Sunday Market at Kashgar on the Silk Route, Xinjiang province, China

Every Sunday is a big day in Kashgar – the population swells by 50,000 as buyers, sellers and onlookers stream in from near and far to attend one of the biggest bazaars in Asia.  We were up bright and early and went first to the livestock market on the edge of town to see thousands of sheep, goats, cattle, horses and donkeys bustle into the arena.  Each type of animal had its own allocated area, and it was fascinating to watch the Uighur and Tajik farmers and butchers locked in earnest negotiations, going through a buying and selling ritual we didn’t fully understand.  Out the back, prospective purchasers took horses for a test-drive, riding them expertly around a large gravelly yard.

The animals and people across the whole market were in close contact and I reckoned that there must sometimes be broken bones for both man and beast.  We strolled around for about an hour watching all the fascinating, swirling sights and soaking up the intoxicating smells and sounds.  Then we saw a large bull not far from us break free from its handler and charge in our direction.  We leapt to the side to get out of his path but he continued to charge, so we began to run.  Luckily for us, the call of nature intervened to save us.  The bull must have streaked past a cow on heat – this stopped him absolutely dead in his tracks and he proceeded to mount an exhibition of an altogether different kind, prompting an immediate whipping from his owner (or more likely the owner of the cow).  We didn't hang around to see the climax of this particular piece of saleyard theatre, instead taking the opportunity while the bull was otherwise indisposed to flee to the relative sanctuary of the goat and sheep arena where we made another inspection of the fluffy little animals all tethered by the neck in their cute straight rows. Then we sat down with some Uighur farmers to enjoy a bowl of freshly-made goat and vegetable noodles.

We'd had enough excitement for one morning, so we fought our way through the throng to get to the market exit where we hailed a taxi to take us to the Kashgar Bazaar. This occupies several blocks of the city, and pretty well everything imaginable is for sale. The myriad of silk and chilli pepper stalls throughout the bazaar add a lot of colour to the proceedings.

After we'd had our fill of the sights, sounds and smells of this fascinating market, we hailed another taxi to take us to the bus station where we intended to buy a ticket to Tashkurgan near the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan.  But language difficulties intervened and we ended up not at the city centre bus station but on the city outskirts at the Tomb of Abakh Hoja, an Uighur ruler of long ago.  Fortunately another taxi soon arrived and we caught this one back to the city.  This Uighur driver spoke not only some mandarin but also quite a bit of English too, and he introduced himself to us.  We took an immediate liking to Mohammad - he seemed to be the sort of guy who could move a mountain if necessary - and by the time we arrived at the bus station we had closed a deal with him to take us in his taxi on a two-day jaunt to Tashkurgan, leaving tomorrow morning.

Kashgar on the Silk Road, Xinjiang province, China

We flew yesterday with China Southern Airlines from Urumqi to Kashgar, the most westerly city in China. Kashgar lies on the fabled Silk Route, one of the ancient world's greatest merchant routes and melting pots, and used for centuries by travelling merchants from China, India and Europe. Livestock, silk, jade, and a host of other products were hauled in caravan trains along this desert road that stretches for thousands of kilometres. Close by are borders with Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Xinjiang province is home to China's several million Turkic Uighur people, and Kashgar and the other towns and cities on the Silk Route are the Uighur heartland. The physical appearance of the Uighur people, and their language and music, seem to have more in common with Central Asia and the Middle East than with the remainder of China. In fact, travelling around Kashgar is like travelling in a different country.

Kashgar is an increasingly modern city populated by a growing number of Han Chinese people, but the old Uighur core remains and is still an exotic and atmospheric place to stroll around. We walked to the beautifully restored Id Kah mosque and wandered through the nearby winding alleys of old Kashgar where people still live in adobe houses and donkey carts remain mainstream.

