We woke up to the sobering reality that we had at least 5 hours left trapped on the train. The size of China really hit home, we had been on the train for 12 hours and even after the full 17 we'd only have covered about half of it's width. After treating myself to a cookie breakfast that had the old lady in the bed opposite tutting I jumped back into 'Great Expectations' and 19th century England. Looking out the window at the peasants working the fields didn't se...

After affording ourselves a little lie-in we checked out of our 'home from home' for the last time. I headed out to find a bookstore containing English books for the gruelling 17 hour train we were about to catch and Dave went to search for more high quality goods to fill his house and fridge door. i wandered the streets for a while, taking in the mass of humanity that was swarming around making the most of their October holiday. I eventually found a bookshopand ...

We were up with the larks at 5 to try and watch the sunrise and headed back to the peak along with about 30 others. Sadly, mist enveloped the peak and we struggled to see 10 feet away, let alone the the sunrise! We headed to the restaurant and chugged back some noodles to power us on our way and set off to reach the other peaks. The exertions of the previous day left our legs pretty heavy but we reached the highest point of the mountain, the 2,196m South peak, be...

We were up bright and early to pack for our ascent of Hua Shan, a 2,000 metre mountain considered holy by Taoists. I was armed with a new 6 quid rucksack and a 4 quid purple plastic poncho to help me on my way. After a couple of hours of constant rain on the bus to the base we weren't sure how safe the ascent would be but we overheard some Germans preparing for the ascent and goddammit we weren't going to be outdone by the Hun! The beginning of the climb was a ...

After a bit of a lie-in and a session getting back in touch with civilization on the internet we headed out to walk the old city walls of Xian. They are apparently the widest defensive city walls still standing in the world (up to 18 metres at the base in places) so we set out thinking it would be an interesting walk. Unfortunately, however, we found the only attraction is the wall itself as the view down into the city is pretty charmless. If we hadn't been to Pi...