10. 31 August to 11 Sept 2011 - South through China towards Tibet - Gansu and Qinghai Provinces

Traffic jam blues were soon forgotten with the wonderful city of Dunhuang, our major stopover in Gansu Province. It lies in a fertile oasis, a relief from the desert landscape all around.

We spent two full days there relaxing in a reasonably priced hotel, and wandering at our leisure throughout the city. A market street selling fresh food and hardware runs parallel and in stark contrast to the busy traffic street of designer clothing shops and everything for upmarket shoppers. We explored the Night Market which is colourful and crowded, selling an array of handicrafts made on the spot, and we had a meal there in a fantastic atmosphere, with a local musician playing a saxophone of sorts, while we ate our simple but so tasty meal of barbecued skewered meat and vegetables.

A night at the Dunhuang Theatre was spectacular - a highly skilled performance of acrobatics, dance and music - a dramatisation of one of the stories on the walls of the Mogao Caves, which we were later to visit. Each curtain drop between scenes would relate the story line ahead both in Chinese and English, though it seemed the whole audience was Chinese, and very subdued with their applause, unlike the six enthralled tourists sitting mesmerized towards the front.

There is plenty to see around Dunhuang as well. The Mogao Caves are cave temples, apparently with the greatest collection of Buddhist art in the world. There are 492 caves, and once there were 18 monasteries and 1400 monks. Some caves date back to 3rd Century AD and silk traders and caravans along the Silk Road stopped there to pray for a safe journey. We visited 12 caves, the first two known as the Buddha caves. Walking into the first cave, as you adjust to the dimmer light, a huge Buddha is before you, and it is not until your head is at right angles to your body that you see his magnificent head 34.5 metres above. Much later you realise his hands are half way back down, and then what a surprise to discover his huge feet on either side at the base. The second cave with the reclining Buddha at peace in Nirvana was also spectacular. The very last cave, called the Library Cave, was accidentally discovered in 1900 by the self-appointed guardian of the caves when he was cleaning a wall. In a tiny hidden room were texts in rare Central Asian languages, military reports, music scores and medical prescriptions, Confucian and Taoist classics and Buddhist sutras, and the oldest printed book in existence, 'Diamond Sutra' from 868 AD. Unfortunately it wasn't long before many were sold for 220 UK pounds and whisked off to Europe. The Western Thousand Buddha Caves which we visited the following day were not as spectacular, but still very interesting and without the hordes of Chinese tourists at the Mogao Caves.

The Singing Sands Mountain is a series of fabulous sand dunes on the edge of the Dunhuang oasis, and we had our first ever camel ride late in the afternoon. It was brilliant fun, and the camels so very well behaved.

More driving through desert landscape after leaving Dunhuang, and interesting campsites as we travelled south into Qinghai Province, following the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, opened in 2007, a huge engineering feat which includes wild and rugged mountain landscape later on, as well as the Fenghuoshan railway tunnel, the highest in the world. Golmud was another fantastic city stop, and we managed to park and camp in a hotel car park right in the centre, enjoying the markets, restaurants, and one evening some street dancing to music as the group followed the moves of the lead dancer. We have seen this before in squares in cities, and it seems a very popular activity.

During our travels, we have had a couple of nights without Ping to help us order at restaurants, though she has taught us some important words like 'beer' and 'meat' and 'rice', and of course 'hello' and 'thankyou'. The menus are totally in Chinese, and even though a Chinese-English dictionary can be handy if you remember to bring it, pointing to lamb or chicken isn't enough to know what you are really ordering, and even the pictures with Chinese writing underneath don't indicate what type of meat or vegetable it might be. One time it had to come down to charades, with Richard particularly clever at conveying 'chicken' and 'egg', with staff and other diners highly amused. Another time, after viewing the fish swimming in the tank, a fish dish for six people was selected. But the Chinese show six with a clenched fist with the little finger and thumb still standing, so although we had learnt this from Ping, we think this sign may have been overused and added to the confusion, because our dish could have served 12 people with untold numbers of fish hiding in the spicy chilli soup. We did our best to eat them all, and the staff kept trying to serve us more and more - the fish were about 15cm in length with soft flesh which just fell off the bone. But the bill certainly revealed how much we need Ping!