Lake Tianchi near Urumqi, Xinjiang province, China

We booked a day tour to Lake Tianchi east of Urumqi with a local travel agent. The agent said the bus would be big and air-conditioned. But the following morning at 9am, a small minibus arrived to pick us up. We were obviously at the beginning of its pick-up run, and by the time all 14 passengers were on board after making several detours for incorrect pick up points and taking wrong routes etc, it was close to mid-day before we headed for Lake Tianchi. Some of the earlier passengers were already frustrated and started to complain that they were hungry and needed a toilet stop, so yet another stop was made for 15 minutes. Finally we were underway and travelling through the countryside towards Lake Tianchi, located high in the Tian Shan mountain range about 80 km east of Urumqi. It was an interesting drive with desert scenery interspersed with oasis country planted with cereal, nut and fruit crops, and a final steep ascent to the Lake. Although Urumqi is the most landlocked city in the world, almost 4,000 km from the ocean, and very dry, there is a huge variety and amount of fruit available from the oasis plantations. We have enjoyed strawberries, mangoes, dates, apricots, currants, raisins, bananas, pineapples, mangoes, oranges, apples, peaches, nectarines, melons, pistachios, almonds, walnuts and peanuts. As the weather has been hot and our appetites dulled, during the day we have eaten mainly only fruit and nuts.

We arrived at Lake Tianchi at around 2pm, and had a quick lunch with the rest of the group (we were the only westerners) at an Uighur cafe. This was rice and a couple of mutton kebabs, and was very good. Then we were escorted by the Guide to the Lake, but as we are not keen on group travel and all the associated tourist hoo-haa, we crept away to walk around part of the lake by ourselves. Lake Tianchi is quite beautiful, set amongst alpine spruce scenery at an elevation of about 7,000 feet, and watched over by the 18,200 feet-high snow-covered Peak of God. It is hard to believe that such a sight could be so close to the surrounding dry countryside. The air was refreshingly cool and when we'd had our fill of walking (we still had sore legs from Zhangjiajie), we caught a cable car down the side of the mountain to be back at the bus before 5pm, the time the Guide had told us the bus would be leaving.

Tours like these usually include excruciating visits to tourist-trap shops that often involve some sort of product demonstration before the hard-sell begins. Every member of the group is expected to participate, even if you ultimately don't buy anything. We had already stopped for one of these just before we got to the Lake. It appeared to me to be some sort of dry stick exhibition delivered by a salesperson wearing a white lab coat (no doubt to lend some clinical cred), and after the demo was over and we were led into the adjacent saleroom, it became clear that this shop was flogging dried local plant stems and bulbs that no doubt had stupendous therapeutic qualities. We saw one young woman shell out 150 Yuan (the price of three nice dinners for two I winced to myself) for a small bunch of dried stem.

By 5pm we were all quite weary and eager to head back to our hotels. The tour was supposed to conclude with a return to Urumqi by 6pm, but around 7pm when we arrived at the outskirts of Urumqi the Guide shocked everyone by announcing that we still had a jade shop to visit. With one exception (the young woman who had bought the bunch of dried stem at the lake), all the passengers were grumpy (in silence). Most of them, including a very elderly man travelling alone, had onward trains to catch that night, but none of them voiced any objections. We wearily stayed on the bus. It appeared to us that the stop was fruitless as no-one made any purchases. We believe the guide or travel company receives a commission from the shop-owner for such visits, so possibly this ultimately feeds through to a lower price for the tour, so we shouldn't be too cynical. Personally though, we would prefer to pay a slightly higher tour price upfront to avoid having to make those pesky shop stops.

