Taxis: the world’s most annoying travel experience.

We arrived in the capital, New Delhi, by train, ending up in the backpacker district of Pahaganj. A bit like its Thai counterpart, Bangkok’s Koh San Road, but less friendly, with fewer bars to meet people in, and more chance of being groped by the market stall owners as you wander back to your hostel. I hated it. More than anything I hated the autorickshaw taxi drivers who refused to put their meters on, and rarely went anywhere for less than twice the usual price. Taxi drivers are normally the most irritating feature of city travel, wherever you go in the world; many times I have stood in a London street after dark screaming at an incompetent, lost, taxi driver, whose English is virtually nonexistent, asking me for two pounds over the normal fare. Delhi is no better. Taxi drivers there drove us so mad that Jonny began telling them he was a member of the Delhi Tourism Office and that they were running a campaign to find un-metered and illegal autorickshaws, terrifying the drivers by taking mug shots with his digital camera and saying they were on his list.

After one particularly fruitless journey of being driven around looking for a shopping mall and ending up in yet another handicraft emporium, we found ourselves lost and surrounded by dozens of rickshaw drivers baying at our heels (“yes sir”, “hundred rupees sir”, “where you going sir”, “good price good price…”). Away from the crowd another rickshaw pulled up at the side of the road and the driver, smartly dressed in a grey workers suit and large blue turban, asked us where we were going: “Paliker Bazaar” we said. “I’m going that way anyway”, he replied in excellent English, “no charge, just hop in”.

It turned out the driver, Sindram, was in his 50s, loved the British, and had a sister working in Wimbledon branch of Barclay’s Bank. Oh the joys of a small world moment. We poured our problems out to our new found friend: we had only a few hours left to try and find some clothes to wear for a wedding in Cape Town which we were due to fly to the following week. We were only in Delhi for two days, then off to the Pushkar Camel Fair in Rajasthan before returning to catch our flight. Sindrum shook his head, “Paliker Bazaar is where you go for electronics. Indians get their clothes made by a good tailor! If you want some nice material, I can show you where to go and then you get them made for very cheap! Very cheap tailors in India!” As we headed towards the first shop, Sindram explained his code for ‘too expensive’ would be ‘very good price’ and for a good price was ‘so-so’, so he could help us and stop the shop owners from ripping us off.

By the time dusk fell, we had been to three separate silk shops, culminating in a boutique sari house where I was like a kid in a sweetshop and bought a ream of the most beautiful material I’d seen to date. Sindram deposited us outside a number of excellent tailors in Connaught Place and after another hour we had been measured up, picked our styles and promised they’d be ready in time.





Job done – and how! The following week Jonny picked up an exceedingly natty lightweight raw silk suit and I a beautiful blue and orange dress with matching scarf. With Indian accessories to match, our rough and ready traveller look was left

behind as we arrived at Lucy and Neil’s extremely stylish wedding in the shadow of Table Mountain. We had had the best shopping experience in India – made possible by the best rickshaw driver in India. Needless to say, Sindram got an extremely good tip!

You have been Puja-ed!

And so to the sights and smells of India, whose land border we crossed at Sunauli en route to Varanasi, India’s holiest city, where we would spend Divali – the festival of Light and India’s answer to Christmas. The border was the usual mix of food sellers, money changers and shady characters. This time, unusually, the scams came not from officials looking for ‘baksheesh’ (bribes) but from a bunch of aggressive, thoroughly nasty fake bus workers, who were extorting money out of tourists (including us) who had prepaid for their bus tickets on the Nepali side of the border. We stood our ground – having been in this situation a few times before – but after an almighty row, in which we threatened to call the police, and they threatened to throw us off the bus (100m from the armed guards at the border post), we gave a third man half the money they were asking for to make the problem (and the men) go away. A small victory we felt, although I did wonder if this was to be the start of a long round of the annoying scams and rip offs for which Indian travel is so infamous. Arriving at Varanasi bus station late at night, after a bone-rattlingly uncomfortable 12 hour journey, we braced ourselves for an onslaught of rickshaw drivers, who are notorious for taking you to any hotel other than the one you want to go to. Much to our surprise and delight, the few rickshaw wallahs at the station not only took us, no questions asked, straight to where we asked, but did so at a reasonable price and with a friendly smile. First impression of Varanasi – very good!

