It was one of those travelling days as we took the bus to another, though less important, Silk Road town called Jiayuguan. Located in the Hexi corridor and an oasis town in the Gobi Desert, the town is famous as being the end of the Great Wall and a large Ming dynasty fortress is loacted here where the Silk ROad Caravans would leave the Military protection as they headed furtehr West. It was a 7 hour trip accross some half-built roads making for bumpy detours every 50km. The scenery was as desert like as ever and only the odd ruined watchtower or maybe SIlk Road building made for any interest as we jerked on by. I took the opportunity to work out that I had spent something like 340 hours on public transport on this trip which amounts to about 14 days worth of time!

We stopped off at a small town (well small by CHinese standards) called Guazhou (or at least that's what the locals led me to believe) and met a charming bunch of people just waiting around at the bus station. THey seemed interested in us and smiled at every opportunity. I took the chance to try and break the language barrier as we taught eachother various simple words in our respective languages.

We carried on and reached Jiayuguan around 4pm, checked into a grotty hotel nearby and set off to explore this relaxing and quiet city. We decided that there wasn't much here, but the people were probably the friendliest of all that we have encountered and it made for a refreshing change. I could at last begin to relax in a way that I hadn't felt able to since Kyrgyzstan.