Not long after leaving the jade shop, the driver stopped the bus suddenly in the busy peak-hour traffic and alighted to check one of the tyres, the same one we had noted he had scrutinized intently and kicked a few times before we left the Lake. He returned and conferred with the Guide who then announced to us all that the bus could go no further and the tour was over. Evidently a split in the tyre had grown, allowing a bubble of tube to protrude, and a blowout was imminent should we proceed. Presumably there was no spare wheel as the passengers were asked to leave the bus and find their own way home from here. Amazingly, none of the passengers revolted or even complained much. Some hailed taxis, others darted to nearby bus stops to catch the next public bus. Luckily for us, the Guide must have felt that we two foreigners would be incapable of finding our way back to our hotel for she invited us to catch a taxi with her and she said she would drop us off on the way back to her office.

She then heroically charged into the melee of concrete trucks, semi trailers, buses, cars, motorbikes and bikes and amazingly returned unscathed to the kerb with a taxi in tow. We, and the elderly man whom she had also taken under her wing, jumped in and we headed for the centre of town. We talked to the old man who said that he had to pick up his belongings at his hotel and get to the train station by 9.30pm. Eventually he was dropped off at a pre-arranged spot (but not at his hotel) to be met by a colleague of the Guide who was to accompany him to his hotel. We finally made it back to our hotel just after 9pm, tired and hungry but gratefully in one piece despite the reckless final taxi ride. We wondered whether the old man met his deadline - we very much doubted it.

Another fun day in China. You may start out knowing your destination, but the journey itself is sure to throw up surprises, ensuring a day of new sights and adventure for all. It's great!

Urumqi, Xinjiang province, China

We intended to return to Zhengzhou and catch a long distance train to Urumqi. But on the internet I found some very heavily discounted airfares (70% off) that were barely more costly than train tickets. So the choice was between a 3.5 hour flight or a 35 hour train journey, for about the same cost. The choice was obvious – the only catch was that the discount flight was from Xian, not Zhengzhou. But that was OK – we caught a 7 hour night train from Kaifeng to Xian, arriving at 6am. There we caught the airport bus and within a couple of hours we were winging our way to Urumqi. The night train to Xian from Kaifeng was interesting – the four-berth soft-sleeper tickets were sold out so we had to settle for “hard-sleeper” tickets. This was a bed in a doorless six-bed compartment comprised of two triple bunk beds on either side with a narrow space between. My bed was at the top, barely 18 inches from the carriage roof and Lee Tuan's was in the middle. Neither had sufficient headroom to sit up – you had to slot in and lie down. If there is a choice of bunk, the bottom bunk is the best as there is at least some space to sit up, but all those had been taken.

Fortunately the air conditioning on this packed train was effective with a vent above the bed, so the air was reasonably fresh although the air conditioning plant made more noise than the train engines. This train had started at a very distant place and would still have a long way to go after Xian. We were boarding it for only a small section of its journey. My bed had obviously been used previously by someone else during an earlier part of the train's journey, and the previous occupant had thoughtfully left behind in the bed an upturned can of soft drink and some pulpy material on the sheets that smelled like apple. In regard to the latter, I decided to leave the analysis there and proceed on the assumption that it was apple – some of the alternatives didn't bear thinking about. All the same, I didn't relish the prospect of sleeping on damp sheets redolent of coke and apple. So I laid the cover on the bed and slept on top; fortunately it was warm enough not to need a cover. This problem resolved, I slept reasonably well, as it seemed did the other five people within a toe's reach.

We arrived at Urumqi in the early afternoon after a pleasant flight from Xian with China Eastern Airlines, and checked into the Xinrong Hotel in the centre of the city.

Urumqi is an interesting place with people of several different ethnic backgrounds. It is the capital of Xinjiang province, home to China's several million Muslim Uighur people. Urumqi also has a large and rapidly growing Han Chinese population. In addition there are many Kyrgyzs, Tajiks and Pakistanis. Although thousands of kilometres west of Beijing, Xinjiang iofficially operates on Beijing time, with the result that the sun doesn't set until 10.30pm at this time of year. It's also now quite hot, and many shops shut for a 2.5 hour siesta from 1.30 to 4pm.

