Almost Tibet

What a difference a truck makes. You should have heard the cheer when Riki walked into John's Cafe Bar in Turpan after an 18 hour drive through the night to catch up with the group. As if by magic, he coincided his arrival with that of Andy, who having lost his passport on the Karakorum Highway had had to fly to Beijing from Kashgar to get another one. He got a big cheer too. However, the biggest cheer was saved for late the following day when the news came in that England had won the Second Test by a remarkable two run margin. We'd been getting updates by text every few minutes and when we'd heard the Aussies only needed five to win there was a nasty 'oh no, here we go again' moment that came over a few of us. It's amazing that you can be in one of the most desolate spots on Earth and get the result beamed in virtually the moment the match is over. Drank some beer that night.

The onwards journey from Turpan has not been without problem. We lost a morning because a crucial bridge had been washed out in the rain and had to execute a major detour to get through. That meant the following day's drive to Dunhuang turned into a 12-hour epic through unforgiving semi-desert and we lost the opportunity to spend time in the town. Nonethless, we did make sure the following morning to visit the nearby 1000 Buddha Caves, which contain the finest examples of Buddhist art in China dating from the 3rd to 14th centuries. There are more than 250 caves with paintings and statues, and the quality and condition of the surviving work is quite simply astonishing. I've never seen anything of the like before and am surprised they survived the Cultural Revolution, not to mention a visit from the pilfering British archaeolgist Sir Auriel Stein in 1907 (though he did make off with a significant cache of ancient documents). At last, this was a Chinese visit that exceeded expectation.

And now we are poised ready for Tibet, which for one and all is the holy grail of this part of the trip. Perhaps appropriately, we're staying in a Chinese mining town called Golmud which has the feel of the last town before the edge of the World. In a sense it is, for tomorrow we cross a mountain pass at almost 5000m to enter the Tibetan Plateau and what is geographically and historically (though not politically) Tibet. It's still a three day drive to get to Lhasa and the other great sites, but we have things to do en route and a lot of bushcamping to fit in, something we all enjoy infinitely more than staying in souless Chinese hotels. Can't wait!