We had heard of the Shiva Ganga guesthouse through friends, who described it as the kind of place which makes Varanasi easy – a retreat from the madness of India’s number one craziest place. It’s basic, clean and cheap but with a garden and beautiful setting right on the edge of Shiva Ghat, where the steps lead down to the River Ganges some distance from the old town. More than anything, it was one of the friendliest places we’d stayed in months, with a collection of different people who reflected much of the spiritual tourism that attracts people to Varanasi.

We met up with our friends, Caroline (English) and Affe (Dutch) who had booked us a room for the night. Caroline was on her second journey of spiritual enlightenment, inexorably drawn to Buddhism and on her way to Bodhgaya for a huge gathering of pilgrims before heading to an Ashram in Tamil Nadu. Other guests included Tim, a wonderful and ever so slightly camp Canadian Yoga teacher with a charisma which draws people of all nationalities together; Laina and Al, who we felt we gelled with in our essentially cynical, but nonetheless open minded, shared sense of normality; and Roddi, a blissed out Iranian Hindu convert who told us in all sincerity that we’d be fine in Varanasi because ‘you’ve got the 12 here, and they’ll look out for you’, referring to the full compliment of Hindu gods which look over the city; and because ‘God runs through the centre of town’, referring to the river Ganges – also known as the Universal Mother, and which is worshipped as a Goddess fallen from heaven. Unfortunately, the 12 couldn’t help Roddi when he stepped in a cow pat from one of the thousands of cows which roam all over Varanasi, and landed flat on his back with his white tunic covered in shit.

For two rather unspiritual types like us, Varanasi was a strange balancing act. We tried hard to put our usual attitudes on hold and surrender to Varanasi’s fantastic atmosphere (“feel the energy, man!”) as something to be cherished and enjoyed; but also to pre-empt that sinking feeling as yet another special ‘karma cleansing’ moment – such as Puja (prayer) offerings to the Ganges, in the form of lit candles sent downriver - ended in a request for money or donations, preferably in Euros, US Dollars or Pound Sterling. Even a simple guided tour of the fascinating burning ghats, where Hindus are cremated to ensure their safe passage to heaven, ended in a demand for money to safe guard not only our karma but also that of our next of kin (preferably including parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, second cousins and those who have already passed on to the next world...). In India, becoming 'spiritually cleansed', is like doing the supermarket shopping for the whole family.

Despite this, the lights and excitement of Divali were an awesome spectacle. The ancient town was like a warzone, albeit lit up with fairy lights, and after a few days of bangers and rockets being fired everywhere, had a strangely smoky, dreamlike quality. On our last day in Varanasi, we happened across a fantastic carnival, which amazingly no other tourist seem to have discovered, and spent the afternoon in mutual amazement as we stood and gazed at the spectacle of Varanasi’s citizens in full party swing, and they in turn gazed at us simply for joining them.

'Tache 'Tastic

The mammoth two weeks of Annapurna, although brilliant and beautiful, had become, by the end, something of a grind. After reaching 3000m at the wildly beautiful and isolated Tibetan settlement of Manang, our party - Jonny and I, our good mates Sarah and Guy, plus our wonderful trek guide Tez and two porters Prim and Buddhi - were only able to safely ascend a maximum of 350m or so each day. Starting early in the morning to avoid the cold afternoon wind, you finish your day’s trek by midday, leaving the entire afternoon and evening with little to do but read books, play cards and contemplate the daunting 4.30am start and ten hour trek of the penultimate day, which came three days later.

Thorong La Pass (5410 metres high) was a final, serious, challenge, unfortunately ending with me getting a severe bout of Giardiasis.

