Hello everyone, how are things going? This email is probably going to make depressing reading at various points. Don't worry, things have improved massively since then, but I wanted to give you the woe is me times as well as the incredible, happy times.

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Wallace, protector of Koreans, scourge of dogs

Langmusi is a town on the border of Sichuan and Gansu, so much so that one of the town's large Buddhist monasteries is in one province, one in the other.

Back in Songpan, the same traveller who'd told me Zoige was a shithole told me he'd stayed in a great hotel, whose manager had arranged it so that he could see a Sky Burial. I was very surprised at this, everything I'd read indicated that the Tibetans were very reluctant to allow foreigners to witness these burial ceremonies. While I don't understand the exact nature of a sky burial, I would well agree that if one was abandoning a deceased relative's body to the elements and vultures, the last thing I'd want was a bunch of backpackers taking photos and probably muttering how this reminded them of Peru.
On checking in to a hotel in Langmusi, I ran my eyes down the list of things to do in town. Numbers one and two were the two monasteries. Number three: Sky Burial. Additional details included the warning for tourists: "Not every day", and the instruction: "Buy your ticket at the checkpoint". Both these comments were terribly depressing... I amusing myself by imagining the kind of person that would need to be reminded funerals didn't necessarily happen every day. Paying to see a dead Tibetan's body sounded strangely similar to paying to see a live Thai girl's body - I realised I was happy to give it a miss.

My first night in town, my hotel manager takes me and a few of his friends to Leisha's cafe on Langmusi's high street. I think he was just relieved to have a guest - I was the only person staying among the three floors of rooms. We ate lovely food and watched Braveheart dubbed into Chinese. I told the Tibetans that my family name, Wallace, is the same as the name of Mel Gibson's hero, William Wallace - but I think their interest was pretty much consumed by wistfully coveting the huge horses both sides rode into battle. Leisha's cafe is deceptively unique. Unusually, for a backpacker type place, the food is really, really good and while Western sounding, is in fact from some strange planet only vaguely similar to Earth. For instance, order "Spaghetti Bolognaise" and a large bowl of hand made fresh noodles with yak mince in a green sauce will appear. Order a Baby McYak and you get a huge plate of vegetables, fried potato and yak meat inside a vast bun. There is a non-Baby Mc Yak, but the walls of Leisha's cafe echo with the warnings of the inadequately stomached fools who have ordered this apparently monstrous twelve yuan meal. Leisha, child of a Hui Muslim and a Tibetan, is also not the usual in backpacker bar managers. She doesn't seem to do the smiling, simpering over-eager to please thing - at first I found her rather dislikable. But this is because, I think, she is quite a strong person, and waits to see if you are worth smiling at.

Leisha keeps track of the foreigners in town - aside from her local friends, we are her livelihood. She tells me on my first morning in town, "There is you and there is a girl from Korea". A girl from Korea, I do a double take - you the reader, have to now imagine some cheesy flashback special effect.
I am in Songpan, the day before my horsetrek started (imagine this bit in black and white if it helps). I am walking around town, a little annoyed at myself for not taking one of a few opportunities to start a conversation with a pretty Asian traveller with long curly hair whom I've seen several times around town. Eventually, I see her in the bus station and just go up and we start talking. She is Korean and is coming to the end of her trip to China. She is heading up to Langmusi, same as I am, but I don't expect her to still be there when I arrive, given that I have a four day horsetrek to do first. We talk for a while, she heads off to study some Chinese by herself (so my conversation clearly can't have been that thrilling). Cheesy flashback ending, I say to Leisha, "Korean girl, very pretty?" - Leisha has a big smile: "Yeah! Korea girl is here! Coming back from hospital, attacked by dogs". Sorry, attacked by dogs? "Yes", Leisha continues with wide eyes, "five big dogs!", making biting hand gestures over her legs and bum. Tibetan black mastiffs, real arseholes of dogs, I can tell you from previous, though nowhere near as close as this, experience, are not to be taken lightly. I took this photo back while I was staying in a village guest house on my Songpan horsetrek. The dog had a perpetual "You're deadmeat, little boy" expression and barked venomously every time it saw me. It is in fact hurling itself at my throat as the picture was taken.
Leisha produces something for me to take - "Use this"! I am holding in both hands something out of the dark ages, a black corded rope about a metre long attached to a 30cm odd rectangular metal head, which widens towards the end. Leisha indicates the cord is to be swung around one's head to build up speed and the metal weight smashed on to any dog's skull that gets too close. Genteel England seems a long way away - this is getting closer to a scene from Braveheart than I expected to be acting out. "Use it against Tibetan dogs - and Chinese people!" gleefully laughs the Tibet brown Leisha.
The Korean girl appears, she is surprised and very happy to see me. She is wearing a very short skirt, one of her delectable legs has a bandage wrapped around it, but beyond that she seems fine. She sits down next to me and tells how she was hiking in nearby hills, thought some dogs barking at her were tied up, they start chasing her, she runs, they chase, she runs, she trips and falls, they surround her, biting and tearing at her combat trousers. They run off once they've made their mark and as locals appear. Everyone is very sorry for her and takes her to the doctor. This doesn't just happen to slender young women - apparently a very large German tourist got a similar treatment over his legs and arms a year or two previous. Hiker, beware.
I suggest to her that she and I go sightseeing to the Gansu monastery tomorrow together, everyone agrees this is a very good idea. I try to give the dog-smashing thing back to Leisha, but she tells me to carry it around with me, as part of my role as protecting male - I can return it after tomorrow's walk. I look down at the thing in my hands, my sword to defend my attractive Asian charge and myself against insufficiently domesticated Tibetan beasts. It is an awful instrument to be holding, I've actually done some on and off weapons training in martial art classes over the years and this thing's weight is weird to my hands - feeling surely too light to be used against an armoured foe in battle, too heavy to be used to whack against human flesh without risk of serious injury. Forget New Man, what did GQ and Men's Health ever have to offer on this kind of subject? This is Old Man, about as Old as you can get.
The Tibetan men in the cafe rebind the handle part for me and offer the prudent tip that I should swing it up and down not round and round - swinging it around my head is likely to result in braining myself long before any dogs are in danger. Korea girl and I agree to meet back at Leisha's tomorrow at 10am.

