The Everest Region

At 8848m Everest is the highest mountain in the world. It might not be one of the world's most dramatic looking mountains but what it lacks for in looks it makes up for in sheer height. Ever since Hillary and Tenzing first climbed the mountain in 1953, hundreds of thousands of people have come to the Everest region to take a look at Everest and the surrounding Himalayan peaks.

The plan for our trek was to fly to Lukla, go up the Gokyo valley and then cross over the Cho La pass into the Khumbu valley where we would walk up as far as Everest Base Camp. To get this into perspective Everest Base Camp, which is where the mountaineering expeditions to climb Everest start from, is itself at a height of 5364m. In comparison Western Europe's highest mountain Mont Blanc stands at a relatively tiddly 4808m.

Of course height isn't everything. To get up Mont Blanc you have to climb on ice and rock. Just about anybody can stroll into Everest Base Camp given enough acclimatization time. In fact as our guide and porter Bhola mentioned he had once taken a 78 year old Canadian man up there. Clearly it was going to be dead easy!

The first challenge however was actually getting to the mountains. Theoretically September should be a fantastic time for walking in the Himalayas. The monsoon has drawn to a close while the tourist hordes have yet to arrive. Unfortunately this year the monsoon came very late to Nepal and on 12 September, the date that we were due to fly from Kathmandu to Lukla, it was still pouring down with rain.

Because the tiny planes that fly to Lukla are not equipped with much in the way of instrumentation the pilots have to be able to see where they are going in order to take off. We joined a group of unhappy tourists waiting in Kathmandu airport. As well as small groups like ourselves there were several large organized camping groups, complete with an extraordinary number of eggs in cardboard cartons.

After waiting for six hours our flight was cancelled and we went back to our hotel in Kathmandu. Determined not to squander our precious remaining time sitting at Kathmandu airport we decided to try once more the following day. If the flight didn't leave we would get a bus to Besisahar and walk the Annapurna circuit instead.

The next day didn't look very promising either. It wasn't actually raining but there was lots of cloud in the sky. We had settled down to eat some overpriced biscuits from the airport shop for breakfast when suddenly we heard our flight to Lukla being called. Within literally five minutes the plane was in the sky. I wasn't sure whether to be happy that we were on our way to the Everest region or terrified that we were now in a small plane in questionable weather conditions.

It turned out however that Lukla airstrip was free of cloud and the plane landed safely. As we got off we could hear sounds of clapping and cheering coming from crowds around the airport. Our plane was the first to land in six days! Just behind us another plane landed. Within a few minutes they were both up in the air heading back to Kathmandu with a full contingent of passengers.

"Wow", said a Dutch guy from our plane who worked in luggage handling at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. "We think we are doing well if we can get the planes turned around in an hour".

Outside the airport were lots of young Nepali men hoping to get hired as porters. There were also plenty of wild haired and slightly feral looking western trekkers hoping to be able to get back home. As we walked up the hill, cloud swiftly crept up the valley and had soon completely covered Lukla airstrip preventing any more flights from landing.

Lukla is at a relatively modest 2840m. The whole first part of our trek however had been planned around our need to acclimatize to the increasing altitude we would experience. This meant lots of short and easy days to start off with, which didn't sound like such a bad idea.

Our first night's stop was Phakding, a village a few hours walk from Lukla. The countryside in the Everest region looked very prosperous. Actually with the cozy looking stone cottages, neat stone walls and tidy vegetable patches we felt more like we were walking through the Cotswolds than the Himalayas.

The next day as we followed the tree lined river valley up towards Namche Bazar, the most important town in the region, the villages became further spread out. We had to sign in at the Sagarmatha National Park Entrance and then walked up a hill until reaching a prayer flag clad suspension bridge high above the river. From here it was a long winding climb up to Namche Bazar at 3440m.

If we were feeling sorry for ourselves, then the sight of the porters walking up the hill to Namche put things into perspective. There are no roads in the Everest area, in fact the road ends at Jiri which is another seven days walk out from Lukla. As a consequence most goods, from silly things like beer and Sprite for trekkers to essential items like flour have to be carried in by porters.

The porters, often wearing flip flops as opposed to proper walking shoes, carry a basket on their backs which is attached by a strap to their foreheads. These baskets are usually piled up so high with goods that they end up towering up in the air above the porter. Each porter has a stout walking stick. At rest stops they don't take their baskets off but simply place the stick underneath transferring the load to the ground.

At this point Steve, whether out of curiosity, machismo or masochism I am not quite sure decided he wanted to try to carry the bag of our guide and porter Bhola. I should say at this point that whilst Bhola was carrying our bag, it did only contain the bare essentials for our trip as opposed to six crates of San Miguel and a drum of paraffin and so was not really to be compared to the loads of the other porters. Even so, once the things that Bhola needed for himself were added on it was a pretty heavy bag and Steve lasted all of about fifteen minutes carrying it up the hill.

We were pleased to eventually make it up to the Sherpa town of Namche Bazaar. The Sherpas, now world famous for their role in mountaineering, started immigrating over the mountains from Tibet around six hundred years ago and settled as farmers and herders in the Everest region. The Sherpa language is closely related to Tibetan. In fact in Tibetan, Sharpa means 'Eastern People'.

Many Sherpas have made relatively large amounts of money working for expeditions and running lodges for trekkers and mountaineers. Perhaps due to this money, Namche itself felt like a boom town. Construction seemed to be happening everywhere. In a labor intensive process, largely carried out by workers from other parts of Nepal, heavy stone blocks were being taken from the quarry by porters and then painstakingly hand chipped into the right shape. The resulting flawless stone work looked like something that the ancient Incas would have been happy to put their names to!

After staying the night in Namche we needed time to acclimatize to the new altitude. The next night's stop was therefore planned for the village of Khumjung a short walk above Namche at 3780m. When we woke up in the morning a huge range of mountains suddenly appeared in the mist above Namche but then swiftly disappeared again while we were having breakfast.

Walking up the hill to Khumjung felt pretty tiring at this altitude. Sir Edmund Hillary (the first man to climb Everest along with Tenzing Norgay) helped to set up a high school near Khumjung and we met quite a few students on their way back down to Namche after taking an exam. Unsurprisingly they all seemed to be in pretty good shape. The epidemic of childhood obesity in the UK would probably be solved overnight if British kids had to walk 6km a day to school up and down a massive hill!

During the afternoon as we were relaxing in our lodge in Khumjung the beautiful twin peaked mountain Ama Dablam made a brief appearance through the cloud.

The plan for the following day was to walk up to Dole in the Gokyo valley. A mixture of sunshine and clouds allowed us to spot a few more mountains and it seemed as though the weather might be taking a turn for the better. Crossing a high point at 4000m Steve developed quite a bad headache (a common sign of altitude problems) so we decided to descend and spend the night at Phortse Tenga (3675m).

The first lodge we experienced at Phortse Tenga was on the more basic side of things. Noting the authentically medieval kitchen we decided to order boiled potatoes on the basis that they couldn't go wrong. We were then a little surprised to be served a big plate of potatoes still covered in both their skins and lots of mud. After removing the skins with Steve's penknife however they tasted pretty good. We then descended a little further towards the river where we found quite a nice lodge to spend the night.

After a short walk up to Dole (4050m) the next day we settled in for the afternoon. Going further would have meant going higher and we felt that it would be more sensible to take the increase in altitude nice and slowly. The scenery was starting to change in Dole. The trees were getting smaller with less agricultural land and yaks were grazing on the hillside.

To pass the time I started to read a book by Jon Krakauer called Into Thin Air. Within minutes I was totally mesmerised. It is the story, written by somebody who was there, of the disastrous 1996 climbing season on Everest in which more people died attempting to climb the mountain than in any other single year. The human story itself is so engaging that I think that even people with zero interest in climbing or Everest would find this book pretty difficult to put down.

I later discovered that Into Thin Air is actually quite a controversial book, mainly because Krakauer criticizes the behavior of some of the other people on the mountain particularly the Russian guide Anatoli Boukreev. As Boukreev risked his life to rescue three people from the middle of a storm near the top of Everest while Krakauer lay safely tucked up in his sleeping bag doing nothing, a lot of people think that Krakauer's comments are hypocritical to say the least! While I am inclined to agree with this point of view I think the book itself remains an absolutely gripping read.

Recovered from my late night mountain disaster reading session, the next day we walked on to a small place called Machermo (4410m). With the sun out, the logical next step was for everybody to start washing their clothes. The lodge owner provided us with plastic bowls and soon myself, three French trekkers who had been at the lodge in Dole, workers from the Machermo lodge and several guides and porters were all scrubbing away at an assortment of socks and shirts and table cloths. Perhaps inevitably as soon as the washing was hanging up, the sky darkened and it started to pour down with rain.