Annapurna has been dubbed the ‘Andrex Trail’ due to this common parasite hitting so many trekkers at altitude. It is carried in the water, which boils at such low temperatures up there that bugs can survive in your tea no matter how long you boil it for, and is a decidedly unpleasant experience when you still have 1800 metres to descend before nightfall and no toilet facilities except a few large rocks to hide behind.

And so, as Sarah and Guy powered on ahead
as usual, Jonny and I finished the last day of trekking from Muktinath to Jomsom on horseback (much to Jonny’s frustration when I refused, on principle, to get in a jeep). Despite my assurances that they would only be pack-mules and he would be ‘completely safe’ because he was on the end of a lead reign, it resulted in Jonny being given a charming but skittish pony which had been loose in the forest for two weeks. Led by a nine year old, it reared and bolted at a particularly scary tractor about three hours into the ride and nearly threw him off the side of a cliff. Luckily, Jonny quite literally held on for dear life, thankfully escaping any serious harm whilst simultaneously impressing the Tibetan horse dealer with his fantastic equestrian skills. I appeased my guilty conscious by screaming at the tractor driver who had stupidly honked his horn at the sweet little foal that belonged to my mare.

From Jomsom we flew to the sleepy post-trekking mecca of Pokhara, where we deservedly chilled out for a few days in a decidedly 1950s retro style hotel called the Bedrock (en suite complete with green tiled corner bath), which wouldn’t have been out of place in Las Vegas. Nepal’s reputation as a world famous trekking destination is fundamental to Nepal’s economy, but it poses a strange problem for Nepal’s tourist trade, for trekkers are an incredibly mixed bunch. Groups are variously composed of young travellers who’ve normally either made it over the Tibet border or are here to escape the chaos of India for a few weeks; older dreamers on ‘do it before you die’ holidays; the odd serious mountaineer; and, seemingly, lots of Austrians, Canadians and Swiss (haven’t they had their fill of mountain scenery?). As a result, Nepal’s main tourist areas, Thamel and Pokhara, seem to cater for everyone and no one in particular, and when you add in the odd itinerant tourist smack-head hanging around trying to score, it makes them both surprisingly ‘unhip’.


So much so, in fact, that Jonny and Guy decided this was the perfect place to try out the power of the ‘moustache’ when they went to have their bushy trekking beards shaved off at the local barbers. There are some serious ‘taches to be seen in South Asia, where matters of great importance are often referred to as ‘matters of the moustache’. Sarah and I were horrified - even more so when we learned they had made a pact not to shave them off until we left Pokhara.

Pokhara’s lack of cool was proven beyond
doubt by a trip to The Beehive, ‘the ‘buzziest place in town’, which had a live band playing so loudly it almost (but not quite) drowned out the droning of the British Army Ghurka recruitment officers, who had made the place their own. Looking around, Jonny and Guy were just two of about 40 bristling moustaches in the place. After a few days, Pokhara’s lakeside prettiness had worn quite thin, and as we were unable to organise our next move from there effectively (not to mention my desperation to get Jonny to a decent barber) we decided to head back to Kathmandu.

Head for the Hills

As a child, I never associated Nepal with the Himalayas. I thought of Nepal as a small part of Northern India which I had gleaned from reading the information box on the menu at ‘Monty’s’, our local Nepalese restaurant. Mount Everest, on the other hand, was a single gigantic entity – God only knew where it might actually be - which the odd, exceedingly brave and/or stupid, person attempted to climb, and would then invariably show off their black, frostbitten fingers on Blue Peter if they managed to get to the summit.

Throughout my formative teenage years, Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, was completely synonymous with the 1960s Hippy Trail, notably through Janis Joplin’s line ‘You know you might think the road don’t end in Detroit…honey, the road don’t even end in Kathmandu…” . Even my parents, who had always pretended to be groovy hippy types in their youth, didn’t make it to Kathmandu. It was a legendary place (probably somewhere near the poppy fields of Afghanistan?), where you could surely smoke Nepalese Temple balls to your hearts content, get into meditation and ‘find yourself’, before dying prematurely in a bathtub, or wherever.

