Well our Great Asia textile journey is all over. We had to come home earlier than we had hoped as my wonderful mother-in -law died rather suddenly. So instead of continuing our travels through Laos, ...
It’s easy to love northern Thailand and Chiang Mai in particular and many people do. It’s easy to relax and start feeling that you could stay a few months and maybe even join the many ex pats who hav...
I’m not sure what it was but it took me a long time to start enjoying Vietnam. Maybe it was just a bit of an anti-climax after the never ending variety and daily surprises of China, maybe it was the ...
Five Things We Love About China 1. THE FOOD! Whether it cost 30p or £3 just about every meal has been delicious, healthy and great value. The delights which can be cooked up in a single wok or the in...
As many of you know, I’ve been a committed Green Party member and campaigner since 1985. As environmental problems have become more pressing I’ve often had China thrown at me as an anti-Green debatin...
Well, I have seen some rice terraces in my time, but the ones at Yuanyang take the biscuit! I think I can safely say that this is one of the most beautiful manmade landscapes in the world. The trick ...
A great place for bird watching! I’m not an expert but here are a few of the birds we saw… An atmospheric (i.e. dull!) day for photographs was quickly enlivened by a Ruddy Shelduck. The p...
Dali – long-time hippie paradise– more Japanese organic cafes and groovy backpacker hostels than you can shake a stick at. It’s not hard to see why people have come here and kind of forgotten to go h...
When we went to the Miao New Year Festival in Guizhou this year, I was surprised to see that the famous pleated batik skirts worn by many Miao girls were not in fact batik at all, just printed imitat...
Polished Indigo from Zhaoxing Zhaoxing is about the size of Bishop’s Castle – half way between a big village and a small town. The people here belong to a clan called the Dong and are famous for thei...
You’ll Be Surprised Not much in China turns out the way you think it will. The other day, for example, we arrived at a grim little bus station first thing in the morning full of foreboding, expecting...
We are here in Guizhou which is apparently the poorest province in China, and “without 3 acres of flat land, 3 days of good weather or 3 yuan to rub together”. Hmmm… well as with most things in...
Chengdu is another huge city (over 4 million) but we have decided to take it on and stay a few days – helped by the fact that Sim’s Cozy Hostel is by far the best place we’ve stayed for quite a while...
Langmusi is a Tibetan village surrounded by superb grasslands where nomadic people herd their yaks and sheep, and some very high mountains with snowy peaks. The village is half in Gansu and half in S...
More thoughts from Jim Gaffney When was then? Officially, the Silk Road opened with an exchange of embassies between Parthia and China in 105 BC. Once the sea route from Europe to the East opened fro...
Five things we loved about Xinjiang Spicy tasty food – great steaming woks of it and never forgetting the shashlik! Old guys. A most attractive bunch with their white beards, embroidered skull caps a...
Xinjiang is the huge province in the far north-west of China where we’re getting our introduction to China. That’s a bit like arriving in Great Britain from the Orkneys, it’s not really typical China...
Over the mountains to China I had read Lonely Planet’s section on crossing the border into China where the possibility of hitching rides on Chinese trucks is mentioned. I had thought to myself “Yes, ...
Five things I love about Kyrgyzstan The spectacular scenery, snowy mountains, rushing water, amazing walnut forests, poplars, planes and willow trees. Yurts and the people who live in them – OK I’ve ...
We took a bit of a breather in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek after many consecutive days travelling or hiking in the mountains. It was pretty much capital city stuff: looking at monuments, walking in pa...
We have been selling felt dollies in our shop for a few years, since we found them in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. Mohammed, a Kazakh trader has been sending them to us every now and then and we had...
Kochkor is a perfectly ordinary little Kyrgyz town. It has its fair share of picturesque, dusty, poplar lined streets, its open man holes, clapped out Ladas and “mountain” Audis, men in white felt ha...
Song Kul is one of the most beautiful spots in Kyrgyzstan, and as Kyrgyzstan must surely rank alongside Switzerland and Scotland in terms of scenery, that’s really saying something. We’ve been warned...
Many country people make their own yurts from wood and wool but if you don’t have the time or the amazing skills in woodwork and felt making needed to make one, you will have to order one from a prof...
There’s a lot to love about Kyrgyzstan and much of the lovable stuff can be found around Karakol. We’ve had two wonderful hikes into the mountains -the first in the valley of the Karakol River, the s...
At last I’ve done it – my life’s ambition has been accomplished and now I can die happy – I have stayed the night in a proper felt yurt (and I wasn’t even at a Festival). Unlike most dreams it was ev...
We’ve come to Karakol – at the far side of Lake Issyk Kul, and we suddenly feel we are in a Russian outpost. The holiday resorts on the Lake cater for a Russian crowd including the motherly Olga and ...
Osh seems to me a tough, gloomy place on the whole. Admittedly, I’ve only been here 24 hours, and last night included ingredients such as a hot airless room, mosquitos, bedbugs (luckily only imagined...
Osh, our first taste of Kyrgyzstan! Famous for felt hats, rioting and crummy Soviet apartment blocks. People’s faces are already a bit different here – rounder, with narrower eyes, higher cheekbones ...
Five things I love about Uzbekistan The textiles – amazing embroideries, beautiful carpets, silk and ikat and all much better than I could have hoped for The bazaars – overflowing with fruit an...
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