Hi everyone. Sorry for the lack of updates recently but we've been really busy for a variety of reasons including ill health and a serious lack of planning. Being spontaneous was cool to begin with, and it took alot of effort to convince Ihsan its ok, but we're still wandering around China and the summer is almost over.

Since the last update we've been travelling further along the silk road which was our original, rather simplistic plan. From the old imperial capital of Xi'an we moved Northwest back to depessing Lanzhou for a second time, and then towards the "New Frontier" of China, Xinjiang, which has more in common with Pakistan and other central Asian countries. We visited Urumqi, Turpan and Kashgar as we crossed the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts and were almost at the border with Pakistan! Lots of updates will follow about our ventures "into the wild" (finally) and some security incidents and stuff.

Suddenly realising how many days we had wasted because of Ihsan having a shit passport and me having a shit immune system we had no choice but to fly out of Urumqi. In hindsight we had been pretty nieve thinking that we could travel a country that is more like a continent by road and rail alone. We're currently in Chengdu, Sichuan province, which was recently devastated by a strong earthquake, and we have been prevented from going to Tibet (a big sarcastic xiexie to Phill Bartell, Tirian Mink, Iain Thom and Lucy Marion for making it difficult for everyone else). With out our planned grande finale of our first leg of this tour, we again have no firm plans and anything is possible. With a target date around 16th August to get to Malaysia, the South East Asia part of the tour is on hiatus. Watch this space for where we'll end up.

-Usman