Well, where to start! So much has happened since the day of the landslides! I've walked 30 kms down a mountain, got marooned half way down and had to spend the night in a monastery and been attacked, yes, attacked by maurauding monkeys!! All that later, however. In the interests of continuity I'll go back last Monday. It was pouring with rain the next morning, so no taxis were to be had so I took a bicycle rickshaw who dropped me off at the wrong place (not on p...

The weather broke with a big storm in the afternoon of the day before yesterday(Saturday) and it has been raining more or less continuously ever since. So yesterday's 10 hour bus ride (which began at 6.30 am), turned into a 15 hour marathon, punctuated by landslides and rock falls, none of which did anything to improve the quality of the road which was often little more than a dirt track. Six and a half hours into the journey we came to a halt and joined a long ...

I'm getting very out of sequence, so will just update as and when I can. Computer scarcity is the problem. The one I'm using at the moment won't let me into my emails, so not sure when I shall read those again! I have just spent 10 hours on a bus, travelling to a National Park in northern Sichuan Province. I sat mutely (only mute because neither of us understood a word the other was saying!) next to a lovely old Chinese man who shared his sunflower seeds with me...

Many thanks to all of you who sent messages of sympathy and support after that horrible incident a week ago. They were so much appreciated. well, I 've escaped! I'm in Chengdu at the moment, having flown in from Xi'an this afternoon. The travel agent in London finally informed me that the train tickets could not be issued prior to 45 days before travel. There was obviously no point in hanging around, so I left on Friday, not before having a bit of a falling out ...

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 ...