Fortunately the lodge owner decided to put the stove on. Although the stove was powered by Yak dung the chimney meant that it didn't smell at all. Soon due to an ingenious arrangement of chairs and trekking poles around the fire everyone's laundry was in a position to get dry.

The French trekkers had, in a very civilized way, brought genuine French whiskey and sausage up to the mountains with them. Combined with a large packet of Pringles they got a very nice pre dinner party going which they kindly let us join in. Feeling that we had to reciprocate their hospitality we bought a not so nice bottle of Everest whiskey to share around and went to bed a little tipsy.

I should say at this point that we had gained the company of a trekking dog. These are dogs that follow trekkers around the main routes begging for food. Not your usual scabby looking mongrels, I think that they are probably Tibetan Mastiffs. In any case they have beautiful thick brown and honey colored coats, presumably a prerequisite for survival in the Himalayan winters.

The dog that was following us was despite his beautiful coat painfully underweight and pathetic looking. Mindful of the notices at the entrance to the national park that warn tourists not to feed the dogs as they pose a hazard to wildlife, we resisted giving the dog any food for quite a long time. Finally however, Bhola cracked and sealed our fate by giving the dog some of my left over vegetable fried rice in Machermo.

The next stop was Gokyo (4800m). To get there we walked through an increasing barren and rocky landscape past a couple of glacial lakes. Gokyo itself was situated by the third glacial lake. There are two main reasons for visiting Gokyo, to climb the nearby Gokyo Ri view point (5340m) and to walk up to the fifth lake (5000m). From both these places there are fine views of Everest and many other Himalayan peaks.

The next day dawned bright and clear so we decided to walk as far as fifth lake. Unfortunately as we walked the sky started to cloud over and by the time we reached the fifth lake the clouds had obscured the top of Everest. We did however get some really good views of Cho Oyu (8201m) which appeared directly in front of us. It seemed surprisingly small looking for the world's sixth highest mountain!

The plan had been to climb Gokyo Ri the following day. However the weather had taken a turn for the worse during the night and when we woke at dawn the visibility was very poor. We decided that there would be no point in trying to climb Gokyo Ri and so had a bit of a lie in before walking across to Tangnag.

The path to Tangnag lay over the Ngozumpa glacier. The glacier was however completely covered by debris and there was no sign of the ice beneath. Interestingly enough, the dog didn't follow us to Tangnag. Presumably it knew we were on our way to the Cho La pass!

At Tangnag we settled in to a cozy lodge for the night. Up in the mountains many of the lodges are owned by Sherpas who have climbed Everest and used the money to open a lodge. Each time that they summit Everest, they are provided with a certificate by the Nepali government. These certificates are usually hanging proudly on the walls of the lodge dining room along with photographs of themselves astride the summit itself.

The next day we planned to cross the 5420m Cho La pass. We set out at six in the morning. The weather was cloudy but at least it wasn't raining or snowing. We climbed on a steep but not particularly difficult path as far as 5150m, being overtaken along the way by two Spaniards and then one Spaniard and an Australian woman.

After descending a couple of hundred meters the path started to rise again and suddenly became much more difficult. It had started to snow and we were climbing over lots of slippery and rocky boulders. I thought that this was bad enough until we started up a very steep slope of snow. The snow was quite deep and we kept falling over. The altitude also meant that we were feeling very tired. Fortunately we could follow the footsteps of the people that had gone in front of us.

I think that at this point we would have just turned around and gone back down had it only been the two of us. I didn't really feel like it was the type of walk that we were equipped for or should have been doing. However Bhola insisted that we should keep going and we eventually made it to the top of the pass.

Once up on the top of the pass sitting amid the fluttering prayer flags I felt absolutely hysterical. Steve was really tired and it was snowing heavily. The visibility was also very poor, approaching a total white out in fact. Not only could we no longer see the path back down the way that we had come, but in front of us there was a lake stretching out onto a glacier where it looked as though the path should have gone. Fortunately we could still make out the footprints of the people who had come before us leading up to the right of the summit and then down on to the glacier.

As we walked on to the glacier we had to jump over a crevasse, which could have been dangerous had the visibility been any worse. The snow on the glacier was knee high and I kept slipping over and having to get back up again as I followed the footprints down the slope.

Steve and Bhola were now apparently feeling happy and relaxed and stopped for a bit of a photography session in the snow. My mind was filled with the scenes from Into Thin Air where the ill fated Japanese climber Yasuko Namba and others waste the precious minutes before the storm breaks taking pictures on the summit of Everest.

"What are you doing", I screamed at them. "Can't you see that the weather is getting really bad? We have to go down now!"

On Everest they call the area above 8000m "The Death Zone" because the extreme altitude makes it difficult for people to survive. As far as I was concerned with our low level of experience and acclimatization, any mountain area above 5000m could potentially constitute our own personal death zone!

After abut half an hour we got off the glacier and started climbing down the rocky slope at the other side. At this point I started to feel much much calmer. We could see the Australian woman and Spaniard resting at the bottom of the slope. It turned out that they hadn't been so far in front of us after all. I figured it was the smoking Spaniard rather than the ultra fit Australian who had kept them down to our pace!

At the bottom of the rocks we stopped for a Mars bar and Chapati. We were now a couple of hundred meters below the pass and the falling snow had turned to sleet. Even better there was now a proper path leading down the hill, one that you could walk down normally.

After another couple of hours of walking in the rain we arrived at Dzonglha. The lodge here was an utterly miserable little place. Damp and dirty it looked no fun to stay in at all but we just couldn't face walking another three hours on to Lobuche. They did however put a fire on in the dining room and we managed to get dried out and warmed up.

Just before dark I was cleaning my teeth outside in the rain when a bedraggled looking young Chinese man staggered towards the lodge.

"Is this Dzonglha?", he asked.

"Mmmmmm", I said with the toothbrush still in my mouth and pointed him towards the lodge door.

It turned out that he had crossed the Cho La pass alone two hours after us. He seemed quite shaken by the experience, but fortunately had still been able to make out our foot prints in the snow and so avoided getting lost.

The area around Dzonglha is supposed to be incredibly beautiful. However when we woke up the following morning the weather had if anything taken a turn for the worse. Nuptse, Lhotse and Cottontail or whatever the surrounding mountains were supposed to be called, were stubbornly hidden behind blankets of black cloud.

After a breakfast of Snickers bars (the rotten eggs and reheated potatoes served up by the lodge proving to be inedible) we set off to Lobuche (4940m). After the previous day, walking to Lobuche felt like going for stroll around Battersea park. We quickly grabbed some lunch in Lobuche which seemed a bit of a depressing place and then started the walk up to Gorak Shep (5170m).

It was snowing steadily on the way to Gorak Shep. Just before the climb up on to the moraine of the Khangri glacier we ran into the Dutch guy who had been on our flight from Kathmandu, coming down the hill.

"Don't worry about the weather", he said. "I spoke to the climbers at Base Camp this morning. Apparently its going to clear up first thing tomorrow and they are already making plans to start ascending the mountain."

After a seemingly endless trudge up and down the moraine, the couple of lodges that made up Gorak Shep finally came into sight. Although very cold the lodge we stayed in was the height of civilized comfort in comparison to the previous night's accommodation at Dzonglha!

Gorak Shep is the highest place in the Everest region where you can stay if you aren't camping. You can walk up to Kala Pattar (5600m) for an excellent view of Everest and the surrounding peaks and also go to Everest Base Camp (5364m). Strangely from Everest Base Camp you can't actually see Everest! However you can see the Khumbu icefall, where the expeditions start their climb and you also get to say that you have been there.

Our plan if it was still snowing in the morning was to walk to Everest Base Camp. Unfortunately Steve had a headache and so it didn't make sense for him to go any higher. Bhola offered to take me by myself but I thought that there wasn't any point as we would all be going together the next day.

As wet and exhausted trekkers from a large organised group gradually straggled in from Everest Base Camp to our lodge in the late afternoon I felt that it had been a pretty intelligent day to pick as a rest day! We set our alarm for dawn the following day hoping that the weather would have cleared and we would be able to go to Kala Pattar. If it hadn't we would just head to Everest Base Camp instead.

Unfortunately, it continued to snow heavily all night and by the morning Gorak Shep was covered in knee deep snow. Depressingly even going to Everest Base Camp was now out of the question as crevasses in the glacier would have been hidden by the snow and the footprints of the previous day's group showing a safe route through would have been covered up.

The question was whether to wait another day hoping that the weather would improve or to start to go back down. The large organised group was about to go to Lobuche so if we left just after them we could follow their tracks. Otherwise if it continued to snow for another day we might just end up stranded in Gorak Shep!

In the end we decided reluctantly to go down leaving only two slightly eccentric looking bearded trekkers in the lodge, playing a game of chess. An English guy had told us that the mountaineers at Base Camp the day before had had a weather forecast predicting that the snow would stop falling at 10am that day. However thinking about the similar and totally wrong prediction that they had made to the Dutch guy two days previously I was pretty skeptical.

