothered going into what I've been doing in detail, here's a rough synopsis:

First, we visited the ruins of the Guge Kingdom, near Zanda (another depressing Chinese town). 8 hours by bus on the scariest road I'd ever been on. Stayed in a hotel owned by Tibetans who were afraid to take us as foreigners, but since it was 12pm...

Took the same bus to a miliary base in the middle of nowhere. Were about to go to sleep in the barracks when another bus came. Ended up in Barga - shithole full of mangy dogs, another Chinese army outpost and impoverished Tibetans living in tents. Met 2 Japanese there who'd been waiting for a truck to Lhasa for 3 days.

Decided to walk the 15km to Lake Manasovar. Regarded by the Hindus as the abode of the mind of Brahman, it is possibly the most sacred lake in the world. Found Chiu Monastery to be closed, under renovation. Stayed with the lovely Abbot and his lovely wife. Gorgeous views of the lake. Very beautiful people. Washed for the first time in 5 days in the mineral baths in the village below.

Hitched on the back of a truck to Darchen, base for the kora of Mt. Kailash. Regarded by the Hindus as the abode of Shiva, it is possibly the most sacred mountain in the world. Darchen is a hole full of concrete, the nastiest toilets I've ever seen, mangy dogs, piles of rubbish everywhere. The only redeeming feature was the Tibetan girl running our hotel, who kept bringing us yak butter tea.

Did a kora (circambulation) of Mt. Kailash. 3 days. 52 kilometres. Highest point 5600m. Stayed at 2 monasteries. Amazing.

Sat on the side of the road for a day and failed to secure transport. Getting back to Darchen had a cup of tea in a tent, had Josh show up from his kora, telling us that a truck was leaving in 5 minutes. Got on the truck.

General observations:

Tibetans are amazing people. Very friendly, they have the warmest smiles I've ever seen, and love to have a joke.

The Chinese soldiers all look like they are under 20. Friendlier than I'd expected.

Food is generally limited to noodles. Yak butter tea is great stuff.

Transport is incredibly expensive. Foreigners get charged double for busses. Hitching is illegal for foreigners. Hitching on the back of a truck is illegal for everybody (as of this year).

If you want to see "Tibet" don't go to Tibet - go to Ladakh, Sikkim, Nepal, West Sichuan Province, etc. None of the monasteries can be classed as functional, even though a lot of effort is currently being spent on rebuilding. In some Chinified towns like Zanda, the atmosphere amongst the Tibetans reminds me of Australian Aborigines in outback outposts... very sad.

Going Legal

Arnaud, Jonathan and I get up early and proceed to look for the Public Security Bureau. Turns out they've moved... into (surprise) a huge concrete building covered in white toilet tiles. Nobody is there aside from one woman, who makes some phonecalls when she sees us. On the wall, the following 'poetry' :

"Visa alternation and plusing the bamboo slips: Foreigners enters a country queen, in case the manouver which will be go in for outside original capacity have to propose the visa sort and alter the application to person in charge's gear. In case man travelling together have to plus the bamboo slips."

2 Japanese, 2 Austrians, a Korean and a Latvian turn up. The first 5 came in a Jeep. The Latvian girl speaks Chinese, and managed to hitch, hiding under a load of watermelons at the checkpoint.

Then come the PSB : 2 friendly Tibetan women in woolen jumpers with a kid. They fill out the necessary paperwork, take our money, and tell us to visit next year... as if we hadn't violated Chinese law in coming here.

Getting back to the centre of town, we run into Josh, from Beijing, who speaks English and wants to go to the same place as us. There's a bus leaving in 30 minutes. But we have no money. A mad rush around various banks leads us to a back room up a staircase, where everything is sorted out. We grab our bags and leave Ali.

Getting into Tibet

Day 1

Rocked up at the Kashgar bus station trying to find out when the bus leaves for Yecheng. Turned out that there were apparently no busses on Sundays. Quick decision : let's go today.

A redbean soup with tofu dumplings for breakfast, and our shopping spree begun. First, a whole department store full of random crap - torches, cooking utensils, guitars, t.v.'s, soap. Was under the impression that you couldn't bargain in a department store : wrong. Best find : an L.E.D. torch powered by a single AA battery for $8.

Then some gorgeous young girls dragged us into their clothing store. Quite healthy actually, given that my only pair of pants hadn't been washed since Uzbekistan, was covered with my own vomit and had two sewed up rips in it.

Finally, food. 20 packs of noodles, a few kilos of dried fruit, lollies... all packed into a Chechen bag. We were set to go... or so we thought.

As soon as we got back to the hotel we were confronted with the sight of yesterday's cops escorting three women into their car - the three women who had robbed us. One of them was holding a fat wad of our souveneir money. Into a taxi and to the police station. Lovely place - spitoons everywhere, fool of green mucus and cigarette butts. Then to a fotographer to fotograph our money. Bastards made us pay for the pleasure and for the taxi. Then made us sit for 2 hours doing nothing, in the hope Jonathan would get his phone back.

In the end we just told them we had to leave, or we'd miss the bus.

At the station, we met the Pakistani (Pashtun) dude who'd been waiting for his visa renewal several days prior. He got the visa eventually, at great pain to his wallet. Still, he insisted on buying us a drink. Lovely man.

The bus was quite an experience. Started with 3 passengers, by Yecheng it had about 30... mostly dirty old men coughing up incredible amounts of phlegm thanks to the dust of the Talakaman desert.