As a result, Nepal never really seemed real,
until a few years ago when my good
friend, Sanjini, was posted to Kathmandu with an NGO, and met and eventually married a Nepali, Ganesh. Through them, Nepal emerged as more than a myth; as a real bona fide mountain kingdom, where the people are very distinct from India, or nearby Tibet, and where the Hindu and Buddhist religions remain so strong that everywhere you go there are shrines and other reminders that here is a deeply spiritual place. The hippys came and went (and a few of them linger on in Kathmandu’s ‘Freak Street’) but of course the Nepali people remain.

Writing this, in the shadow of Nepal’s Manasulu, the eighth highest mountain in the world at just over 8000 metres, and Annapurna 2, another giant at over 7000m – (Everest trumping the lot at 8882m and rising), it feels like the peaks and valleys of Nepal have been left surprisingly untouched compared to other places. Although the environmental impact of tourism – mainly in the form of over a million water bottles left by thirsty trekkers as they walk one of the many trails around the Himalayan foothills – is palpable, the lodges are still basic, electricity a luxury (we’ve had two days without, out of 6 so far), and an extensive menu featuring anything but potato or lentil curry all but a distant memory.

All this on one of what is supposed to be a very over-developed 'apple-pie' trail called the Annapurna Circuit trek. Not only is the scenery here awesome, the levels of comfort are just enough to get us through 2 long weeks of daily trekking, particularly given the first two days of solid rain. If you like camping and hate seeing other Westerners, maybe the Annapurna is too easy. For us, struggling up the mountainside in the sunshine, trying to get over landslides, waterfalls and such like after days of heavy rain at the beginning of our journey, it feels just about as far off the beaten track as I like to get.

Chinese Medicine

On the way back to civilisation, bad luck struck again, and Jonny developed the worst toothache imaginable. His cheek swelled up to the size of a large orange, and we had to head for the nearest city. Toothache is about the last thing you want to get when travelling in under-developed countries. Where the tropical medicine is often better than anything you’ll receive in the UK, dentistry is often of the ‘if in doubt, pull it out’ school.

China is famed for its traditional medicine, and we had had a few brushes with it up to this point. Jonny had had his ears de-waxed with the longest cotton bud I've ever seen in my life; I had twisted my ankle quite badly on the Great Wall of China, and had some fantastic sports massage by a lady in Pingyao who managed to stop the pain for a few hours; following on from that, I went for another one in Xi’an and was offered ‘cupping’ – a traditional remedy that works on the basis of drawing toxins out of the body. Thinking it would be something akin to acupuncture, I agreed, and to give him something to do, Jonny was offered a free treatment as well.


Randomly placing cups on Jonny’s back and around my bruised knee, he sucked up the skin with a vacuum pump. Apparently the more bruised you get, the more toxins are coming out. All I could see was skin starved of oxygen, and purple bruising developing. Cupping, in my humble opinion, is nothing but outdated quackery and hocus-pocus.

Trying to find a decent modern dentist in Kunming was always going to be difficult. The first dentist was asleep on his own chair when we walked in, and after a cursory examination wanted to pull out Jonny’s gold tooth without even doing an x-ray. Needless to say, we left very quickly. Then we spent four hours in the local hospital, which was all very modern and had full oral x-ray facilities, but nobody spoke English. Somehow, through sign language and drawing pictures, we managed to get an x-ray done, but still couldn’t get any strong painkillers. Only then were we pointed in the direction of the local Colgate sponsored, sparkling clean and full English speaking dental hospital! After finally receiving a proper examination, it seemed Jonny was going to need to be somewhere for a while to sort the problem out, and the last thing we wanted was to be stuck in Kunming for another week.