The landscape between Gorak Shep to Lobuche had been completely transformed. In fact covered in a thick layer of snow it was almost unrecognizable. Unlike our experience on the Cho La pass however I wasn't in the slightest bit worried. There was a clear and fairly busy path with people in front of us and behind us and we were heading down hill. In fact, although I wasn't tempted to have a snow ball fight with Steve in a lot of ways walking through the snow felt quite fun.

After a quick break at Lobuche we carried on down the valley towards Pheriche (4293m). On way down we passed a series of rock memorials to climbers who have died on Everest, including Scott Fischer who died in the 1996 storm that I had read about in Into Thin Air.

Gradually as we lost altitude the snow became very slushy and I fell over quite a few times slithering down the hill. Eventually as we approached Pheriche the sleet stopped. Then unbelievably the sky began to clear and Ama Dablam and Lobuche East appeared out of the cloud. It was 3pm. The mountaineer's weather forecast had been out by only five hours.

At this point we both felt pretty sick that we hadn't waited in Gorak Shep for one more day. Still there was no way we were going to climb up 1000m to get back up there so we checked into a lodge in Pheriche. Looking on the bright side of things the change in the weather might mean that we actually got to see some more mountains.

The lodge we stayed in was run by Pemba Sherpa whose Dad had once guided former American President, Jimmy Carter on a walking holiday around the region. As the only guests (I guess the flights from Lukla still weren't coming in) we were given Jimmy Carter's former room complete with a photo of him above Steve's bed.

Next to the lodge was the Himalayan Rescue Association Medical Post. Staffed during the peak trekking season it treats lots of tourists with altitude sickness and also provides medical care for local people. Outside was a tasteful looking stainless steel memorial. Naively, I thought it was a memorial to all the people who had died at the Medical Post. Instead it turned out to be a memorial to all the climbers who have died on Everest.

Pemba's lodge was the first one we had stayed in that felt really family run. We sat around the fire drying our socks while Pemba's dad spun yak's wool into thread. The star of the show though, was Pemba's cute eight month old daughter. A true Sherpa Princess she even had her own fur lined cradle.

The next day dawned clear and following Pemba's advice we tried to head up towards Taboche Base Camp in order to get a view of Everest. Although we could see Lhotse, the world's fourth highest mountain, very clearly and had great views of Ama Dablam, Everest was once again covered in cloud.

I was starting to think of seeing Everest as being like spotting a highly endangered species of animal in the wild. Was it really possible that we would end up spending weeks walking around Everest without ever seeing the mountain? Would Steve have to carefully photograph a postcard, Photoshop us into it and put it up on Flickr in an attempt to prove we had actually been to the Himalayas?

After a late breakfast we set off walking towards Tengboche (3860m). Walking in the sunshine the landscape gradually became less harsh and trees began to reappear. From Tengboche, a Buddhist monastery surrounded by several lodges, Everest could apparently be seen clearly on a fine day. By the time we walked up the steep hill to Tengboche in the late afternoon however, the whole area was covered in cloud.

The next morning, Steve got up before me and was soon hassling me excitedly to get out of bed. We had a perfect view of the mountains on all sides. Finally even Everest was there sticking up innocuously by the side of Lhotse.

After we had warmed up from the early morning photo session, we started the day's walk down towards to Namche. Now suddenly, everywhere we looked there were more incredible views of Everest and of the other mountains in the surrounding valleys.

Getting to Namche felt fantastic. Now that we could see the mountains it looked much prettier. We took a relatively expensive room with a shower in the nicest lodge we could find and got clean for the first time in far too long. My appetite was raging out of control and I ate beans and fried eggs and potatoes and toast and still felt hungry for more. Best of all I was able to briefly use the exorbitantly expensive satellite internet connection and discovered that my brother had had a little girl making me an auntie for the first time.

It now just remained to walk back to Lukla and catch our flight back to Kathmandu. The walk was longer than I remembered, perhaps because we did it over two days on the way up. Still at certain points I felt like I was suffering from Low Altitude Sickness. The sudden descent had left me teeming with energy and I almost couldn't seem to walk quickly enough to use it all up.

Coming the other way were hordes of tourists and porters and trains of yaks. By the suspension bridges traffic jams were starting to develop. Despite our bad luck with the weather it made me quite happy that we had chosen to come in September. At least we had had the snowy cloud covered mountains to ourselves.

As we flew back to Kathmandu the views of the Himalayas were magnificent. I felt quite sad though as we flew past. The adventures of the last year were now over and the routine of normal daily life would start up again in only a few days.

Tomorrow we fly back to London and so this is going to be the last entry that I write in this blog.

We have certainly had a fantastic time. If any one wants to get in touch in the future my email is natalie_dillon@hotmail.com.

Tibet

Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, is a very colorful city. The evening that we arrived we joined the pilgrims circumnavigating the Jokhang temple in the center of Lhasa.

Everywhere in Tibet people walk clockwise around religious sites, which can be anything from mountains to monasteries, swinging their prayer wheels and prostrating themselves on the ground. The circuit around Jokhang temple is the innermost circuit in Lhasa called the Nangkhor and is only a few hundred meters around. On the outermost Lhasa circuit, or Lingkhor, you can spot people dog walking and holding their dog's lead with one hand while they swing their prayer wheels with the other!

After circumnavigating the Jokhang temple we explored the surrounding area, which is filled with market stalls. Tibetan women wearing their distinctive outfit of a long dress with a stripy apron were out shopping while Monks in red robes, some playing drums, seemed to be everywhere. In fact, the only thing that detracted from this fascinating scene was the obvious poverty. We saw lots of beggars in Lhasa, more than in any other city we have visited on this trip, and many of them were clearly sick or had some type of disability

Dominating Lhasa's skyline is the huge Potala Palace, former home to the Dalai Lamas. Due to limitations on the numbers of visitors, in order to get a ticket you have to queue at midday to reserve a ticket for a particular time the following day. I left Steve, having a very late breakfast, in order to go and reserve some tickets. Unfortunately while I was in the queue a taxi ran over a small stray dog with a long shaggy coat. Fifteen minutes later when I got out of the queue the dog was still alive but clearly in agony. The poor thing kept trying to move around, dragging its mangled hind legs behind it.

A Chinese man who spoke some English translated for me and one of the taxi drivers phoned an animal ambulance to come and collect the dog. I managed to give the dog some water but I wasn't really able to do anything else for it as unsurprisingly it tried to bite anybody that got too close. It took over an hour for the animal ambulance to arrive during which time I just had to sit and wait and watch the dog suffer. I was however cautiously optimistic that if against the odds such a thing as an animal ambulance existed in Lhasa then maybe there would also be a decent vet.

Unfortunately the animal hospital turned out to be just a room with a man in a dirty white overall, some tins of dog food and some medicines. With no operating theatre it was pretty obvious that the outlook for the dog was hopeless. The vet could speak almost no English but I tried to explain to him that if he couldn't do anything else for the dog he should put it to sleep or at least give it a pain killing injection. In the end he did give it some type of injection and it lay down quietly. I handed over some money and managed I think to get in return an agreement that they would look after the dog until it died. By this stage I had got quite upset and I hope that in reality the vet was just waiting until I got out of the room to put the dog to sleep. It was all highly depressing, especially because in England it would probably have been possible to do have done something for the dog.

The next day we went to the Potala Palace. To get to the entrance we had to climb up many flights of stairs, which at an altitude of 3490m left us completely out of breath. The palace turned out to be a veritable rabbit warren of rooms, shrines and tombs with some amazing views out across Lhasa and the surrounding hills.

After a visit to Jokhang temple we felt like seeing something of the Tibetan countryside and took a tourist bus to Namtso Chukmo Lake. This is a very large, beautiful, blue salt water lake fringed by snow capped mountains. Our bus took us to Tashidor, a kind of shanty town made up of tents, by the shores of the lake. Having checked into the tent where we planned to spend the night we set off on a walk along the lake shore. We were now at 4800m and as we had ascended 1300m in a few hours on a bus we weren't acclimatized to the new altitude. This meant that shortly into our stroll we both developed splitting headaches!

Both in Lhasa and in the surrounding countryside we saw quite a lot of evidence of the way in which the Chinese Government is taking over Tibet. Although the Tibetan traditions and culture are still very strong there are obvious signs that things are not right. In Tibet you see many Chinese soldiers and police, far more than in the rest of China. There are Chinese flags everywhere, many flying from newly constructed homes. There are also many Chinese immigrants and while it might be an exaggeration to say that they are all driving new looking jeeps, they are clearly much richer than the Tibetans. The Tibetan language has also been replaced by Chinese characters on most signs. If the Tibetan script is there at all it is written in small letters at the top.

