20 November It seems our luck at avoiding crowds has come to an end. We've spent the day at Jûzhaigōu National Park and it's quite possibly my worst national park experience, ever. The guide books has said it was busy and I'd even read that they limit entry to 40,000people per day! I thought no way will there be that many people. It's mid November and everyone tells us it's low season and buses aren't even running any longer to go north. I was wrong. We arri...

Yunnan 8-16 November We're six days into our China travels and things are easier than we expected. Nearly everyone we had spoken to said China wasn't a great place, was really difficult to travel, the people were rude and it wasn't clean. Needless to say we were slightly apprehensive but ready for the challenge. Our experience so far couldn't be further from that. Yes, very little English is spoken, no signage is in English other than at airports, menus are gen...

Everest Base Camp Day 1 Friday 16 October We woke at 4am to catch the 6am flight to Lukla. It's best to leave early as the weather tends to worsen as the day goes on. We boarded the 16 seater plane, managing to get seats on the left hand side which offer the views of the Himalayas. We were not disappointed, the scenery was spectacular and the flight very smooth. I knew though that Lukla is a difficult airport to land at, with a short, steep runway and upon desc...

We've arrived in Nepal and are in Kathmandu. Tony's bag didn't quite make it beyond Dubai, although mine, checked in at the same time, did. We were told that Kathmandu airport doesn't have a service to forward on missing bags so we headed back to the airport nine hours later hoping it had arrived on the next Dubai flight. Thankfully it turned up although it was an agonising wait as it was one of the last off the conveyor belt. I'm actually writing this whilst st...

South Africa 30sep-12 Oct South Africa represented a departure from our normal travel style through Africa. We stayed in fab accommodation, ate at fancy restaurants, drank our body weight in red wine and we spent time alone and not in a group. We arrived in Stellenbosch staying at the Stumble Inn and ate at Ernie Els restaurant in the private dining room. The food, service and decor were fab. The next day we headed out on a wine tour with Brad, Michal, Alicia...