Like the rest of China, there are food stalls and restaurants everywhere, although the cuisine here has a strong muslim influence reflecting the composition of the population. A popular Uighur dish is “La Mein”. The noodles in it are freshly made by a noodle maker in every stall who is very skillful at kneading, stretching, swinging and twirling the dough into multiple metre-long strands. The locals usually have noodles, kebabs and flat round naang bread for dinner. Another common local food is a rice dish similar to fried rice but cooked instead with shredded carrots, parsnips, lamb meat, raisins and dates (without any eggs). The rice is normally eaten in the afternoon. We have been very well fed in Urumqi. In addition to all the great street food close by, the Xinrong Hotel's restaurant serves the best food we've seen in a hotel restaurant for a very long time. An excellent dinner there can be had for about $4 each – a large bottle of good Chinese beer is a mere 50 cents extra!

The road traffic throughout China is chaotic and hazardous but is especially so in Urumqi. Elsewhere you can be reasonably confident that the drivers of the vehicles bearing down on you will at least attempt to stop, and magically do, if a collision appears inevitable. But not, we discovered, in Urumqi. Here, many vehicles and their drivers tear around much too fast, displaying an aggressive traffic body language that leaves you in no doubt that you will be mown down in an instant if you put a foot wrong. Green pedestrian lights are uniformly ignored, and defensive driving seems to be an unheard of concept. The hospitals must have to deal with a lot of unnecessary road trauma cases.

Kaifeng, Henan province, China

While in the Zhengzhou area we also took the opportunity to visit the city of Kaifeng, about an hour to the east by train. This city of 5 million once had a serious flooding problem – it was inundated about 400 times over an 800 year period to the early 1900s. The result is that the ancient city is buried under metres of silt below the present-day city, and strict building controls so as not to disturb the historical record beneath. The welcome result for the visitor is a funky town that seems a decade behind the rest of China's cities. The buildings are more old-fashioned, and bicycles much more numerous. We spent two pleasant days here seeing the sights. Kaifeng has a fantastic night market and here we saw something we had not seen before in China – people strolling around the night market in their pyjamas! Apparently it's quite the done thing after dinner and dressing for bed to go for a stroll around the market streets before turning in for the night! To us this seemed OK, if a little weird. For dinner we enjoyed a brace of excellent dumplings in a restaurant in the town square located in a building straight out of the Qing Dynasty.

We visited the beautifully restored Guild Hall, built long ago as a lodging and meeting place by visiting merchants from other provinces. Next stop was a disused bank building that holds a significant place in Chinese government history. Liu Shaoqi was a senior member of the Party, and Mao's intended successor. Apparently he was the Party's leading theoretician, and wrote several books including the classic How to be a Good Communist. Obviously a good communist himself, he rose to be the Chairman of the People's Republic of China for about eight years. But he was purged during the Cultural Revolution and banished to Kaifeng where he was locked up in a room in a disused bank, and he died here. But Liu has since been posthumously rehabilitated, and the room where he was held and where he died is now open to the public as both a memorial and tribute to his life. We looked around the room and at the bed where he had his last sleep, and inspected his clothes and shaving equipment still neatly displayed in a case. One corner of the room is decorated with bunches of flowers.

Then it was time for lunch, and after walking a little further on, we chanced upon a roast duck restaurant with a line of people streaming into it, always a good sign. Better still, we learned that a whole roast duck was only 42 Yuan (about AUD$6.30), or strangely that a half duck was only 20 Yuan. Hmmmm, I thought, perhaps we should order two half ducks. But we steadied ourselves and resolved that a whole duck for two would be going too far, despite the tempting arbitrage opportunity. So we ordered a half duck, some green vegetables, rice and a large bottle of Chinese beer. Everything was excellent, and after an hour we spilled back out into the sunshine with full tummies and a wallet only 34 Yuan lighter. It was at this moment that I decided I could move to Kaifeng and settle down. But that would have to wait awhile as we now had onward tickets and another train to catch in a few hours time.