That night it snows, and the hills and mountains cupping Langmusi in their enormous hands become even more beautiful.

I walk through town as people hurriedly shovel snow away from their doors, women in shops throw snowballs at me. Korea girl and I start our walk to the overhead monastery. The snow is deep and the ground underneath slippery mud, after several fallings over we walk holding hands on our vague path around the hills. No dogs appear, probably preferring to stay indoors during the cold.
The Gansu monastery seems far less about school and books than the Sichuan one was - while the young processions of monks smile at us (well, they smile more at one of us), we aren't allowed to go inside and the monks retreat for some chanting.
While the Buddhists attend to their souls, I am wondering if the Korean girl is happy to hold my hand because, well, she likes me, or simply because she doesn't want to fall over. Much later in the day, it rather awkwardly transpires it was, unfortunately, very much the latter.

This way lies Tibet The view from the hills above Langmusi. This is one of my favourite photos ever - if you are trying to decide whether to throw in the job and go travelling, this may decide you...

I had some very nice experiences in Langmusi. I spent an afternoon in two two young monks' house (in the much more accessible Sichuan monastery). Five of them shared a simple house, and the ones I had met while resting on a hill and shown my photos to, brought me back, got a fire going in a small oven and made tea. I had some very fun chats with Leisha, she tried to get me to stay in town and teach in the school, and when it was clear I was leaving, she gave me a couple of goodbye presents (on the understanding I'd tell other travellers to come to her cafe). So, I really can't explain the almost continuous feeling of confinement, feeling desperate to leave. By the afternoon of my second full day, I held an inexplicable almost fury at the town for keeping me there, watching the minutes tick along until I could go to sleep and catch the 7am bus away. Perhaps this was due to my continuing feeling ill, so not able to really appreciate Leisha's good cooking. On arriving in Langmusi, my hotel manager turned out also to be a pharmacist - "What kind of medicine would you like, Chinese or Tibetan"? I realised I probably was going to have to go to a genuine doctor once I got to Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, so figured I'd take something Tibetan as a stop gap. I was instructed to purchase a bag of large black balls of ?, to chew and then swallow with hot water. They were probably the most disgusting thing I've ever put in my mouth. On a bad taste scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being "instantly vomit it back on to the plate", these were maybe a 9. A couple of times my throat did in fact retch on contact with these vilenesses - I stood over the sink, watching myself in the mirror dribble black gunk down my chin. That was something of a low point, I can tell you.

In the evening of my last night in town, I went to Korea girl's hotel to tell her and a local friend of her's that I was leaving - they wanted me to stay and visit some friends in the Sichuan monastery the next day. As I walked down the stairs having told them, she ran after me and said goodbye and good luck. It was a really nice thing to do, given the awkwardness earlier, one I completely spoilt, feeling still somewhat embarrassed, so just saying, yeah goodbye, I waved and quickly walked off. So I guess in the end I wasn't a very good defender of Koreans.

On to Xiahe, the Tibetan pills turned out to be as effective as they were revolting. By the time I was checked in to my Xiahe hotel, my stomach and bowels were all but back to normal functioning. I'm not sure whether I was more happy that I was feeling well or that I could stop taking those pills.