One of the things that struck us about Tibet was its uncanny similarity to Mongolia. This goes way beyond both countries having herders that live in tents and raise yaks and goats. You can see exactly the same patterns, designs and colors painted inside Tibetan temples as are painted on the furniture in Mongolian gers. The traditional music is so similar that many of the melodies are actually the same in both countries. Perhaps the explanation is the Mongol invasion of Tibet and the subsequent adoption of Tibetan Buddhism by the Mongolians. Although most Mongolians lost their religion during the period of Russian domination this Tibetan influence must have rubbed off on other areas of Mongolian culture.

Traveling outside of Lhasa is a little bit tricky if you are not on an organized tour. Many areas of the country require special permits to visit and this combined with the bad roads mean that most tourists end up arranging their trip with a travel agency. After our return from Namtso Chukmo Lake we spent a couple of days relaxing in Lhasa and recovering from our headaches. We then decided to take a public bus to Gyantse as there is a good road that leads there (who said the Chinese never did anything for Tibet huh) and no special permits are required.

The buses were like a return to Bolivia, tightly packed in with chain smokers and people who almost certainly didn't have access to a bathroom with hot running water for daily showers! It was quite fun though to get out of Lhasa and see a bit more of Tibet.

Gyantse turned out to be a very nice town where people were if anything even more friendly than in the rest of Tibet. The town itself was quite small and modern but the Pelkor Chode Temple Complex on the outskirts of Gyantse was very interesting as was the adjacent stupa, the Gyantse Kumbum. The town was also overlooked by a medieval fort.

Before seeing the cultural highlights of Gyantse we headed to a restaurant for breakfast called Gyantse Kitchen, attracted by a large sign in English outside which promised Western, Tibetan and Chinese cuisine. Our waitress looked a little out of place in Gyantse as she spoke good English with an Indian accent and was wearing a salwar kameez. Curious, we got into a conversation and discovered that she was from Nepal. She had been working as a chef in Lhasa and had been drafted into Gyantse Kitchen as the owner was unable to find a western chef in Gyantse.

'Gyantse is so dull', she said. 'Nothing to do and I don't know anybody here'. After explaining a little about the trials of life in Gyantse, most common ingredients for the western style food she was expected to cook being unobtainable for a start, she asked if she could come and visit the temple with us.

First though she explained that she would have to change into proper shoes. We waited around for a little while and were surprised to discover that for the walk to the temple she had changed out of her sensible flip flops into a pair of strappy high heeled sandals. Clearly this was a woman far too glamorous for small town Tibet!

Sadly we had only just made it to the Pelkor Chode Temple when her boss phoned saying that a tour party requiring western style food was on its way and so she had to rush all the way back to the restaurant.

While visiting the temple I finally discovered a use for my Footprint Guide to Tibet (don't buy it whatever you do) which I had written off as being entirely useless as it contains almost no practical information. A trainee monk of about eight asked to have a look at it and found an illustrated guide to Buddhist images and deities in the back in both Tibetan and English.

The trainee monk was fascinated and took me on a bit of a tour pointing out the names of the different deities. As he was clearly much more interested than me in the subject I decided to rip the relevant pages out of our book for him
accidentally poking him in the eye in the process. Fortunately after standing with his eye shut and wincing for about a minute he turned out to be ok and gave me a wooden bead bracelet in return.

Tomorrow we return to Lhasa and the next day we are going to get a flight to Kathmandu. We decided to wimp out of the overland route to Nepal after hearing horror stories about dangerous roads and landslides on the way. Nepal is going to be the last stop on our trip.

Eastern Europe

It was actually quite a relief to cross over the Russian border into Finland. Although the architecture and people in Russia had looked European it wasn't until we got to Helsinki that we felt we had really arrived back in Europe. The supermarkets were well stocked with familiar products, there was a helpful tourist information office with maps and most people could speak a few words of English. Best of all it felt as though there was no chance of getting trouble from any policemen as we wandered around town. In fact we couldn't even see any policemen!

We spent a couple of lazy days in Helsinki just walking around the very pleasant but not massively exciting town center before going to Budapest for the wedding of our friends Jonny and Bettina. We arrived to find the bride and groom not feeling very happy at all. With only a couple of days to go before their wedding there had been a massive security alert at all UK airports and many of the English guests had had their flights cancelled. Fortunately by the afternoon of the wedding all but two of their guests had found a way to make it over from England.

The wedding was held in the Gerbaud in the center of Budapest. Betty is Hungarian and the wedding ceremony was held in both Hungarian and English presided over by a man in a rather cool Dracula style cloak. It was really nice to see so many of our friends again and after a big dinner with lots of wine Jonny and Betty impressed us all with their Hungarian folk dancing. The language barrier made it difficult for the English and Hungarian guests to communicate, though that didn't stop Betty's granny chatting away to everyone in Hungarian regardless!

Jonny and Betty and many of the guests stayed on for a couple of days after the wedding so we got to spend some more time with them. We spent an afternoon at the Szigat music festival but didn't do much actual sightseeing in Budapest due mainly to the bad hangovers that we kept waking up with.

From Budapest we flew to Krakow in Poland to meet up with Roy, Heather and Willi (my Dad and Steve's mum and step dad). We had rented an apartment near the Market Square for the two of us and my Dad to stay in. Unfortunately the apartment turned out to be directly above a nightclub and so we made arrangements for my Dad to stay in a hotel with Heather and Willi instead. This turned out to be a good decision. One night the music was so loud that Steve ended up getting out of bed and going downstairs to the nightclub on the basis that if he was going to have to stay awake all night he might as well try to have a good time.

Krakow is a very beautiful medieval city which was once the capital of Poland. At the very center of the town is the huge Market square which is flanked by impressive buildings, including the lavishly decorated Basilica of the Virgin Mary. The square is packed with bars, restaurants, cafes and market stalls. To add to the atmosphere, every hour a bugler appears in the tower of the Basilica and plays the Last Post. Streets filled with shops and interesting old buildings and churches radiate out from the market square. This whole central area of Krakow is surrounded by a park where the city walls and fortifications used to be.

We spent quite a lot of our time in Krakow just soaking up the atmosphere in the centre of the city, drinking cups of coffee and sampling the tasty polish dumplings. Just outside the central area of Krakow is Wawel Hill where we visited the castle where the Kings of Poland used to live as well as the Cathedral.

Another interesting area of Krakow is the old Jewish quarter of Kazimierz. It is a very pretty and atmospheric area of Krakow with an old Jewish cemetery and several Synagogues. Unfortunately Kazimierz is a familiar sight to anybody who has ever watched the film Schindler's List, much of which was filmed here. It was this area of Krakow that was turned into a ghetto during the Second World War and where the Jewish citizens of Krakow were imprisoned before being murdered by the Nazis.

We went on a visit to the remains of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp which has now been turned into a memorial and museum. Auschwitz is just over an hours drive from Krakow, which I must admit I found quite shocking in itself. I had always imagined Auschwitz to be miles from anywhere hidden away in some bleak and desolate region of Poland, not just down the road from a beautiful and cultured European city.

Auschwitz was in reality a number of different camps as well as an industrial complex and was spread out over quite a large area. Today two camps remain, Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II or Birkenau. We went first of all to Auschwitz I which was the headquarters of the whole complex. This was the first camp to be set up, initially to hold Polish political prisoners. On the surface, perhaps because it had been converted from an ordinary barracks for Polish soldiers, Auschwitz I looked surprisingly normal.

At least 1.1 million people were killed by the Nazi's at Auschwitz. The great majority (around 1 million) of the people who died were Jewish, though many Gipsys, Russian prisoners of war, Poles and other categories of prisoners were also killed. It is really very difficult to grasp the enormity of these crimes, but the large collections of shoes, particularly the children's shoes, on display, that were found at the camp, get the point across to some extent.

As part of the guided tour of Auschwitz I, we were taken into the punishment block. This was where many prisoners were tortured before being shot and also where in the underground cells the first experiments at Auschwitz of killing people using gas were carried out on Russian prisoners of war. Also in Auschwitz I is the only surviving gas chamber left in the complex. This gas chamber fell out of use before the end of the war because the camp authorities decided that the screams coming from the victims created too much disturbance. Instead prisoners too sick to work were taken to the more isolated gas chambers at Birkenau to be killed. Walking into the gas chamber where so many people had died felt really very sad as was walking out again past the ovens where the bodies of the victims were burned.

Next we were taken on a bus to visit Birkenau. This camp was built after Auschwitz I, initially to house Russian prisoners of war but it was later adapted for the purpose of murdering all the remaining Jewish people in Nazi occupied Europe. At the entrance you can still see the gate, the watch tower and the railway tracks where the trains came in. On the platform SS officers and doctors would divide people into those who would be sent to the gas chambers straight away, such as old people and children and those who were fit for work. The prisoners who it was decided were fit for work would be admitted to the camp. They might stay in Birkenau or be sent to any of the sub camps in the Auschwitz complex to work as slave labourers.

