Our train journey out of Zhangye that evening was probably the best I've ever had. Shortages of normal hard seat tickets meant we'd had to pay for more expensive soft seats - very exciting, as it was the first time any of us had done so. Soft seats are arranged in rows of two, they have more leg room, they can recline and there are no people with standing tickets sharing your carriage and blocking the aisles. Not just that, but thanks to some very complicated sea...

We left Xiahe at 6am on the morning of the 12th to get back to Xining. A little girl vomited in the aisle early in the journey, which, as usual, took an hour or so longer than it was meant to, but we got into Xining in decent time and managed to shower and repack before getting onto our next bus, this one to Zhangye. We arrived at around 1am and immediately sprang into action as the world's most efficient travellers, organising a driver for the next day before we...

The owner of our guesthouse, who also suffered from a touch of the crazy, had arranged our horse-riding expedition with a local Tibetan family he knew. He sent us off with gleeful stories of how a girl had broken her front teeth horse-riding the day before. We were dropped off at a small, one-storey brick house the size of a portakabin in the grasslands, set in its own large yard amidst a small collection of similar buildings. Inside, we were gestured through to ...

There was only one bus each day from Tongren to our next stop, Xiahe, and that left at 8.30am. We set plenty of alarms so we'd wake up in time for this, but Cat sleepily turned them all off, so it was only by the luck of my having woken up at 7.45 in need of the loo that we made it in time. The bus was packed with local people in traditional dress, who were just as fascinated by us as we were by them. I made friends with the Tibetan lady sat next to me by showing...

Tongren was the first real stop on Cat, Hannah and I's path along the old Silk Road. From here, the three of us would spend 10 days inching further north-west towards Hannah's project, Bagang, by Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province. Here we would pause to catch our breath and reunite with Beth and Dan, who'd have finished their summer camp, and the five of us would continue on to Kashgar together, which is conclusion of the Silk Road in China. I think our ro...