We were in Urumqi for a couple of hours, but most of that was spent crawling across the city centre in a terrible traffic jam, and then back out of the city in a minibus on its way to Bagang, where Hannah's project was based. Visiting Bagang was exciting for several reasons: first, we'd get to slob around and relax for a couple of days; second, we'd be reunited with Beth and Dan there and finally, we'd get to try gotye, the local fried dumpling specialty that Han...

To get from Dunhuang to Urumqi, in Xinjiang, we were taking a 14hr overnight bus which we, fairly, I think, expected to horrible. Our visit was also coinciding with a period of violence in Xinjiang, seemingly related to its being the anniversary of serious riots by the local Uighur minority in 2009, so we were worried that we, as tourists, might not be allowed into the area. Luckily, we were, although police came onto our bus to check the identity papers of all t...