In reality those who were admitted to the camp to work were also condemned to death, only more slowly. The food and clothing provided to prisoners was completely inadequate and after a few months most prisoners would either die of exhaustion or disease or become unable to work and be sent to the gas chambers. Those who did manage to survive until close to the end of the war were made to march back towards Germany ahead of the Russian advance and most either froze to death or were shot by the SS along the way. The remaining survivors were then sent to concentration camps like Bergen-Belsen where many more died of starvation before finally being liberated. Sick prisoners that were unable to move were left at Auschwitz but many died of the cold and starvation before the Russians arrived or succumbed to their illnesses.

Despite all this it is from the prisoners that worked at Auschwitz that most eyewitness accounts of the Nazi death camps come. From camps like Belzec and Treblinka, which were purely extermination camps there were virtually no survivors.

At Birkenau we were taken to look at the prisoner's barracks where they slept in wooden huts tightly squeezed into narrow bunks and also the sanitation facilities. The gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau were destroyed by the SS before they left in an attempt to cover up their crimes and so today only the foundations remain.

It might seem a little strange to decide to visit a place as horrible as Auschwitz. I think though that it is important for people to visit in order to understand the past and hopefully therefore help to prevent similar things occurring in the future. I think that even people who are familiar with this period of history would probably gain a greater understanding from visiting the camp.

We went on an organised tour and to be honest we were rushed around quite a bit. I went to the toilet for five minutes for example and found the bus was ready to leave without me. While I think that all visits around Auschwitz have to be guided, for a less frantic experience it might be better to go independently and then hire your own guide or join in one of museum's guided tours.

After one more day in Krakow, during which time I turned 30, it was time to leave Poland and go back to China. You might be thinking at this point that we are not really following a very logical route for a round the world trip! Initially we were actually planning to end our journey in Europe but with six weeks still to go we thought it would be more interesting to go back to China and visit Tibet and Nepal.

Nine hours on the plane were sufficient to arrive in Chengdu in Western China and travel further than we had in a week on a train going in the opposite direction. I have to say that Chengdu is definitely not the most attractive city that we have visited in China! The air is thick with pollution and it is hot and humid. Meanwhile the fetid stench coming from the river suggests its main function is that of an open sewer. A bit like a nightmare vision of environmental catastrophe.

Fortunately it is not all bad. Only 10km outside of the town is a Giant Panda Breeding Centre. Set amongst bamboo groves, not only can you see dozens of giant pandas roaming around spacious enclosures but you can also breath. We were lucky enough to also see some baby giant pandas in incubators. They are extremely small when they are born and completely pink. The ones that we saw were born a few weeks ago and had grown distinctive black and white fur but were still very tiny.

We have also managed to find a computer in a hostel in Chengdu, from where the usual restrictions don't seem to apply and is possible to view and post to this blog. You still can't see the BBC website though!

Tomorrow we are going to fly from Chengdu to Lhasa in Tibet.

Siberia to St Petersburg

When we woke up on the train on our first day in Russia the scenery had changed dramatically. The Mongolian steppe had given way to a seemingly endless forest of birch trees. Soon Lake Baikal appeared though the window, stretching out to the horizon like the sea.

Lake Baikal contains one fifth of the world's fresh water, which is more than North America's five great lakes combined. We decided to head straight for the lake after arriving in Irkutsk and took a bus to the village of Listvyanka.

It didn't take long for us to encounter the 'Nyet' philosophy of customer service. Nyet means no in Russian and unfortunately it is often the only response that you get when asking a question. It's often accompanied by the person glaring at you and crossing their arms in front of their face to make sure that you get the message!

We didn't like Listvyanka that much as it seemed a bit run down and had a road running along the lake front. After spending the night there we decided to take a boat to the more remote lake side village of Bolshie Koty.

The lake at Bolshie Koty was unquestionably beautiful. In fact looking out across the blue lake and the wooded hills we could almost have been beside one of the Italian lakes. Unfortunately the similarities between Bolshie Koty and Northern Italy stopped there!

Between the wooden houses there were piles of rusting metal and disused machinery. The lake shore was covered in rubbish. In fact, as we found when we went on a walk, all the rubbish and waste from the village just seemed to have been thrown into the woods on the outskirts. There were no restaurants or cafes and just a couple of kiosks selling beer, cola and Snickers bars.

We found some accommodation in a wooden hut but there was no running water and only a smelly pit toilet. To top things off Bolshie Koty was very hot and home to some very nasty insects. Forget anything that we might have seen in the Amazon, these things were like oversized flying cockroaches and even Steve was scared.

After one night in Bolshie Koty we were desperate to leave. Unfortunately we had to sit and wait for a boat out (there is no road) for seven hours. Perhaps we were being paranoid but it seemed like the only thing that brought a smile to the faces of the rather glum Russian tourists (and lets face it if your annual holiday was to Bolshie Koty would you be in a good mood?) was us trying to ask in sign language what time the boat left.

Back in Irkutsk we checked into a youth hostel and felt very relieved. We were back in civilization and there were supermarkets and restaurants! After a day wandering around Irkutsk not doing a lot it was time to get the train to Moscow.

The three and a half days on the train were surprisingly pleasant. We were traveling in second class and so shared a four berth compartment with a Russian couple. It was very comfortable and we were impressed by the efficiency of the Russian railway network which got us to Moscow within a couple of minutes of the scheduled arrival time.

The landscape itself was not particularly exciting. There are clearly a lot of trees in Russia. A couple of times each day the train would stop for 20 minutes and we would get out and stretch our legs. With the time available it was only really possible to walk up and down the platform, which was filled with ladies selling food from baskets to the people on the train. There was also a dining car on the train selling reasonably ok food but it was mainly full with people drinking beer and vodka.

After arriving in Moscow we headed for the center to see Red Square, St Basil's Cathedral and the Kremlin. The Kremlin has many beautiful churches as it is not only the centre of the Russian Government but also of the Russian Orthodox Church. In Red Square itself, is the mausoleum where the embalmed body of Lenin is on display. Sadly we missed our opportunity to see Lenin as he is closed to the public on Mondays!

There are some interesting sights in other parts of Moscow too. In Iskussty Park we saw a display of decommissioned Soviet statues that included Lenin, a toppled Stalin and other Soviet leaders. We also went to the Novodevichy Convent and the atmospheric cemetery next door. Russian VIPs ranging from Checkhov to Raisa Gorbachev are buried in the cemetery. A lot of the grave memorials show what the person did in their lifetime, so there are sculptures of ballerinas dancing and cosmonauts with their helmets on.

On our last day in Moscow we decided to pop back into Red Square to take a better look at Kazen Cathedral before going to collect our bags and leave for the train station. As we approached Red Square we were stopped by some policemen who wanted to check our documents.

Perhaps at this point I should explain a little about the documents that you need in order to travel in Russia. Virtually all visitors to Russia need a visa. To get a visa if you are not on a package holiday you have to obtain an invitation to Russia from a tourist agency. In theory this agency should book your accommodation, though in practice many agencies will make 'virtual' hotel reservations leaving you free to arrange your own trip. Confused? It gets worse.

On arriving in Russia you are given an immigration card. This card needs to be stamped within 72 hours of your arrival in Russia in order to 'register' your visa. Then if you stay in any area of Russia for more than 72 hours your visa has to be registered again. This visa registration can be done by all the large expensive hotels but a lot of the smaller hotels, hostels and homestays cannot register your visa unless they were the agency that invited you to Russia. Well sometimes they can if you pay them some extra money...

When we arrived in Irkutsk we stayed in a hostel which was able to register our visas for a fee. In Moscow however we checked into a cheap hotel (cheap being a relative term) which couldn't register our visas. We had our train tickets from Irkutsk and onward tickets to St Petersburg, so that we could prove that we were spending less than 72 hours in Moscow should we encounter any problems.

The policemen that we met in Red Square insisted that because we were staying in a hotel our visas should have been registered straight away and that the 72 hour rule only applied to homestays. We tried arguing with them but they said that we had broken the law and would have to come with them to the police station and pay a fine.

"Don't worry Madam" said one of the police officers. "The process will only take about four hours. It is such a pity that you will miss your train to St Petersburg."

This was of course a preliminary to suggesting that we should pay them an "on the spot fine" of $80. Eventually Steve negotiated a price of $40 to get them to give our passports back and leave us alone.

This whole experience left us feeling pretty angry, though under the circumstances we didn't really have any choice except to pay. Anyone visiting Moscow should definitely make sure that they get their visa registered before going into the centre of town regardless of how long they plan to stay. Unfortunately if a policemen in Moscow sees that you don't have a Moscow registration stamp on your immigration card they will probably use it as a pretext to try to extort money from you.