The frustrating thing was that even in the proper dental hospital, the only painkiller on offer was under-strength ibuprofen. I couldn’t understand how, even in the major hospital in the city, they couldn’t prescribe ibuprofen with codeine or another stronger painkiller. Later I found out that the Chinese have an uneasy relationship with Codeine, or any opiate, due to the history of Opium Wars with the British, and the vast numbers of opium addicts in the population throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Codeine Phosphate was only licensed for use in cancer patients last year, and for any serious terminal illness, pain relief is woefully under-prescribed. We also learned that with no national health system, victims of accidents in China are often left on the roadside, as if you take a poor man to hospital unfortunately the good Samaritan is liable to pay his medical bills. When in China, it’s definitely best to be either healthy or rich, and preferably both.

We flew straight to Hong Kong, where our friends Gary and Angel put us up, got Jonny a dentist who managed to sort the problem out without major surgery, gave us the Slaughter and May company junk for a morning, and generally spoiled us rotten. Despite the pain Jonny endured for a few days, there is no doubt that we are definitely the lucky ones.

Kham Again

From Tiger Leaping Gorge, we headed further north into Tibetan Yunnan, where we approached the high altitude plateaux at an altogether more sensible pace. Before Tiger Leaping Gorge, we’d taken in the very beautiful but distinctly touristy town of Lijiang, whose great saviour was the amazing quality of its arts and crafts, but wanted to get further off the beaten track, if we could. We got to Zhongdian, recently re-christened Shangri-La to help bring in tourist trade after it was named as the subject of the 1930s British novel Lost Horizon (available in all good Yunnan bookshops).

Its 80% Tibetan here, with a few other minority groups, and really feels it: cold and crisp with the kind of amazing quality of light that you get at very high altitudes; Tibetan people of all ages dancing in a circle in the town square at dusk; being served deep fried yak cheese with sugar for breakfast (surprisingly tasty!).

Shangri La was our stopping off point to get to Deqin (Day-chin), which we’d heard was a largely unspoilt region. Its difficult to get to, being at least two days journey from the nearest airport or train station, and is only just opening up to tourism. We stayed at a little Tibetan trekking lodge – traditionally built in brick and wood and with space to keep animals below (newly converted to a shower block for backpackers) and with murals and paintings on all the walls.

Leaving our big packs behind and taking the barest essentials, we did a steep four hour trek uphill to a mountain pass. From there it was an hour downhill to a little village called Yebong. The facilities here are basic, to say the least. In fact, we’ve got quite used to decent backpacker hostels and clean, warm surroundings in almost all of the places we’ve stayed. Here it was rough and ready – four newly constructed hostels in a row on the side of the valley, with planks knocked together and thin mattresses for beds, one shower shack outside – solar powered shower though, not bad - and a ‘thunder-box’ on the path outside.

But to make up for the lack of creature comforts, Yebong is a valley truly deserving of the moniker ‘stunning’. There is no road, people get around on foot and mule and I guessed that this was how the Swiss Alps may have looked, in the days before carver skis and cable cars. Waking up in the morning and looking out over the valley, it was difficult to keep your balance: the feast for the eyes was too much to take in.

From Yebong you can trek to waterfalls and glaciers – all difficult climbs (for us) through thick mud and steep forest, but really worth it when you get there. We went in a group as it’s easy to get lost. The area is so new to tourism there aren’t any decent maps to be had; one man nearly didn’t find his way back and a search party was sent out to find him.

Getting back after the day’s trekking, we ate at the hostel. This wasn’t as straightforward as it sounds, as Jonny had to go into the kitchen (which was only lit by one dim light bulb) and order according to what he could see on the shelves. Spying a piece of meat, he flapped his arms in the universal sign of the chicken, and received a nod of the head. Great, he thought, chicken with vegetables. A short while later, much to the dismay of the group of Israeli’s who we’d been trekking with, a beautifully cooked piece of pork was served up. His excuse? In Tibet, pigs must fly! The flying pig was closely followed by a huge pot of casserole, containing an entire chicken, which had been duly chased around the yard and sacrificed for our dinner. Head, claws, everything was included!

It can't be long before this kind of life is a thing of the past for Deqin. It's certainly true that where backpackers go, a couple of years later the Chinese tour groups will follow. Deqin's saving grace at the moment is the lack of road but given that the Chinese government have built a train to Tibet's isolated capital, Lhasa, and are half way to finishing their highway to Everest base camp, unspoilt parts of Tibet are increasingly difficult to find.