Travelling through Gansu province countryside and towns, words don't hit any of the senses of this strange place. Cold wind, snow, grey and brown, small communities sheltering under and from bleak hills and mountains. Each smattering of houses seemed the same colour as the earth surrounding them, whether grey, red or yellow. To say Gansu is mountainous is true, but these are not heroic looking Yunnan style mountains, these are endless hills just too large and brutal to be lived on. Houses collected in the flat plains between them. To say that Gansu is poor is true, but then many houses had appealling coloured glass fronts, large walled front yards where animals were enclosed for the night, I imagined. To say that it was harsh, yes, but wide fields ever surrounded the road. It felt remote, even with connecting roads and nipping motorcycles passing our bus, these villages were deeply nowhere close to anywhere. Dark faces followed us along this frontier province, little boys screamed at the bus, clearly the day's entertainment for them. The journey from Xiahe to Lanzhou was an incredible journey across worlds: I began in a centre of Buddhist pilgrimage, Tibetan faces the majority, and as my bus headed north, we crossed over to a different God, the white caps of Islam becoming a bobbing sea in every small town we passed, every humble skyline was a great towering mosque.

I wrote this while in Xiahe:

Losing my wow

Something of a very, very low point lately. Really feel like I've lost my sense of wow here in China. I walk the streets and don't see them, pass Muslims and Buddhists and nothing excites me particularly. Staying in the largest Tibetan buddhist monastery town outside of Lhasa, and now that I've visited the huge temple complex, which was indeed amazing, I have no idea what to do next. I had this idea I would stay a couple of weeks and teach English to the monks, but walking around, although I got a lot of smiles, no sense of welcome or inviting me in. I felt very much the gawking tourist, but had no idea how to alter that.
It's getting to the stage where sitting in an internet cafe (as opposed to actual exploring) is becoming too appealling. China is a bad country to lose one's wow. It is a wearying place at times, frequent and blatant overcharging, long rough bus journeys, hard to interact deeply with anyone, largely due to the near constant language barrier.

The appeal of travelling is, on one big level, visual. Things leap out and demand your brain's attention - differences assault your ability to comprehend them. A father and two daughters in the town of Songpan, crouching over the muddy gutter, brushing their teeth for the evening, is an image that will stay with me for a long time.
If that initial level, the wow, goes, then does simply continuing to travel around start to lose its point? I know if I keep going in China, I will spend too much time saying: yes, yes, another... It was the way I starting feeling back in Nicaragua about Latin America. The treatment for such a feeling is, for me, to stop travelling for a while, stay in a place and go deeper. Go deeper and find out things about a culture that aren't on a superficial level.
The problem is, I'm not sure where I can do that here in NW China. I'm not sure where there's anywhere that will call out and invite me to stay for a couple of weeks or a month. It seems a terrible shame to stop my exploring of NW China so early, but equally, might it not be more terrible to continue travelling and not appreciate any of it? There are some caves in north Gansu with huge collections of ancient Buddhist art. I know if I go there in my current frame of mind, I will utterly waste the opportunity to appreciate them.
Think that perhaps a change is needed - perhaps sneaking into Laos before the rains wash away the roads for the summer.
I feel absolutely no regret for coming as far as I have, incidentally. I feel as though I have earned an amazing view of the Tibetan world, one I wonder how easy it would be to get in Tibet or India, what with the rumoured presence of Chinese secret police, all the other tourists and, in India, Richard Gere. I've seen the ferocious Goloks, I've seen monks squatting down fully robed and, merely shifting layers around, taking a piss in the street - neither were images of Tibet I expected to see. Perhaps what I hope to learn in India is something deeper of this world - something more than just the visual - I've found it hard to learn much theology from monasteries so unprepared for tourism that no one spoke English.

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Next day, feeling a bit better. Amazing what difference a good sleep can have on one's mood. Decided, at least, to go to Lanzhou and work out what to do after I've looked around and spoken to travel agents. Checked out of my hotel, involving, so unsurprisingly, yet another argument about money, bought a cd of a Tibetan pop song I know will bring back memories of this region in years to come.
Still feel very lonely. Wondering how long my being alone reserves will last, how long before my internal lake, "sequestered and self sufficing" to appropriate Nieztsche, starts to dry up. But then it occurs to me, I am not doing this trip entirely alone, there are quite a few people doing this trip with me, reading my stories and emailing me. Perhaps I should look at it in those terms. On to Lanzhou.

