We checked out of the Hotel Shangri La, sad to leave the friendly staff behind us but happy to be moving on to Beijing, but first had a couple days' stopover in Kuala Lumpur to recharge. We arrived at the Royal Chulan hotel in the early afternoon then spent ages discussing the room options with reception. Maria had already checked that our reservation was confirmed, which is just as well as their system had no record of our stay, so we were at least now co...

Maria couldn't sleep so decided to spend the night in the corridor and in so doing identified some interesting signs for the benefit of the passengers...well foreign travellers at least!! We arrived on time, about 0800 ish, at Liuyuan train station, some 128 km north of downtown Dunhuang and met our new guide, Kevin, for the drive to the next town.

Maria hardly slept a wink last night as she felt as if she was the midnight snack for gazillions of hungry little visitors.The western breakfast, as advertised, wasn't, so we were in great spirits for the day ahead!In fact, we had contemplated scrapping some of the day's itinerary as the guide book advised against visiting the Bizaklik Caves and Grape Valley as there was nothing worth seeing there.We decided to judge for ourselves and set off on the 30-minute d...

We drove the 2-3 hours to Turpan on the 113 mile expressway, passing vast wind warms that, judging from the lack of motion from the turbines, were generating about as much electricity as a Toyota hybrid breaking.Turpan is a basin in the mountains of east Xinjiang, has the lowest elevation of any place in China and is the third lowest depression in the world at 154m below sea level.It is insanely hot and the temperature in the summer reaches over 40°C, which is...

Another early morning but we skipped breakfast today for obvious reasons! Our flight to Urumqi was at 0850 local time and we were at the airport at 0715. We checked-in no problem, said goodbye to Wahap, got our full bottle of P20 sunscreen confiscated at security as we'd left it in a carry-on bag by mistake and boarded the flight on time. We bumped into Jack and Brian again, the two gentlemen from Karakul Lake and the Kashgar tour and said hello then started ch...