Zhengzhou, Henan province, China

From Zhangjiajie we shared a cabin on the overnight train to Zhengzhou in Henan province with a very pleasant, softly-spoken woman and her twenty-something daughter. The daughter had just completed her accountancy studies at the Zhangjiajie University and the mother had come to accompany her back home. The daughter spoke good English and told us she had spent a year at the University of New South Wales as part of her studies.

The mother asked us whether we had heard about the tragic Wenchuan earthquake in nearby Sichuan province that had struck earlier that day. We hadn't. We would have been out walking in the mountains at the time of the quake, and fortunately we had not felt anything. With no English TV or radio in this area, and keeping to ourselves at the time, we hadn't heard anything either. But over the next few days we watched a lot of Chinese TV, with many of the 57 channels Chinese people have to choose from devoted to the quake and its aftermath. There was a big emphasis (apparently well-deserved from what we saw) on publicizing the effectiveness of the response by the government and the People's Liberation Army, and segments designed to stir national pride and sentiment.

On our arrival in Zhengzhou at 3.30am, we left our travelling companions sleeping peacefully in the cabin, and spilled out into the large, and still-bustling despite the hour, city square at the front of the station to start looking for a hotel. Fortunately there were several in the square itself, and we chose the second one we looked at. Sleep time.

Zhengzhou is a city of over 6 million and is a major transport hub in this part of China. The latter is the reason why many people, including ourselves, arrive in Zhengzhou. Our intention was to connect with a long distance (several thousand kilometres) train to Urumqi, the capital city of Xijiang province in the remote far west of China. But we first took the opportunity to have a look around town, and to catch a bus about an hour out of the city to see the Yellow River. The section we saw was a vast expanse of the silt-laden water that gives this river its name.

Tonight we ate the last of the Haigh's chocolates so now we're really on our own.

Zhangjiajie, Hunan province, China

We caught an overnight train from the cavernous Guangzhou railway station, arriving in Zhangjiajie in Hunan province at around 10am the following morning. We had shared a four-berth cabin with a pleasant younger couple who were keen to talk about the how, where and costs of tertiary education in Australia, obviously with their teenage son in mind. We had talked for a long time and eventually we both looked forward to a good night's sleep. The signs were all good – the beds were clean and comfortable, the cabin air conditioning was effective and our companions were very pleasant. But we soon discovered that the man was a heavy duty snorer who proceeded to do stunningly realistic chainsaw imitations for the rest of the night. In the morning the wife apologized for her husband's loud snoring and she hoped it hadn't disturbed us too much. We politely replied that we had slept like logs and had only heard him a couple of times. This was a bare-faced lie. We'd hardly slept a wink, and as the night passed excruciatingly slowly, I coped by entertaining increasingly violent fantasies about how Mr Chainsaw could be silenced. I thought about thrusting a metre-long steel skewer up through the bed above me. But there were no skewers to be had. A more realistic option would have been to break off the wooden rod attached to the bed support, and use it to deliver a hard whack to the unsuspecting man's temple that would have made a Canadian seal clubber proud. He would never have known what hit him – he was a good man and he didn't deserve to suffer. But he had to go.

