Kyrgyzstan: Jun 14 - 27

Irkeshtam - osh - bishkek - osh

Homeward Glances

Sometimes it's the closing in that makes you realise how far you really are.

We had raced from the border with a brief stopover in Osh. The first leg was in a hatchback so crammed we took turns lying on our panniers with feet dangling out the rear, the second in a rack-equipped stationwagon where the comfort of greater sprawl space was offset by the looping mortality song of tyres screeching around blind descents at 130 km/hr.

Xinjiang: Jun 13

Ulugqat

Blind Deaf Justice

Well at least Dheiu no longer has to worry about coming up short if a conversation turns to talk of pushing the Chinese deaf around.

Here's the exchange as a montage. Cue The Benny Hill Show's 'Yackety Sax' for full effect:

Xinjiang: Jun 2 - 12

KASHI

Uyghur Please

Kashi sits in the far northwest, nestled against the Taklamakan Desert in the Xingjian Uyghur Autonomous Region. In its Silk Road heyday merchants converged on this oasis city from Central Asia and China on heavily-loaded, slow-moving caravans.

Xinjiang: May 23 - Jun 1

URUMQI

Why is a Chicken Like a Chinese Train?

After a certain point it can start to feel like travel might just be about practicing your nod in different timezones.

Beijing: May 14 - 22

Beijing

Our Long March

You can't play the Good, Culturally-Sensitive Tourist all the time.

Sometimes you need to retreat from what's outside--find a backpackers' hostel and binge on Cohen Brothers' story-telling and Monopoly Deal.

Inner Mongolia: May 10 - 13

Erenhot

Under the Weather

Here's a good joke: someone cashed-up/job-free/21st Century enough to be travelling for five months pulls up to a blog and says,  I'm just not feeling it this week.

Welcome to Erenhot, where something like homesickness rode the coattails of boredom.

Ulaanbaatar: Apr 30 - May 8

Mutton-Mouthed Wild West

Ulaanbaatar is the sort of capital city you inherit when your ancestors were nomads, your closest neighbour is Russia and you sit on top of staggering amounts of recently-tapped mineral wealth.

Bowlegged ex-horsemen lean onto canes next to rich young things. Both travel over cracked footpaths past drab Soviet-era tenaments, outlying gers and just-built skyscrapers, skirting crumbling roads where everyone is a taxi driver but no-one covers manholes.

Gobi Day 7: Apri 29

Gobi Desert

Final Stretch

On day seven we rode a measly 10 kilometres before we found another truck willing to take all the way to Ulaanbaatar, still some 400 kilometres away.

The driver had been more eager to accept us than his passenger. By the time we hit the sealed road at Choir I understood why: the passenger was the one who had to hide whenever we passed a traffic police checkpoint.