Given the complexity of the regulations and the corruption of the Russian police it perhaps isn't surprising that we have come across quite a few other tourists that have run into trouble.

An American woman that we got to know on a tour in Mongolia was not allowed to leave Russia when an official at the airport noticed that on her visa her nationality had been written as Thai. This was clearly just a silly mistake by the Russian embassy in Thailand. As the visas are written in the Cyrillic alphabet, she couldn't have even been expected to spot the error. This didn't stop the official making her obtain another visa saying that she was American (which he knew she was anyway) and missing her flight home!

Getting to St Petersburg cheered us up quite a bit as it is such a beautiful city. It was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 with the aim of rivaling the great European capitals. Architects and skilled craftsmen were brought from all over Europe and the Russian empire and no expense was spared. The result is a historic center that stretches on for miles and positively overflows with churches and palaces.

One of the most magnificent buildings in the city is Winter Palace where the Tsars of Russia lived. This has now been turned into the Hermitage museum, which houses one of the world's largest collections of art. The collection was begun by Catherine the Great, added to by her successors and increased in size still further after the Russian revolution when the art collections of wealthy Russians were "nationalized" by the party. What makes the Hermitage different from other art galleries, apart from the scale, is its setting in the amazingly lavish interior of the Winter Palace.

While the Hermitage displays art work from all over the world the Russian Museum concentrates on Russian art work. We went to see an exhibition of the work of the avant guarde Russian artist Pavel Filonav. Usually I am not a massive fan of modern art, at least not the sort of stuff that wins the Turner prize, but this was really imaginative, interesting and thought provoking.

In the Russian Museum we also saw a more general exhibition on 20th century Russian art. If only from a historical point of view it was fascinating to see all the pictures of buxom young women harvesting corn, workers with rippling muscles forging steel and huge canvases depicting epic revolutionary scenes. There were also examples of underground art showing life in the Soviet Union in a slightly more realistic way.

St Petersburg is as famous for its musical traditions as its collections of art. We had first heard Russian Orthodox Church music in St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow and had been totally blown away. There are no instruments used apart from the male voice. Some of the singer's voices are so low that they sound a bit like a didgeridoo. The harmonies are very complex and the the overall effect is both beautiful and unusual.

We went to see the Male Choir of St Petersburg sing traditional Russian church and folk music at the Peter and Paul Fortress and were both totally captivated. It's definitely something that I would recommend to anybody visiting St Petersburg.

Our plan is to leave St Petersburg for Helsinki on 7th August. That's always assuming we aren't detained at the border for breaking any rules that we haven't heard of yet or pretending to be Japanese.

Mongolia

We arrived in Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia, feeling a little tired after the 36 hour train trip from Beijing. Ulaan Baatar isn't the most attractive city. While it has plenty of facilities like supermarkets and restaurants it feels a little down at heel, with lots of shabby concrete buildings and broken pavements. After dark it doesn't feel entirely safe either...

The day after arriving we signed up with three other tourists for a four day trip in a Russian jeep to the countryside around Ulaan Baatar. On the first day we went to the supermarket at the State Department Store in the centre of town to stock up on food. Wary of what Mongolian country side fare might taste like to fussy foreigners like ourselves, we packed our trolley full of food.

Mongolia is not a country of urban sprawl. Once we passed the outskirts of Ulaan Baatar the Mongolian steppe started. There was an almost infinite expanse of grassland fringed by hills, with a clear blue sky stretching out to the horizon. The only signs of human activity were the occasional ger, which is a tent like home used by nomads, and passing horse riders herding cows.

It was a very peaceful feeling to be in the middle of a beautiful and empty landscape. The only distraction were the very bumpy dirt roads. After a couple of hours driving we arrived at the Gorkhi-Terelji national park, where rocky hills rose up out of the steppe. Our destination was a tourist ger camp, which had very comfortable gers with clean sheets and a shower block.

After our guide mysteriously disappeared for three hours, allegedly he was looking for camels for us to ride, we went on a walk up the nearby hills with the son of the ger owner and his Korean girlfriend. The views were great and the air felt incredibly fresh.

The next morning we went on a horse ride around the nearby village and saw a new born yak as well as the women going about their daily task of milking the horses (yes I did say the horses). We were invited into a ger to try a bowl of fermented mares milk. I don't think that I have ever seen a less appealing beverage. It was mainly white but with big globules of yellow fat floating in it. I tried a sip and it didn't taste totally unpleasant, a bit like sour yogurt. Nonetheless I wasn't tempted to have any more!

That afternoon we went to the Manzushir Khiid monastery which was a bit disappointing as it turned out to have mainly been destroyed in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. Our guide told us that the monastery had been destroyed by angry locals because the Buddist monks used to sacrifice young virgins to the gods. I wonder if that's what they used to teach in school history lessons in Mongolia...

Our next stop was the Khustain National Park where we spent two nights. This area has been set aside for the conservation of the wild horse, which is actually a different species from the domesticated horse. We were lucky enough to be able to get quite close to a group of wild horses, which looked a little like zebras without the stripes.

Again the countryside was very empty and beautiful. On our second night we went to stay as guests in a family ger. Every inch of the ger was used, with meat hanging from the ceiling to dry and cheese being prepared on the roof. The family owned a second ger, which was vacated for the five of us to sleep in. It had very pretty painted wooden ger furniture and a lined floor.

We thought we were living like the locals, having to go outside on to the steppe to go to the toilet. However later in our time in Mongolia we realised that we had actually been staying with very properous nomads, who had two lovely gers, their own Russian jeep and a large herd of yaks.

It was nice to hang out with the family who were very friendly and kept offering us unappealing looking Mongolian snacks. In addition to the yaks they also had a cute kitten, lots of dogs, a puppy and a baby goat that fell asleep under our van.

Back in Ulaan Baatar the Naadam festival was getting started. Naadam is a two day celebration in which Mongolians compete in the 'manly' sports of wrestling, archery and horse racing. This year the festival lasted three days in order to celebrate the 800th anniversary of Chinggis Khan founding the Great Mongolian State.

We had tickets in the stadium for the opening ceremony which was very impressive. It was the first time that I had heard Mongolian music. The melodies are all in minor keys and are haunting in a way that seems entirely in keeping with the Mongolian landscape.

A whole traditional Mongolian orchestra, dressed in traditional Mongolian coats and hats was present for the opening ceremony. The ceremony also included a lot of excellent traditional dancing. The best bit though was when horse riders dressed as soldiers of Chinggis Khan appeared and galloped around the stadium in armor. Chinggis himself also appeared on a great white stallion and proceeded to lead a troupe doing acrobatics on horse back!

For us the opening ceremony was definately the best bit of Naadam. It was fun to watch the archers but the wrestling was a little difficult to see as the stadium was so big. Before long we were planning another trip to the country side, this time to go further west for six days.

One of the problems with travelling in Mongolia is that the lack of public transport and poor roads mean that you really need your own 4x4 with a driver to get around. As the drivers don't speak any English, you also need a translator to communicate with them. We weren't keen on joining an organised tour and so close to Naadam none of the tour agencies were able to find us a driver and translator.

In the end we left with a young student that we had met on the street as a translator. He spoke excellent English but had very little experience. He had found us a driver who had a good jeep but who was also young and inexperienced and seemed a little grumpy from the outset. We also agreed that our translator could bring his wife with him!

On the first day we drove to Karakorum, a town to the west of Ulaan Baatar. We arrived at dusk at the Erdene Zuu Khiid monastery. Although most of the monastery buildings were destroyed in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, the walls with their 108 stupas and several of the temples had been preserved. It was certainly a very atmospheric place. It even had a Buddist ger, complete with robed monks chanting prayers.

That evening we found a quiet spot to camp by the river and settled down for the night. However, just after dark the group of Mongolian campers next to us started to blast music really loudly from a sound system. Our translator went over to chat to them and was told that they worked for the government and that no they wouldn't turn their music down.

We ended up having to unpeg our tent and walk with it in the dark as our jeep drove forwards to provide light. Unfortunately the light attracted hundreds of insects and I soon had moths and flies in my face and beetles crawling over my pyjamas. Eventually we pitched around 100m away from the noisy campers. With the aid of ear plugs we were finally able to go to sleep, only to be woken up by an exceptionally loud blast of hardcore gansta rap music at 7:00am. Not exactly the tranquil Mongolian camping experience that I had been imagining!

The next day it turned out that a countryside Naadam was taking place in Karakorum so we went along to take a look. In some ways it was a lot more interesting than the Naadam in Ulaan Baatar. Hundreds of herders had come into town on horse back, many of them dressed in traditional Mongolian outfits. They sat on their horses outside the small stadium, where they got a good view of the opening ceremony and the wrestling.

