The Silk Road - Part 1

We are writing this blog from Zhang Ye. That's about 5 hours from WuWei, which is 12 hours from YinChuan. YinChuan is another 12 hours from HotHot.

If you recognize any of these names, then you are more knowledgeable than both of us! We are in the lesser travelled part of China - which runs through Inner Mongolia, underneath Russia and to the East of Mongolia proper. It's the old (Northern) silk route.

You really don't see many white people here, and even KFC, McDonnald's and Star Bucks have not yet ventured this far. We are living on a mixture of veggie jiaozi's (like Chinese tortellinis), instant noddles, sweet bread, pizza with apple on it and other strange things. Despite the large cultural differences, the people here are some of the most friendly and genuine people that we have met to date (along with the other "Northerners"). They seem to be more lively and out-going than in other parts of China, and maybe because of the novelty factor, we feel like we get special treatment.

Today we made a day trip to Mati Si, which used to be a Tibetan Chinese Buddhist Monastery. They were crazy monks, in that they built a whole complex of temples 50 meters up into a solid rock cliff face (OK, it is sandstone...). The way in which the landscape changed was dramatic - one minute in desert, the next in corn fields and the next in mountain alpine. Lee spent the trip back playing "Spot the Pot" - a game of simple rules. When you see a pot plant, you shout "Spot the Pot". This has inspired Lee to write a book called "Pot in China - the definitive guide".

Yesterday we were driving along large stretches of the "Great Wall of China". Lee finds it hard to believe that this part is visible from space with a naked eye - it was more like a an Africa mud and straw sheep pen. But time is not always kind on beauty.

Apart from food being a little bit difficult here - we are really enjoying ourselves. There are less people everywhere - a nice change from the normal Chinese "Mega Cities". The skies are really blue, and the heat wave seems behind us.

More photos to follow... soonish...