Uses for a guidebook

In all frankness, having a guidebook would be rather useful on arriving in a big city like Lanzhou. I got off the bus with no idea where a cheap hotel might be, nor even where I was in the city. The station could have been in the very centre or some distant suburb - the close together buildings, their white tile covered walls, in that oh so Chinese style, crowded out explanations. Taxi drivers shouted at me to get in, sniggering amongst themselves when they realised I didn't understand them. I had long been planning, anyway, when I at last got off this cramped and hungry bus (it had been seven unpleasant hours since Xiahe), I would sit down and eat, first of all. I walked to a cheap restaurant opposite and ate noodles.
The world makes more sense on a full stomach - I got up, paid and started walking. I had no idea where I was going, but the weight of traffic was heading downhill, so I followed it. As the road curved, I got glimpses of distant hubbubs of the city, its scale was unquestionably beyond my capacities to uncover. I passed the smallest of family restaurants - a one room house, in fact just a tiny basement of a house, some steps leading down to a well lit room where dumplings sat prepared. My restaurant radar, "restdar", if you will, started pinging, this seemed like a nice place. The husband and wife were happy to serve me, the little boy goggle eyed - the place was cordoned into their living quarter and an L shaped diner circling the tiny family bedroom. I ate and asked them where I could find a hotel, they pointed me a little down the road, to a Muslim hotel. It turned out to be a very nice, friendly place, a little more expensive than usual (40 yuan), but after all those bus journeys, I couldn't face sharing a room with the unappealling Uyghar that they were offering me for 20 yuan.
Leaving Bertha in the room, I decided to go evening exploring. While having a guidebook would have been helpful, and might have found me a cheaper hotel, the delight of not having one was just wonderful. I don't mean that in an "aren't I cool" sense, I mean the delight of being in a new, totally unknown city, and beginning to reel it in, step by step. I still had no idea where I was in relation to the rest of Lanzhou, but I smiled at my ignorance - Daniel, you're were born in a big city, you've spent your life in them, soak this one up. I issued an order: feet, take me to this city's heart. I followed people, distant lights, odd senses of a buzz further along, choose not streets that didn't call to me. Every sense was alert that evening, each brought whatever it could to my brain's attention. I noticed how dressy Lanzhou was, how for the first time in China it seemed people were wearing suits in a way I recognised - to deliberately look well off and smart. Everywhere in China, people everywhere wear suits (without ties), but in a strange, indifferent way, they wear them to cook meals and drive buses - in Lanzhou, people dressed to impress. There seemed a uniformed girl or boy behind every door, to greet new arrivals to the restaurant or bar. Was this formality just the same as in places to the east like Beijing? I preferred to imagine the Chinese of this city (Lanzhou amazed me with how Han it was compared to the surrounding countryside) preened their gentility and money to help them forget the howling barbarian abyss just to the north and west. Well, there probably hadn't been any howling barbarianism near to Gansu for centuries, but I smiled to keep my image of this frontier city. I came to a street stall, bought a map, found I was indeed walking towards the city centre - Haha! I carried on, and came to a vast white mosque, green spotlights making it shine in the night. Each night in Lanzhou, its glowing spires would be a mark in the city for me to angle off. I walked for a long time that night, saw many visions of the city - I retreated to my room rather proud of myself.

The next day I made my decision about where to go next on my travels. On a map, Lanzhou might not seem that remote or hard to get to, but the journey from Chengdu via Songpan, Zoige, Langmusi and Xiahe had been long, uncomfortable, just this side of bearably cold at some points. I found I had no more stomach for the by far even longer journey through Gansu and Xinjiang to Kashgar - apologies to disappoint, dear readers, but I wanted a change more than I wanted central Asia. The idea of SE Asia, Laos and Thailand, were fascinating me, making me feel an excitement that China just didn't anymore. There was also the perhaps embarrassing fact that during this eight month "Trip around the world", I have so far managed to visit eight countries. Yep, just eight, and have spent the vast majority of my time in only four: the US, Mexico, Guatemala and China. Perhaps it was time to see a bit more of the world. Reading on the internet, I discover that Laotian new year is in mid April, a time of happy fiesta. I have time to head down to the border, relax amid the bath water heat, then choose somewhere to be for the celebrations.

A plane ticket to Kunming was about 1000 yuan, by train it was around half that. But as there wasn't a space on the plane until five days later, I would arrive the same time whatever, so opted to save money and bought a sleeper train ticket for Chengdu. I was looking forward to a reunion with pleasant Chengdu and Kunming, feeling happy and free. I spent my last night in northern China exploring, at one street corner watching rows of puppies in boxes being examined by well dressed women, breeders avowing their charges' suitability as pets. I ate in that little family dumplings place again on my last morning, filling up my stomach for the long journey south.

Daniel, 26 March, Lanzhou