China
My Chinese posts comprise of three trips I did in the 1990s. The first two were both to Yunnan in 1991 & 1992. The third trip was much longer. It took me 6 weeks from April to May 1993. I started in Chengdu, Szechuan, bussed it north over the Tibetan plateau to Gansu and then, skirting the Gobi desert, to the far west of China at Yining and from there south to Kashgar. Here I took the Karakoram Highway to Pakistan and my journey ends in Peshawar. Go straight to the map here
Dali & Lijiang
20 Dec 1991This is a trip me and Ingrid did in December 1991. Unfortunately, I lost my diary for this trip so I’ve only got (badly scanned) photos. As we were coming from Hong Kong, we flew into Kunming and looks like we stayed in the Green Lake Hotel which is now 5 stars – it was a bit different then. We somehow got to Dali. I presume a very long bus journey. Then we moved onto Lijiang, again, presumably on…
Xishuangbanna
20 Dec 1992This was a trip I did in December 1992 in South West China. Xishuangbanna is an autonomous prefecture in China’s southwestern Yunnan province, bordering Myanmar and Laos. It’s known for Dai culture, distinctive temples and tropical rainforests. I was living in Hong Kong at the time and went with my friend Ingrid. First up we got the overnight ferry to Guangdong, headed to the airport and then got the flight to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. That was the…
Over the plains of heaven
13 Apr 1993I was living in Hong Kong at the time. Or rather I’d just been transfered to Sydney but managed to get a two month break in order to do an epic journey from Chengdu, skirting the Tibetan plateau north, west across the border with Mongolia and Russia and then south to Kashgar and across the Karakoram mountains into Pakistan. It was April 1993. Almost 30 years later, I’ve dug up my old diary and scanned the photos and this is…
Between the desert and the mountains
20 Apr 199313th April, Lanzhou. I decided that rather than go back to the train station, I would try a few travel agents to get my train ticket to Jiayuguan. After trying a few and a bit of bargaining I got a place on a train at 11.30am tomorrow, arriving at 6.15am the day after for 130 Y + 30Y commission. The times are pretty good and I get a bit of time to rest up after my exhausting time in Tibet….
Land of the Uighurs
27 Apr 1993After my mini lie-in I got the 10am bus for the relatively short 4 hour hop to Urumqi (20Y). The bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere but I was able to get a 3-wheeler to the Hongsham Hotel where I got a room for 45Y with the world’s smallest bath. I needed to get some laundry done and the hotel staff weren’t interested but fortunately there was a laundry across the road. I went for a wander…
Kashgar
3 May 1993The southernmost metropolis of China’s New Frontier, Kashgar (Kāshí) has been the epicentre of cultural conflict and cooperation for over two millennia. Modernity has swept in like a sandstorm. A paved Silk Road preceded an airport and in 1999 the Iron Rooster arrived, along with many Han Chinese. Taxis and motorbikes are everywhere, and much of the old architecture is giving way to the new. This is the guidebook description from 2010. It was very different 17 years earlier. After…
The Karakoram Highway
20 May 1993My time in China was almost at an end. On Monday morning I was off on the bus to Pakistan. Gathering in the foyer of the hotel was a bunch of foreigners also going. There were three British girls, the Chinese/American I had met before, an American from Beijing with his Chinese wife, one Japanese guy and one other American. We all handed our passports in and waited. When the bus appeared there was a huge scrum of locals. The…
Map of China