China was not as we expected it is modern super power, not so much ancient culture as we imagined. A massive place with destinations thousands of miles or days apart by public transport.

We started our trip in Hong Kong where we stayed with our mate Jo. It was great to stay at some ones house with a fridge and sofa, a real culuture shock from India. Hong Kong is a fine city with great food and architecture. We were there when they celebrated indepenadance day. From HK we flew to Guilan and headed to Yangshou, a back packers mecca. A nice place with fabulous limestone cliffs climbing out of the padi fields. Here we done a hot air ballon ride which i found very scary especially when we rose to 1000 metres, but great scenery. From here we took a 30 hour train ride to Chengdu to go see the Pandas. The pandas were great, but the place very touristy and full of arrogant pushy chinese tourists. The whole of China is geared up for chinese tourists and is only begining to cater for western tourists, but this will change with the 2008 Beijing Olympics. From CVhengdu we then flew into Lhasa in Tibet. We visited the Potala Palace, the former home of the Dalai Lama who now lives in north India. The Chinese crushed the rich Tibettan culture in the 1950's and 60's. Tibet will never recover to its former glory. Tibet was the poorest part of China we visited and the most desperate. We hired a 4x4, driver and guide and headed to Everest Base Camp. We cruised through amazing scenery, desert, mountains, padi fields and ancient temples that survived the revolution. It was a memeorable experience to see Everest gleeming white in the sun. Tibet was very hard to travel as the altitude makes you feel very tired and reduces your appetite. Our jeep got stuck when we were in the middle of no where and got dug out by some villagers who appeared from no where. What a great place to get stuck the scenery was breath taking. We headed over high passes with Himilayas snow capped peaks away on the horizon. A great land trip but very hard as the roads a just tracks in the lush valleys or the dry deserts. From Lhasa we then flew to Xian to see the Terracotta warriors, another massive tourist ghetto and a huge archelogical site. From Xian we then headed to Pingyao, an old town as yoiu see in the Chinese karate films. It was a great place with good food and some cool temples. After a few days here we then bused to Beijing to see the forbidden city and the great wall. The day trip to the wall was superb, we trekked for as day over 8km and was very hard and hot. Harder for keely as she had a broken toe, but she gritted her teeth and did it! The wall is amazing, how did they build it, its so big. The forbidden city is being restored for the olympics so it lost much of its impact but what a vast palace. From Beijing we then took a 3700km night train to Guanzhou before we flew to back to HK to Jo's place where we were looked after again with great resturants and went to see the view from the peak, a wicked view of the city.

China has good accomodation and the hostels were the best and cheapest. The chinese in general do not speak much English, but we always made it through. A great experience but i would not return to China, but maybe Hk to buy some fake goods and eat some good food!!!