Day 2

Got to Yecheng at 1am. Checked into the cheap-ish hotel next to the bus station, slept 6 hours, then took a taxi with tinted windows to A-ba (6km away), where the road to Tibet starts. Was afraid that the Public Security Bureau (PSB) would bust us.

A word about A-ba. It's a completely Chinese town, built mostly of concrete with white toilet tiles plastered on. Order of buildings looks roughly like this: brothel, mechanic's garage, brothel, restaurant, brothel, restaurant, guesthouse, shop. Dust blows through the place all day, turning the sun orange, or blue. Behind A-ba, stretch fields of corn and other vegetables, tended by impoverished, but in our experience, very friendly Uygurs.

Getting to A-ba, we ate breakfast at a restaurant in front of a huge sign saying : "Foreigners shall not be allowed to travel on the road to Ali without permission." We proceeded to try to get a truck. No luck. Everyone made handcuff symbols, and told us to take the bus.

Buying the bus ticket was easy-ish. The seedy bus driver told us to sit down, put on a video and went off for an hour before bothering to sell us the 500 Yuan ticket. Stayed at the same guesthouse as the rest of the people taking the bus. Slept all day, only to emerge for another feed of awesome Sichuanese food.

Also went for a walk through the fields, to find a wasteland behind them full of rubbish, mangy dogs, and a brand new set of multi-storey apartment blocks with nobody living in them.

Getting back, we found a new arrival in the room. Barry, from England, was making his way to Australia by land, where he works in some shithole in the middle of the outback. Barry does this every year - via a different route. Last year, it included Baghdad and Kandahar. This year, both Congos and Sudan.

Day 3

We were still in A-ba, and the food was still the only attraction, aside from a brief episode at the grocery store. Ended up playing a concert on the owner's son's guitar and then signing the guitar afterwards. Quality.

The bus was meant to leave at 12 but didn't. 8 hours later we were finally on it, crammed into bunks designed for midgets. Then... DISASTER, as the cops showed up.

"It's for your own good. This is a dangerous road. 3 Koreans died last month. If you rent a Jeep with a guide you can go..."

We were put into a van and driven to a designated "tourist hotel," but not before the cop had a severe word with 2 more westerners hanging around A-ba.

Naturally, the place was above our budgets. Soon a taxi showed up with 3 more westerners: Helena from Sweden, Elizabeth from Australia, and Jeff from Ireland. All of us sat on the steps of the depressing hotel, in a depressive stupor for an hour, getting stared at by rich Chinese tourists, before a herd of goats turned up from nowhere.

I decided to walk to the bus station hotel, to work off the rage. Ended up doing a circle through Yecheng after asking directions from various Uygurs in Turkish.

Day 4

Got up and decided I was getting to Tibet, no matter what the PSB was going to do to me. Helena was in the same mind. Jonathan seemed happy to come along. Everyone else decided on a different route. But just as we were sitting in the foyer of the hotel, our friend the policeman turned up.

First, he ignored us, and checked our registration papers.

Then: "Do you really want to go to Ali?"

In unison: "Yes."

"If you get in trouble, you will not tell your governments and make trouble for us?"

In unison: "No."

"There is a good bus leaving tomorrow. You can take that bus. But this is the last time you can do this."

Austrian girl starts dancing.

Day 5.

We rock up in A-ba and the bus driver wants to charge us 600 Yuan. We go back to Yecheng to find our friend-the-policeman so he can get on the bus driver's arse. We fail to find him. Coming back, the driver refuses to sell us the ticket. We give him the cop's phone number. The cop turns up and sorts everything out. Everything is legal...

Then the conductor tells us to hide behind some trees in a field peppered with human shit and toilet paper. Arnaud, a French Tibetan Buddhist joins us, and Nikki, a Scottish girl without a clue as to what she is doing. The bus is going to leave 6 hours late. We eat dinner, using the back entrance of a restaurant, then get pushed into a taxi organised by the bus conductor, and get driven outside the town and told to hide behind a dirt embakment. We wait until it gets dark, then get on the bus which comes out of nowhere.

But there's a problem. The bus is full, and the taxi carrying the other half of the party still hasn't arrived. We stop to load a load of luggage onto the roof, just as a dust storm comes through, mixed with pelting rain. Finally the others arrive. We're on the bus about to leave, but there's a problem and a half hour wait. Some guy comes in a taxi and sits down on the floor since there's no room.

10 minutes of driving, and it becomes apparent that the bus isn't going to get to Ali (Engine sounds like William S. Burroughs reading out of Naked Lunch). We turn back and drive to A-ba to change busses.

Day 6.

The bus is lovely. No room to put one's legs, driver decides to keep himself awake at night with bad Chinese pop, everyone is smoking and spitting. Above 4000m you probably couldn't tell the difference between inhaling fibreglass fumes, and cigarette smoke.

In the morning a check point. The driver does some smooth talking, the surly officer lookes at our passports and waves us through.

Beautiful landscape. Barren valleys, brisk streams, a landslide.

By the end of the day we're on a plateau. I'm very glad we're in a bus. Our driver is a genius, navigating through rivers, landslides, as convoys of trucks stay stuck.

Day 7.

We clear a pass in the morning (above 5000m). Running is painful at this altitude. Elizabeth and Jeff are not feeling well.

Arrival in Ali at 10pm. Total journey time 44 hours. Very short.