I am now in Chongquing, insouth western China. We arrived here at 7:00am this morning, having cruised up the Yangtze for three days from Yichang. Chongquing is the seventh province we've visited in China and we'll be criss-crossing it and Szechuan for the next week or so. En route to Chongquing, we saw the three gorges dam, crossed six ship locks, saw the three gorges themselves, saw the mini three gorges, watched monkeys frolicking on cliff faces, cruised u...

On 17 June we passed the Silk Road monument, which is built on the old mustering point for silk road caravans at Xi'an. It marks the start and the end of the silk road, so it's official - we've completed it. Silk Road - tick. Some statistics: 1. Geography: - it took 89 days for us to travel 19,400 km by road from Dover to Xi'an. - our highest point was 4,090 metres above sea level on the road to Tashkurgan. - our lowest point was 50m below sea ...

We set off into the desert from Turpan and ran straight into a sandstorm. The wind was sufficient to slow us down to 30km/h and we made a gand total of 200km into the wind on the first day, stopping at 19:30 to make camp. Camping that night was interesting, sleep only came after I'd wrapped a sheet around my head to keep the sand out of my mouth and nose while I slept. On the second day we had the wind (and the inevitable rain) at our backs and covered ...

Haved spent the last five days crossing the Taklamakan desert and have now arrived in Turpan, the hottest city in China. We're lucky, the temperature is still in the low thirties, reaching 35 degrees yesterday. The real heat is expected to arrive in two weeks time (when we will hopefully be ensconed in air-conditioned, five star luxury in Xi'an). The Taklamakan desert is the flattest and wettest we've yet encountered. We've been rained on every night and our...

Now in Kashgar, having made it safely across the Torugart Pass from Kyrgyzstan. The total crossing time was 3 hours and 25 minutes - far less than the 16 hours one punter had bid for on the trcuk sweepstakes. Kashgar is our first official Chinese city, but in many ways it's not very Chinese at all. The population is mostly Uighar, with Kyrgyz and Tadjiks in the countryside outside the city. There are pockets of Han Chinese within the city, and it's fair...