A Dam Shame

More trekking. This time at “Tiger Leaping Gorge”, the world’s deepest river gorge, spanning the mighty Yangtze in the Yunnan Province of South West China. Named after a tiger was seen leaping across the stepping-stones at the turn of the century, these days the gorge is far too wide for any tiger to jump (even if there were any left in this part of the world) as a result of four separate earthquakes, which have driven the gorge apart.

And what a joy it was. We followed the upper path that winds through the forest and around the cliff - only safely accessible when the weather is good due to the high risk of landslides, a problem which isn't helped by the serious deforestation in a country that consumes about 25 million trees every year simply to make chopsticks.



This was the path of the ancient tea traders carrying tea between India and China and the pack mules are still in evidence, although these days they carry not tea but tourists up the notoriously steep ’24 Bends’. The whole walk normally takes about two days (very fit hikers can do it in a day), but we weren’t about to rush. Our legs were still recovering from Emei Shan, for one thing, and to take in the spectacular scenery and make the most of the top quality hostels en route, it’s best to go slow.

Despite the high risk of earthquakes, the Chinese government is planning to dam the gorge in 2008, flooding the entire area and ruining this beautiful place, not to mention the homes and livelihoods of thousands of locals. Officials say it’s the only solution to China’s serious water shortage: providing for over a billion residents is no easy task, as witnessed by dry water taps in many of the toilets, restaurants and hostels we’ve visited over the past few weeks.



As we picked our way down a somewhat slippery path to the rapids on our third and last day, we could hear the boom of the initial blasting (we thought it was thunder for a while) echoing over and over between the enormous cliffs on either side. It was unbelievable to think that Tiger Leaping Gorge might not even exist by the end of next year.

Upstairs, Downstairs

“A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”

Having fully recovered from our brush with Tibet, we decided to go ‘active’ for a while and headed for Emei Shan. One of China’s four holy mountains, the peak is 3047m high and is considered a necessary pilgrimage for many Chinese Buddhists. For some devout followers, climbing Emei Shan involves bowing with their heads to the ground after every 3 paces; for most visitors, however, taking a bus and cable car to the summit, and taking the bus back down again, is a more than adequate expression of faith.

The whole mountain is a giant staircase, with old craggy stone steps on the ‘long way round’ and newer concrete ones on the other, steeper, side. At intervals along the way are ancient monasteries, with names like ‘Magic Peak’ and ‘Elephant Bathing Pool’, where you can stay and rest overnight for a few dollars, and where large families of monkeys terrorize tourists with food or valuables. Starting at the steep side’s Wannian Temple we, along with hundreds of other people, began our trek upstairs. After the first hour of walking in the heat, Jonny, predictably, had turned into his ‘amazing melting man’ alter ego. I was reminded of the sign at Covent Garden station that says, ‘this emergency exit has 124 steps. Do not attempt unless in an emergency’; climbing this mountain would be no easy feat for these two Londoners. We took it, quite literally, one step at a time. A few hours and hundreds, if not thousands, of steps later we stopped for lunch, where we met an American guy, Jimmy, and another English couple, Pat and Nic, who walked at a similarly snail-like pace to us. We continued the climb together, which thankfully took our minds off the task.


It’s every pilgrim’s (and by this point, we definitely felt like pilgrims) wish to make it to the Golden Summit for sunrise on Emei Shan. Up there, magical things happen, like ‘Buddha’s Aureola’, a natural phenomenon where your own shadow becomes tinged by a rainbow, and when monks have been known to jump off the cliff believing they’ve been granted early nirvana. A bed would be good enough for us, mind you: we were determined to make it to the top before nightfall.