In Ulaan Baatar the horse racing takes place outside town but in Karakorum the finsh line was right next to the stadium. The horses ran for 25km from the starting point and we waited with a large crowd to watch them come galloping in. In Mongolia the jockeys are small children, some as young as five. They often ride bare back without stirrups to further reduce the weight on the horse. Despite this some of the horses still collapse and die during the race. Oh and none of the children wear hard hats either!

Later that day we drove to the waterfall of Orkhon Khurkhree along a bumpy dirt track, where we spent the night. The waterfall itself is Mongolia's largest and is hidden in a pretty wooded canyon. It rained for most of the night and the next day when we set off for the Tovkhon Khiid monastery the roads were really muddy.

Tovkhon Khiid was rebuilt reccently but it has a very beautiful setting high amongst forested hills. It soon became apparent that our jeep was not going to make it up the muddy slope, so we got out and walked up the hill to the monastery.

It was getting quite late as we left the monastery, mainly because our guide had disappeared on a long walk up the mountain with his wife. The plan was to drive to Tseterleg, the provincial capital, about 100km away where we would check into a hotel and have a shower. Unfortunately as we drove on it started to rain again and the roads became more and more muddy. In the end perhaps inevitably, our jeep got stuck in the mud.

Fortunately the place where we were stuck was right next to a mound of small stones. The driver started jacking the wheels up to place stones underneath and Steve and I built a small road of stones in front of the jeep. In the end it took 3 hours to free the jeep, by which time we were all soaking wet and covered in mud!

After navigating our way through some more horrendous road we came to a stop at 10:30pm just before dark. There was a Russian jeep stuck on the muddy hillside. The tourists on board had some how managed to light a fire in the rain and were standing around having a chat while they waited for a tractor to arrive and pull out their jeep.

A local nomad came by on horse back and mentioned that there were three gers where we could stay just over the hill. It was pretty obvious that the jeep wouldn't be going any further that night so we loaded ourselves up with cooking equipment to make a hot meal and we set off walking in the dark.

Funnily enough there aren't any street lights in the Mongolian wilderness. Our torches lit up the ground in front of us but we couldn't see the gers. Eventually we came to a stream where the sound of dogs barking identified the location of the gers. I was wet, cold and hungry and the thought of approaching a ger in the dark surrounded by unfriendly dogs almost sent me hysterical.

It was at this point that our translator proved invaluable as he offered to jump over the stream and move forwards shouting 'hold the dogs' in Mongolian. Fortunately a lady came out, the dogs stopped barking and our translator shouted that we should come up to the gers. The first ger that we went to already had six children, two adults and a calf living in it. They had already gone to bed and looked more than a little surprised to see two tourists turn up.

Fortunately the ger next door had a little more space and they were able to offer us some accommodation. This was not however the sort of family ger that we had stayed in on our last trip. The air was filled with smoke and the sour smell of fermenting mares milk, dung was burning on the stove and bones were hanging out to dry. There was also an exceptionally cute new born goat sheltering from the rain. The fact that the new born goat was suffering from diarrhoea, did however detract slightly from its charm!

At this point I realised that I was desperate to go to the toilet. An old man accompanied me outside 'to hold the dogs'. After a brief struggle with my pride I did in fact go to the toilet in front of the old man, it was very dark and he was busy smoking a cigarette in any case! The dog stood half a meter away looking at me curiously but I guess he realised I must be harmless as I was accompanied by his owner.

Dinner was clearly not going to be an option as people were already sleeping in the ger so we ate some cheese and crackers and went to bed. I didn't get a very good nights sleep. The dogs kept barking and the cows mooing. Even the new born goat kept bleating to its mother outside which bleated back.

In the morning the whole situation seemed highly amusing. All the kids came into the ger to get a good look at us getting up. Our hosts did seem genuinely entertained by the fact that some tourists had come to stay, though obviously we paid them for their trouble. Our driver had also made it up the hill during the night and so shortly after getting up we all set off for Tsetserleg.

The last leg of our journey to Tsetserleg was happily uneventful. We arrived in town and checked into a hotel, ready for a shower at last. Unfortunately at this point we had an argument with our driver. There had been some damage to the jeep in the mud the day before which he wanted us to pay for. We on the other hand had thought that he would be responsible for any repairs to the vehicle. In retrospect we really should have agreed this in writing and made sure that the driver had proper insurance before leaving Ulaan Baatar. Fortunately in this particular case the damage was quite minor but if he had crashed the jeep we could have been facing a demand for thousands of dollars...

Pretty quickly tempers became frayed and the driver announced that he just wanted to be paid up to that point and leave us in Tsetserleg rather than complete the trip. The translator's wife pointed out that we were probably only arguing about $15, but sensing that our relationship with the driver which hadn't been very good from the start had pretty much broken down we decided to part company.

There didn't seem a lot of sense in staying in Tsetserleg if we were unable to continue to the nearby lake, Terkhiin Tsagaan Nuur, that we had been planning to visit, so we went to the market place to arrange a lift back to Ulaan Baatar. Fortunately we met a nice farmer with a jeep and two little boys who was quite happy to earn some extra dollars driving us back to Ulaan Baatar. Very unusually, he had been learning English during the winter and had learned to speak it quite well. The boys were very well behaved and sang along beautifully to the Mongolian music playing on the tape recorder. Despite the things that had not gone to plan we had really enjoyed our second trip into the countryside.

We have now spent a couple of days in Ulaan Baatar relaxing and making arrangements for the next stage of our trip. Tomorrow we get the train to Russia.

China

We arrived in Shanghai from Tokyo by a rather circuitous route via Hong Kong and Beijing. Shanghai is mainland China's most modern city. That means lots of shopping malls selling designer clothes, restaurants where you can buy very expensive coffee and high rise buildings.

After a brief detour to buy replacements for some of our more horrific looking clothes we went to the Bund. This is Shanghai's riverside walkway flanked by colonial period buildings. What none of the guide books mention is that there is a huge noisy motorway between the riverside walkway and the colonial buildings. In any case, the stifling heat and pollution made it no fun to walk anywhere so we headed across the river to Pudong.

Jinmao tower is the tallest of Pudong's skyscrapers, in fact it is the tallest building in China, and looks like a very long modern pagoda. Extremely fast lifts took us up to a viewing platform on the 88th floor where we got a great view out across a hazy Shanghai. There was also an amazing if vertigo inducing view down through the atrium to the bar in the Grand Hyatt hotel on the 54th floor. We were soon looking at the view from the other direction, as we sipped long island iced teas!

From Shanghai we flew to Xian where we met up with two friends from London, Lin and Andy. Although Xian was the ancient capital of China not much remains of the old town within the city walls. The real attraction are the Terracotta warriors just outside of Xian. These are thousands of life size statues of soldiers and horses who were buried underground to guard the tomb of the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang.

At the site we looked around different pits filled with hundreds of soldiers. Some were unbroken, some had been restored and some were lying in pieces in the pits, fragments of heads and hands sticking up at funny angles. The soldiers were undeniably interesting but the site itself could have been a bit better presented. Each soldier was for example originally buried with a realistic life size weapon but not a single one was shown, not even in the adjacent museum. Apparently they are all in storage somewhere!

In Xian itself, an unexpectedly beautiful place was the Great Mosque. To get to it we walked down a narrow alley way, where strange odds and ends like Mao's little red book and Mao watches with waving arms were on sale. The mosque itself was in a Chinese style with gardens but with Arabic inscriptions, a very calm place to relax away from the heat and noise of Xian's streets.

Our 'hard' seat train tickets from Xian to Pingyao seemed incredibly cheap for a 12 hour train journey. As we tried to push and shove our way on to the train we worked out why. The carriage was heaving and our reserved seats were already filled with people who didn't look like they were particularly interested in getting up to make way for us. Fortunately the miniscule but assertive train guard, shouted a lot and shoved people until our seats were vacated. She then organized the rearrangement of everyone's luggage until places were found to squeeze our ruck sacks in. I put mine beneath our seat but had to move it when Steve noticed that some one had moved in to sleep next to it.

We finally arrived in Pingyao late at night absolutely exhausted and covered in the dirt that had flown in through the train window. Driving through the streets to our hotel though was a magical experience. Pingyao was built during the Ming dynasty (1368 - 1643 AD) and I don't think that it has changed a lot since. There were no lights in the streets and as we drove through the old city walls we could just make out the old buildings and gates in the narrow alleyways. Our hotel was itself very beautiful and we had to walk through a series of courtyards to get to our room.

Pingyao was a different sort of China to the one that we had seen in Shanghai and Xian. It was nice just to wander the streets and watch people playing cards and hanging out. We also went for a walk right round the still intact city walls. There were many small museums and temples in Pingyao. For us the highlight was the Pingyao County Government Office Building. More like a small town than a building there were law courts, a prison, accommodation for officials, gardens and exhibitions of torture instruments as well as modern photography.

