2009 has gone and with it goes my greatest year of travel; so many people have asked for highlights, so here is my top 5 in no particular order!
I had the enviable task of spending six months of 2009 on the road – taking in 14 countries – and I’m going to try and narrow it down to the top five spots that I visited. Plenty of people that I’ve spoken with think that such lists are daft, that there is little point in designating an obscure spot that is …

D5675, Shanghai South Railway Station to Hangzhou, 17.58 scheduled arrival time. This wasn’t a train that I was anticipating sitting on. A couple of weeks ago I booked a flight from Shanghai to Kuala Lumpur on Air Asia X. I never took too much notice of the airport as I figured I’d sort it out when I arrived in Shanghai.

Terracotta Warriors, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China – Images by Jamie McDonald
Well, one thing I have learnt in the past week since leaving Xi’an and arriving in Beijing. Don’t ever, ever catch the bus from Xi’an to Pingyao – it is bus number AF432 and it leaves from the bus station next to the train station in Xi’an.
It is a sleeper bus that costs 144 Yuan, and whilst in the first instance that is steep, when they leave over 2 hours late, and then fill the corridors with twenty to thirty people …

Taklamakan Desert, Xinjiang, China – Images by Jamie McDonald
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Well, we were on the road to Rome, in Kashgar, a crucial silk road stop after and before the Taklamakan Desert.
The name of the desert in local folklore means Go in and you won’t come out, and the fierce heat and sandstorms could easily allow one to dissapear very quickly. We wanted to go for a ride into the desert by camel, so we contacted Ali at Uighur Tour and Travel Centre (mailto: silkroadguide@hotmail.com) …

12.57 PM Urumqi to Kashgar Express, Xinjiang, China – Images by Jamie McDonald
Welcome to beautiful Kashgar. The oversized billboard in the old town square is not modest in its own description and nor should it be. This is a town that has been on the crossroads of the world for millennia, having seen empires and dynasties across asia, through the middle east and the mediterranean rise and fall as trader caravans crawled through the desert on the silk road.
Time today is brief as a 23 hour train trip to Turpan …

Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan, China – Images by Jamie McDonald
Chengdu Airport, Sichuan Province. Departing rather than arriving, which means I’ve had about a week off from the blog, which in turn means I’ve got rather a bit to catch up on!
We left Shangri-La under the guidance of one of Daisy’s (from Sean’s Cafe) friends who had a hostel in Haba village, under the snow capped Haba Snow Mountain. Our journey was quoted to be three hours, but after stopping for every person with a thumb out on the way (and …