This, I am sure, you will want to know. If there is any 'you' reading this, that is. I have just been on holiday, about which there is nothing much to say, and I had an overlong series of flights home starting late at night, and that evening I went out for my final local meal. My enthusiasm for exploration exhausted, I went to the place opposite ( Read more... )

Between one thing and another I have not had a moment to spare, which is why you have not yet heard about the success with which our search for haggis was finally crowned. Exhaustive research fails to find haggis in Beijing or Shanghai, but after a couple of false leads in Nanjing, our next destination, we eventually find an old blog post whose ( Read more... )

The Bund is the stretch of riverside running along the neoclassical facades of long-gone European trading and banking organisations when Shanghai was under foreign control, and opposite the tall skyscrapers of the commercial quarter. It also played a part in the struggle for supremacy between the Communists and the Kuomintang, and with many ( Read more... )

For the past week I have been an unashamed tourist, travelling with my Chinese friend Y and going at the most hectic pace from Chengdu to Xi'an to Beijing and from one famous attraction to another. (This post is therefore the equivalent of 'would you like to see my holiday snaps', and you may wish to skip it.) Everywhere we have gone the streets ( Read more... )

It is an enchanting flight from Kathmandu to Chengdu. If you can, get a window seat on the left-hand side. We took off in bright sunshine and, continuing in the same vein, were soon cruising over an amazing craggy sunlit wilderness, with snow-capped peaks to the north. There is no sign of any human activity: these are the very highest places in the ( Read more... )

I'm posting from Kathmandu airport, where my flight has just been announced. My last few days in town have been uneventful, mostly catching up with some old friends and acquaintances ( Read more... )

The next day we visit a village close to the town where four brothers of S's and their families live, which is very beautiful and where I meet many excellent people and see many wonderful things of which time, however, is too short to speak. I stay the night while S zooms off to take care of some things. He reappears next morning and takes me off ( Read more... )

When I rise in the morning S is outside trampling on a circular pile of straw nearly as tall as himself. A much bigger pile is over by the field, where it has been left by the thresher after a bale or two of rice were threshed a few weeks ago. Now it's time to start packing the straw into a huge bullet-shaped bale of a type which litter the ( Read more... )

Our departure is delayed by bureaucracy till the next morning, and despite sunnier estimates takes over 12 hours, on a very long bus journey to Urlabari, followed by an autorickshaw to S's sister's house where we pick up his motorbike and set off out of town. Though we woke at 5 and arrived at the bus station by 6, it is dark by the time when, ( Read more... )

I arrived in Kathmandu on Friday in warm sunshine, but it's nippy at night. The Tibetan family-run Hotel Utse still as good as ever: comfortable, clean, homely, handsomely decked out in a Tibetan style, cheap, with good food, hot water when you are lucky, and these days tolerable wifi to boot ( Read more... )