hey there everyone, still a little behind on this web site but i'm starting to get there. since leaving dege i've been on one hell of a long road trip! i had to take the bus back to ganzi and saty the night there. early the following morning i was taking the bus to tagong. i fell asleep on the bus and the driver sailed right past my stop, muppet!! so i had to pay eaxtra to get to kanding, after kanding it was up early again to get the bus back to chengdu so i could get some money to fund the second leg of my western sichuan trip. i stayed in chengdu for 2 nights. it was nice to get back to the city after being out in the wild west, nice to have everything you want at your finger tips. caught up on some well earned drinking in chengdu aswell, met some really nice chinese students in a pub, we all sat down and had a drink and a chat and had a real good time. back at the guest house dan, my friend i met in hong kong, sorted me out a cheep and comfortable ride all the way to litang. so the following morning it was off again to kanding, one night there and then onto litang. litang is bloody high!! since i arrived here yesterday i've been constantly out of breath. even when i'm led down in bed reading my book i find i'm having to take long deep breaths. i went to the main moastery in litang with paul the scottish guy i met yesterday. the monastery is only about 500 meters walk but we had to stop twice to take breath, being at 4680 meters the air here is rather thinner than what i'm used to. the monastery is a beautiful place with plenty of monks hanging around the place. on the was to the monastery we saw a bit of a rawkus kick off between to young monks, they couldn't have been any older than about 15 and they were throwing punches at eachother, one even pulled a large stone out of a nearby wall and started to swing it wildly in the direction of the other monk, but i think this was more to scare the guy, i think it scared me more than the other monk. after checking out the monastery paul and me went to the bus station to see if we could get a bus out of here tomorrow. i'm heading to daocheng tomorrow in the afternoon and paul is heading to zhongdian. with the sun being really strong at this altitude i decided to chill out in my room for the rest of the afternoon and read my book, john grisham's 'a time to kill'. not much else has happened today other than chatting to the locals and being talked into eating with a monk tomorrow at a tibetan resturant, i think he want's to take me to daocheng tomorrow on his motorbike, but i might be completely wrong. cheers all, speak again soon. christopher.