I should say at this point that we were spending quite a lot of time eating. I have always thought that I didn't like Chinese food because most of stuff I have had in England has been heavily laden with mono sodium glutamate and basically not very nice. Instead in China we were ordering lots of very tasty different tofu and vegetable dishes as well as different types of dumplings to dip in vinegar, all for next to nothing!

We also found people in China extremely friendly. Initially China was a bit of a shock after Japan, as people don't spend any time bowing and saying thank you. Rather than forming neat lines as they queue they are more likely to elbow you out of the way as they push in front of you! That said in some ways it was a bit of a relief as we didn't have to put on too many airs and graces ourselves.

A lot of Chinese people seemed very curious about us and wanted to chat even if their only English was 'England, Beckham good'. We found ourselves helping to correct English essays and admiring people's babies. Andy's feet, which are a size 16, caused quite a stir whenever they were noticed.

Children are made a big fuss over in China. Most kids, male or female, look extremely well looked after and are constantly being hugged or kissed by somebody. One thing that I found a little difficult to get used to however was that babies don't wear nappies. Instead they have holes cut in their trousers. I couldn't work out how this worked. I mean how do the parents know when the baby needs to go to the toilet? We watched one baby score a direct hit on his mum's lap, proving that whatever the system it doesn't always work!

Although China is not a democracy, as visitors the only tangible evidence we saw of this were the restrictions on internet use, which we nicknamed the Great Firewall of China. The choice of sites to be blocked seemed a little odd. We couldn't access this blog or any BBC sites including BBC Sport but we could get through to the Guardian web site. This left us reading relentlessly negative coverage of England's performance in the world cup!

After Pingyao we caught the train up to Beijing, fortunately we had a decent bunk each this time! I visited Beijing with my mum and brother as a child in 1987 so I was quite interested to see how much I could remember and how much Beijing had changed. At that time you had to come on an organized tour so in addition to all the usual tourist sites we went to visit a silk factory and a kindergarten. I was ten years old and everywhere I went people wanted to take my photo and touch my hair, which was blond when I was a kid. I thought that China was great!

The most obvious difference I noticed was that where once the streets of Beijing were crowded with bicycles they are now crowded with cars. Lots of the traditional areas or Hutongs have also been demolished since the 1980s to make way for high rise buildings and the shopping malls are definitely a new arrival!

One of Steve's friends Chris, who also works at the same architecture practice, was in Beijing with an Engineer called Tim, as they had been working on a bridge project together in Xian. We met up at our hotel and after a brief stop in Tiananmen Square we took a taxi to look at the construction site where they are building the Olympic Stadium. Personally I thought that it would be better to wait and come back and see it when it was finished, but the others had a great time!

There are some amazing sites to see in Beijing. The most impressive for me was the Forbidden City. This is where the Emperor of China used to live. It's called the Forbidden City because ordinary people did not use to be allowed in and because it really is the size of a city. We walked round a whole series of courtyards and gardens and temples and throne rooms as well as the living accommodation of the Emperor. His principle wives all used to live quite close to one another, which must have made for a difficult atmosphere. Some of the buildings were closed for restoration, but there was still so much to see that we couldn't walk round it all in four hours.

After visiting the Forbidden City we went to a bar by Houhai Lake to watch England go out of the World Cup to Portugal. Lin and Andy had been completely oblivious that the World Cup was even happening until we got them interested just in time to watch England lose on penalties as usual!

We spent the next day visiting the Summer Palace which is a enormous complex of gardens and palaces with a huge lake in the middle where the Emperor used to spend the summer.

On our last day in Beijing we took a bus to see the Great wall of China. It was exactly as I remember it except a lot steeper! Unfortunately the weather was not that clear but we still got the idea that the wall went on for a long way. Whoever got the idea of building a wall across the mountains of Northern China must have been completely mad. Not only must the construction work have been nearly impossible to carry out but as it is nearly vertical in places it was hardly ideal for rushing troops along.

After a final evening watching acrobats do impossible looking things in a Beijing theatre it was time to say goodbye to Andy and Lin and move on to Mongolia. We passed the Great Wall and the mountains in the train and then went through the desert in Inner Mongolia before arriving at the Mongolian border after 13 hours. The trains have different gauges in Mongolia so we spent an hour in a shed having our train lifted up and the bogie (wheel assembly) changed before finally crossing the border.

Hiroshima

It was a sunny day when we arrived in Hiroshima and on the surface it seemed like any other pleasant, modern Japanese city. It took about 20 minutes to walk across town from our hotel near the station to the Atomic Bomb Dome. This is the remains of the Industrial Promotion Hall and was near the hypocenter of the atomic bomb. Strangely some of the only buildings in Hiroshima to survive the bombing were near the hypocenter, as the explosion came almost directly from above, sparing the walls, though not the occupants of the buildings.

Across the river from the Atomic Bomb Dome is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial park. At the center of the park is the Memorial Cenotaph where all the names of people killed by the bomb are held inside a stone coffin. Also in the park is the Peace Memorial Museum which sets out the details of what happened in Hiroshima.

In the museum are two large scale models of Hiroshima before and after the atomic bomb. It was really strange to think that the whole of the city that we had walked through on our way to the park had been destroyed by the atomic bomb and rebuilt afterwards.

Generally I would say that most English people (and probably Americans too) are given the impression through the media and also to some extent through school history lessons that they were the good guys in WWII. The lesson of Hiroshima's museum, as we quickly realised, is that by the end of WWII there were no good guys.

The official reason given for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan is that the Japanese had decided to fight to the death, would not surrender under any circumstances and that therefore the overall number of casualties would have been much greater had atomic weapons not been used. To be honest it has always seemed unlikely to me that the best way to minimise casualties would be to drop bombs killing hundreds of thousands of people in an instant, and the facts really don't bear this theory out.

There was no attempt made to negotiate with the Japanese other than to call for their unconditional surrender. They were not warned that the Americans were in possession of a new and very powerful weapon that would be used if they didn't surrender. There was no warning of where the weapon would be used so that civilians could be evacuated. There was no 'demonstration' use on a mountainous or less populated area that could have resulted in surrender with a minimal lose of life. In fact there was no indication at all that the allies were anything other than criminally indifferent to the massive and indiscriminate loss of life that they knew the atomic bombs would cause.

For me however the clincher was the discovery that the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki only three days after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. For some reason I had thought that the Japanese had still refused to give in for weeks after Hiroshima and that for that reason it had been decided to drop another bomb.

It is depressingly obvious that the Americans had one hydrogen bomb and one plutonium bomb and that they wanted to try them both out. To add to the impression of the atomic bombings being a sick scientific experiment, Hiroshima was spared bombing before the attack so that it would be easier to measure the extent of the destruction from aerial photographs. The British government of course, was fully informed of and approved the American actions. The only people who come out with any credit are the scientists that invented the atomic bomb, who wrote a letter suggesting that a warning be given before it was used.

The first section of the Hiroshima museum looked at the background to the bombings, the destruction that occurred and the aftermath. There was then a section on nuclear weapons in the world today. After witnessing the extent of the destruction in Hiroshima it was really scary to think that the average nuclear weapon today has 1000 times the power of the bomb that exploded there.

The final section of the museum showed the victims of the bomb as people rather than just a sad statistic. It was all quite harrowing and included depressing exhibits like a charred pink dress that once belonged to a baby girl and photos of people suffering from radiation sickness. There were also videos in which eye witnesses described the horror they saw in Hiroshima, as badly charred people stumbled around and threw themselves into the river.

When we first arrived in Hiroshima, I had wondered a bit what we were doing there as a tragedy of this type obviously shouldn't be a tourist attraction or a form of entertainment. After visiting however it seemed to me that Hiroshima had tried to come to terms with what had happened by using the disaster to warn of the dangers of war and call for peace. We were certainly convinced. I think actually that it's a place that everybody should visit.

In the evening we went out to watch Japan play Australia in a bar in the town centre. Initially it was great fun. All the Japanese fans had their faces painted and were singing. However after leading most of the way Japan let in three goals in the last ten minutes leaving the whole bar thoroughly miserable.

The next day we caught the train down to Aso in Southern Japan to see the volcano. The main Aso volcano crater had been a bit ruined by stalls selling camera film and a very ugly cable car station. It was possible however to follow a footpath round to the neighboring Nakedake crater where the landscape was very beautiful and unspoiled.

We are now back in Tokyo after quickly popping into Nara for some more amazing gardens and temples on our way back. We are leaving Japan for China on Sunday and will be sad to go as we have really enjoyed it here. We have spent a fortune though so maybe it is time to move on!

Rumor has it that the Chinese government has blocked access to the web site that I use to write this blog so it may be some time before I get to post again.