Ping has introduced us to some new food experiences. Steamed bread curled into little balls and soft and spongy like white bread. Chinese fast food hamburgers, different to ours with two round flat crispy pieces of bread, the dough made on the spot near the door, with finely minced tasty meat inside. Chinese ravioli served in a tasty soup - who made pasta first we ask??? The Italians, or did Marco Polo take it across to Italy from China, and it dried out along the way?? Ping laughs and knows the answer! And we've had moon cakes, which celebrate the Moon Festival in September, when over a three day period families do their best to get together on Family Reunion Day and eat moon cakes together. Moon cakes are small, individual cakes and can have anything in them, as was the case with the two we bought. One had a duck egg yolk in the middle, which was an interesting surprise, while the other was sweet potato and corn, but with a cake-like texture. We have also tried yams and long green beans, which are not beans, but peppers - another taste surprise. And finally, we have eaten street food, all very tasty and spicy, even the hot and bubbling liver dish which was scary but delicious.

We are also intrigued with the variety of glasses in which beer is served. Plastic mugs in plastic mug holders, which force the little finger out in such a dainty way, as well as shot-size glasses, which certainly make harder work of consuming a bottle, and would certainly make shouts more interesting at home! Also regular English pint glasses, and small tumblers, but often the beer is not chilled, so Ping now chooses restaurants for us based on the temperature of their beer. Looking forward to serving unchilled beer at home in tiny glasses with straws, just for a change!

The Chinese really know how to do food as we know from the China Towns we all know from home. We have walked through a huge undercover market as big as a football field, selling every type of food imaginable. Meat - mutton, pork or beef -butchered on the spot, half carcasses still hanging, and dangling skeletal frames completely stripped of meat. Poultry, whole and dried, still with head, legs and feet, or live in cages. Fish are either alive in tanks or dried and hanging in rows, and all manner of seafood on display. And rows of bags full of spices. But the vegetables are the best, some we haven't ever seen before. We saw varieties of mushrooms that don't even look like mushrooms, both dried and fresh, and just about every vegetable that has ever been grown. And people hosing and sweeping the walkways, motor scooters weaving in and out, and busy, busy, busy!

We have also found some great supermarkets, one with three storeys, but it's a matter of getting used to completely different products, and actually not knowing exactly what they are until after opening or checking with Ping. We haven't had butter or milk for weeks, and cheese is rare.

Leaving Golmud we knew the challenge of high altitude was ahead. We were travelling south towards Tibet, still following the railway line, which goes through to Lhasa and then on to Beijing. The snow capped mountains of the Kunlan Mountain Range were immediately visible, and it wasn't long before we saw the first of many Buddhist prayer flag maypoles on the side of the road. We stopped for lunch at 4044 metres (Golmud was 2800m) near a Taoist Temple, set in the stark hills with the backdrop of a Kunlan Mountain jade mining site, well known in China. After lunch the Kunlunshan Pass at 4784 metres found us short of breath as we wandered around all the prayer flag structures, added to by travellers praying for a safe journey. We eventually camped at an altitude of 4474 metres, more than double the height of Mt Kosciusko, and woke up to -4 degrees outside and zero in our camper.

A beautiful drive across open plateau landscape and towards the Tanggula Mountains, stopping for morning tea with the temperature still only 2 degrees. Another prayer flag draped mountain pass - Fenghuo Pass - at 4968 metres, higher than we have ever been on land. Our campsite that night was at a mere 4540 metres near a small town and an army base. But what we thought was light rain during the night turned out to be an inch of snow on our vehicle and 'dom' next morning. This was a first, but feeling breathless and cold while trying to pack up camp was not fun at the time. More plateau driving, but this time with snowy peaks all around and we started seeing yaks, so beautifully adapted to high altitude, with their long haired skirts, in fact they apparently can only survive above 3000 metres. We had now reached over 5000 metres, and passed through a very Tibetan-looking village with decorated motor bikes everywhere and houses with highly decorated doors, windows and eaves.

Finally we made it to the Tanggula Pass and the Tibetan border, though not a typical border post with Tibet being part of China. Just more elaborate prayer flag structures, and a breathless 5231 metres! The altitude definitely a challenge, but here we were about to descend into Tibet, with more high altitude, but it felt it might be worth every metre.