Okay, so checking into the Fawlty Towers hotel is kind of a strange experience - reading the hotel service guide it instructs you to call Manwell for anything you need... quite funny - but actuall the hotel was very nice!

The town itself it a complete tourist trap and very westernised, everywhere western menus, and almost everyone was able to take money off you in English...

Songpan was a lost town for me - I didn't make it out of my hotel room - okay the bathroom to be more precise!...

Next day we were bus'ing it to Chengdu- which promised Panda's and spicy food - cool!

After Langmusi, we stayed in a village homestay - a little house which was cashing in on tourist trade. The family moved out and stayed in the living room, and let us lot have their bedrooms. It was a nice insight into real life in China...

A sky burial, sounds quite barbaric to westeners, it is where the body is taken to a sacred hill, and cut up and left for the vultures to eat. This is a respected for of burial for the people in Langmusi. The sky burial site is open to tourists although obviously there was a considerable amount of respect required before visiting such a place... {don't read this if you are squeemish!}

Day 8... Six hours on a bus to Langmusi, JiuJa is coming with us as he will be our local guide as we get more and more remote.

Adrian and Mickey were a bit rough, but Sam, bless her, she was looking terrible...

We made really good time as a road had been built where the track had been before.. Lunch was in a very local roadside cafe, local is now starting to mean 'cheap and dirty' without sounding negative :-)...

Early up, to visit the Monastery with our local guide JiuJa, he was a cool dude.. he had a swagger and a knock off North Face jacket. His english was excellent and he is a very dedicated buddist.

He gave us a really good explanation of all the protectors and buddhas, it is all so complex. He was also know by the monks, it had a good feeling.

After a long sleeper train ride down from Xi'an to Lanzhou we met our bus, which was to take us to Xiahe. We stopped briefly for a Chinese buffet breakfast, which was good.. Pickled cabbage, rocket, beansprouts, celery, corn plus some of the hardest sponge cake in the world.. you could build houses out of it!

The bus ride was six hours with our driver for the next week or so, the to become legendary Mr Xu!...

We all raised ourselves from our sleepy pits, to go and join in with T'ai Chi in the square next to the hotel. There were a number of groups of people, a couple of people practicing T'ai Chi sword, and another in a uniform practicing a Fan routine.

This was a new experience for me, and one which I approached with a certain amount of concern... My preconceptions included very hard sleeper, smokey and noisey.. I have to say, this was not the case at all.. Hard sleeper, is comfy, the locals are really respectful and everyone is quite.. the smokers move away from the sleeping area to smoke.. so it was actually a very relaxing way to travel...

Our last day in Beijing started with the prime tourist sights, Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City, with our local guide Gloria.

We took the underground, which was cheap and easy, and gave the locals more staring time with us...