Nine hours after we began the trek, our five completely exhausted bodies somehow reached the top cable car station. Here you could get a lift to the last section of stairs and a hotel for the night and a further hour’s walk to get to the ‘Golden Summit’. Our relief soon turned to horror, as we realised we’d missed the last cable car of the day. As we pondered the prospect of a 3am rise and a two-hour morning walk to the summit, two Chinese ladies shouted down from the cable car station. Jonny somehow translated, “another cable car…going now!” Every last vestige of energy we had was spent running up the (yet more!) steps to the cable car station, carried only by a huge sense of elation that we would, after all, see the sunrise. At 4.30am, we woke up for the last hour of walking to the summit. It was pitch black, so foggy you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, and raining.


We had no idea how to get there, but knew we had to look out for a giant golden statue comprising four elephants and three Buddhas. Ten minutes later, we stumbled across a strange, marble plateaux, with steps and a sign saying ‘best place for Golden Summit photograph’. Surely this couldn’t already be it? We had no idea – it was so foggy we couldn’t see anything at all. We decided to stay put. Even if we weren’t right at the top, we would be in a good place to see the sunrise. When the light came, we were standing at the bottom of the biggest golden statue I have ever seen. There were crowds of people lining the plateaux and three temples of Bronze, silver and gold. At 6am, the sun poked its head above the clouds to a resounding cheer. We’d done it.


Or had we? If we thought the climb up was hard, nothing could have prepared us for the walk down again. Deciding to take the long way round, as it was more picturesque, the first hour of walking down wasn’t too bad. And then my knees began to really hurt. By 5.30pm we still had 2 hours of walking to go, and only one and a half hours of daylight. Despite the very real pain, we all quickened our pace to an, ‘almost-run’, singing songs and eating large amounts of chocolate to keep us going. Twenty minutes before we reached the bottom, the heavens opened and proper, torrential rain soaked us from head to foot. We didn’t care though: at least we’d make it back for beers in the hostel.

Emei Shan. One to remember.

Too High

Half way to Litung lies a small town, Kangding (pronounced Candy) with gushing rapids running right through the centre, neatly dividing it into two, and brightly coloured buddhas painted onto the mountainside above. Its here that China begins to really feel like Tibet – where green tea becomes ‘butter tea’ – a salty milky frothy drink which tastes like its fresh from the Yak - and where bright red cheeks give away the people’s true Tibetan mountain blood.

We stayed at the top of town, in a hostel where travellers congregate on their way into the highlands. Talk soon turned to the Litang horse festival, where we learned that there had been trouble earlier in the week. The festival is one of the few traditional meeting places for Tibetans from all over the Kahm region of Tibet (part of which is in China, and part in the Tibetan Autonomous Region); and for that reason the horse festival has been politicised by the Chinese ‘occupation’ as a rare chance for Tibetans to come together and voice their unhappiness. Consequently, the second day of the festival had been marked by political protest, soon descending into a stand off with the Chinese army; and then riots in which a Tibetan man was shot and killed by the military. Things had apparently calmed down, and the festival was still going, but it was to be the last ever horse festival of this kind that the Chinese would tolerate. We decided it was still worth the chance.

The next day we were up at the crack of dawn (she didn’t seem to mind - J) to begin what has to be one of the bumpiest, uncomfortable and yet stunning drives. Beautiful mountain countryside, ravines and waterfalls, dotted with grey brick Tibetan houses with multi-coloured windowsills. After a few hours, every bump in the road (and there were many) could be felt through the ancient bus seats, making the bus trip almost as much of an endurance test as climbing the mountain itself. We drove higher and higher, (the night before we’d been asked how high we’d been before; our response was, um, “is that a metaphorical question?”). We past a sign that said, scarily, 4600m . From a height of 2500 the previous night, we had climbed over two thousand metres in a matter of hours. I turned to Jonny, who was looking exceedingly pale. I feared the worst; travel sickness being one of the few minor ailments Jonny doesn’t suffer from.

Altitude sickness is a strange thing. If you’ve had it before it doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily get it again. And if you’re a super fit trekker accustomed to high altitude you can get it just as easily as someone who isn’t. Either way, at best its unpleasant, at worst it can be extremely serious. Jonny had suffered once before, in Peru; my only experience of altitude sickness had been a legendary New Years Day hangover in 1997, when I swore blind I had it (at 1400m), and passed out in the back of the car for the afternoon while the family went skiing.

