Having expored Lanzhou pretty much to its maximum the day was spent idly in coffee bars playing cards or checking e-mails. We did venture a little bit off the beaten track back to the Muslim quarter and the old part of town to see what was going on there. As I've mentioned before, this was a side of Lanzhou that we hadn't seen before, having stayed in the modern and new part of town. There was some sort of a "market" in full swing along the main road as we arrived, though it was hardly like any other typical Chinese market. It had the charm of the Kashgar Sunday market, though without the numbers. As we walked along the street passing the stalls, a train pulled up behind them and chugged its way through, hooting at those dawdling on its tracks to move out of the way. The fact that a train passed right outside people's front doors and that the tracks essentially formed part of the road still bewliders me - the Health and Safety guys from Europe would have a field day here I'm sure.

A couple of old men selling chickens cooped up in cages beckoned us over. We obeyed and made a few grunts and gestures to try and explain our presence and introduce ourselves. They proudly showed us their stock of sqawking birds pecking at the ground of their cage where a small helping of nuts had been scattered. Above them, on the top of the cage, some of their "colleagues" had already suffered and were sitting, plucked and rigid in the heat, waiting for a customer. I asked how much it would be to buy a live chicken "62 kuai" came the reply. Well for about 4 pounds, i didn't think it was too bad, though with a bit of bargaining maybe we could have got him down to half.

We carried on past an old veiled lady counting sheep's feet and her duaghter collecting the heads. I wasn't sure what had happened to the rest oftheir bodies but judging by the number of body parts, she must have had a busy day.

But all of this was just passing time. We were, in fact, waiting to take our first sleeper train having managed to secure the sacred tickets for the k120 to Xi'an - the final stop on the Silk Road and the last city of a long Silk Road journey that had started back in Venice in March. My research was almost complete too and with some satisfaction I boarded the train knowing that this would be my penultimate train journey for after Xi'an I had only to go to Beijing and catch the plane back home!