My Tibetan guide/minder did not take her duties very seriously and left me to my own devices for much of the time. So on Thursday afternoon and evening I joined the stream of pilgrims circumambulating, in a clock wise direction, around the periphery of the Jokhung Temple. The circuit is souvenir mecca and the pilgrims are from all parts of Tibet with distinctive hairstyles, clothes and ornaments. They carry hand-held prayer wheels with which to send, skywards, th...

Well, things are moving quickly. I've got BOTH visas and have thus been able to plan the remainder of my travels. The Russians tried a final act of sabotage (and no, I'm not becoming paranoid!) when I went to collect my visa. They decided that they did want to see my rail tickets after all. But I was on to them and produced the tickets in a flash, so they were forced to concede and hand over the visa! The Mongolians were as helpful, friendly and unobstructive as ...

I'm back in baking old Beijing. I got back last Friday after a journey that lasted 15 hours. First there was the bus to Haikou through a quite mountainous and thickly wooded interior, which was, at one time, virgin rain forest but has now been largely cultivated and built on. Heavy rain in Haikou meant that, once again, no taxis were available so I ended up on the back of a motorbike rickshaw, buried under my mountain of luggage. Quite how the motorbike made it a...

I'm not sure that I should be writing a blog in my present state of mind. Things are not going well. It's a case of 'abandon hope all ye who enter Beijing'. I dispair of ever escaping. The Russians are refusing to give me a visa without a train ticket and I can't get a train ticket until it has been paid for and that will take a day or two and so the time rolls on, with nothing good coming out of it at the moment. In fact I had a pretty unpleasant experience on ...

The trip to Hong Kong was nothing if not incredibly HOT (temps in the mid to upper 30's) and incredibly frustrating! First I was told that the train back to Beijijng was completely full until the 20th July but that I could get a cheapish (nothing in HK is actually 'cheap') flight. So I didn't rush the visa through in 24 hours, I gave it 48 hours instead. I was then told that actually the train wasn't full at all, there were plenty of seats, but that there wasn't ...