On our arrival at the Zhangjiajie city railway station we bleary-eyedly found the correct minibus to take us to our intended destination of Zhangjiajie Village in the Wulingyuan foothills about one hour away. But our trip in this vehicle was quickly cut short. Barely five minutes after we set off, the driver stopped in the middle of the street to talk with the driver of another van. He then ordered us off his van, telling us to go with the other. Evidently, as we were his only two passengers, he considered it not worth proceeding. That didn't seem too unreasonable to us, so we politely left and squeezed onto the other minibus that was full, and we were soon on our way again. But then we discovered that this bus wasn't going to Zhangjiajie Village at all. Not to worry, the driver assured us – he would drop us off “at the turnoff”. Further questioning revealed that this “turnoff” was several kilometres from our destination, so it was time to dig our heels in. The driver momentarily relented, agreeing to take us there. In mandarin he announced to his passengers that he would take these two foreigners to the village but as that would delay everyone else by half an hour, he would charge them (us) a high price. This provoked an immediate storm of protest from our fellow passengers who weren't going to tolerate such a delay and who in any case would not share in the spoils of the higher price the driver was planning to charge us two trouble-makers. Then Lee Tuan had a good idea – she suggested to the driver that he telephone the hotel where we planned to stay and ask them if they would send a car to pick us up at the turn-off. The driver made the call, and after a lot of convincing, the hotel owner agreed. The remainder of the trip was uneventful by comparison, and around lunch-time we wearily booked into our hotel.

Zhangjiajie and the surrounding Wulingyuan scenic area is a very beautiful world heritage listed nature reserve and, according to our travel guide book, a great place for hiking. In this area there are around 250 peaks and 3,000 quartz-sandstone spires rising above the subtropical forest. Over the next couple of days we did a lot of walking, including going up and down several thousand steps. This was supplemented by two cable car rides and a ride down the Bailong elevator, a lift that plunges down the sheer face of a high cliff that separates two sections of the park. By the third day we had maxed out on great scenery, and in any case we could walk no further. Our legs had never been so sore and it was all we could do to hobble up the steps to the railway station to catch our next train.

Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China

Travel fever having flared again, we caught a bus to Melbourne from where we flew to Singapore via Darwin. We stayed in Singapore for a few days and Lee Tuan caught up with her relatives and friends from her Singapore days. Singapore weather may be unpleasant, but you would be hard-pressed to find better food anywhere, and we enjoyed some great street and café food. And you can't help but admire the cleanliness and order of the place.

On 5 May we caught an early morning flight to Guangzhou in southern China. Our hotel is near an entire shopping district devoted to just one product – shoes. There are over 1,000 shoe shops offering a total of about 500,000 different models of shoe. Lee Tuan browsed around but didn't find anything she liked!

We went for a walk to Beijing Lu, a popular Guangzhou pedestrian mall. As we approached, we saw an enormous crowd ahead. We then discovered that the Olympic Torch Relay was due through the mall in 90 minutes time, so we joined the crush (and I mean crush) and waited in the heat and humidity for it to arrive. The crowd-control skills and methods of the Chinese police were something to see, and when the time came, the mall was cleared within seconds. The torch bearer was accompanied by such a large entourage of security personnel, police and vehicles of all description that the torch had passed before we realized it. But the massive crowd was extremely satisfied with the spectacle and went wild with excitement. Their pride in their country was palpable.

It's mango season in Guangzhou – they are everywhere and inexpensive, and we have already done our bit to keep China's mango growers in business. And the fried dumplings from the small shop across the road are to die for. Which is exactly what attempting to cross that road might require.

Mt Gambier, South Australia

Our four months in Mt Gambier passed very quickly. We stayed with my nearly 97-year old father who still lives in his own house, despite the increasing ravages of time on his body and mind. But he remains happy and determined to reach his goal of living to at least 100. He is adamant that when he leaves his house for the last time it will be in a box. We hope he gets his wish. He loved Lee Tuan's cooking, so much so that he has appointed her as his chef for his 100th birthday bash. We took him on many drives to the coast and places where he lived as a boy and young man. We drove to Hamilton in western Victoria to attend the 2008 Hamilton Beef Expo, memorable for the great lunch of scotch fillet burgers and Coonawarra cabernet. One day we also took my father to visit a retirement village that provides the type of support services he now needs. He knew many of the residents there, and as we walked around they approached him to say hello. Later I cautiously suggested to him that he might consider selling his house and moving into this pleasant village where he would have plenty of friendly company and ready assistance. But he obviously wasn't impressed with this idea, merely replying that he “might consider it in five years time”!