An hour and a half later we were in Litung. Two hours later we found out there had been more arrests the previous day and two monks had been arrested for handing out political leaflets. Three hours later, we were both in a real state with extreme headaches and being violently sick. There was only one thing for it: we had to get down the mountain as soon as possible. Early next morning we found ourselves going back the way we came. Tibet and the horse festival had been screwed by China. And we had been screwed by Tibet.

Museum Peace

"The Great Wall Climber"

We've spent the last week or two ticking so many tourist boxes en route to Sechuan, that I think we might be 'templed out' before we've even reached Nepal!! Mind you, the four hour trek along the Great Wall just outside Beijing was truly great (even if I did twist my ankle stupidly jumping out of a watch tower), and the Terracotta Warriors were definitely worth the queue, as were some spectacular cave temples called the Longmen Caves - a UNESCO world heritage sight that we hadn't realised even existed.


Thousands of Buddha's carved into a rockface, from 1" to 100' high, all with different expressions and meanings...not that we knew what the meanings were as most of the explanation, as ever, was in Chinese. We're getting used to putting our own spin on things!

The Chinese approach to museums is interesting, to say the least. The Forbidden City in Beijing suffers from the fact that almost all its interior treasures got taken to Taiwan, where they now sit in a reputedly amazing museum. Those few that were left are now behind window panes which haven’t been cleaned for years. I’m all for repatriation of the world’s treasures to their rightful places (Elgin Marbles anyone?) but to be honest, at least for the moment some of those might be better off where they are. In Pingyao, a perfectly preserved old town just outside Beijing, the tourists crowd in to see a slice of old China. It’s like a movie set – and all the more interesting because its still very much a working (if increasingly touristy) town. But when the very artefacts which they’ve come to see are, quite literally, left outside to rust in the rain, you have to wonder how long this gravy train can last.

"Pingyao - last vestiges of reality before tourism sets in..."

So now we have arrived in Chengdu, capital of Sechuan, where much to Jonny's annoyance, he's discovered he can't stand the aftertaste of the world famous Sechuan Pepper (its a bit like detergent to the wrong tongue), leaving me to deal with the spicy hot pot, and him to put up with the milder version... certainly not playing to type!

We've just got wind of an annual Horse festival in Litung, near the Tibet/China border which is about 300 km west of Chengdu. Its apparently an amazingly colourful experience and involves all kinds of horse racing, skill demonstration and general 'wow' horsemanship. It finishes in a few days time, so if we're going to catch it, we've got to get the early bus (8 hours, then another 8 hours and a climb to over 4000m so hopefully no altitude sickness!).

Beginning in Beijing

We’d heard a lot about Beijing before we left London; mainly as the subject of much derision for its over-pollution, overpopulation, and over-demolition. But for us it was nothing if not a pleasant surprise.

True, the legendary traffic fumes choke the sunlight so you rarely see more than a haze over ”Old Peking” (you wake up coughing as if you’d smoked a packet of Benson and Hedges the night before) but despite this and the enormous scale of the place, which perhaps only dedicated urban dwellers can really enjoy, Beijing is one of the most relaxed capital cities I have ever been to.


Even the ubiquitous Tianannmen Square scammers aren’t very savvy in the grand scheme of things: we met a few travellers who had managed to scam them right back. Still, the vast majority of people treat westerners as somewhere between minor celebrities and the subject of much hilarity: we frequently turned around to find ourselves suddenly the subject of a group photograph - no questions asked!


Wandering through the Hutongs, its easy to see how the old style of Chinese living is disappearing very quickly in the name of ‘progress’, and with it much of the community feeling that living cheek-by-jowl demands. But that said, when traditional Hutongs lack basic sanitation, and whole families are living in rooms no larger than a double bedroom, perhaps progress really is the only way forward. Either way, the decision has been made. It ain’t pretty, but Beijing is now a thoroughly modern city.