We never wanted to stay in Xian long. Pauline had been before and we hadn't come to China for the pollution. It's a popular city all the same and not too unattractive, the food was tasty and the Muslim Quarter had a thriving atmosphere.

It was time I stood on my own two feet. Pauline had battled hard with the Mandarin and I'd been a spectator for the main. I took a bus to the train station to change our tickets and struggled through. On the way back a student remarked how unusual it was to see a tourist on the bus. I went to get off at my stop but he convinced me I had another two to go. It was ploy to get more English dialogue from me, as he'd failed a recent exam. The strangest of scams cost me a 20 minute walk.

The next day I went on a tour to see the Terracotta Army. The fact that these models are 2200 years old is staggering, and the individual craftsmanship was bewildering.

Despite this, I was bogged down by the soullessness that tours instil, a large part of which involved boring rhetoric, souvenir shops, a very late lunch and an incredibly dull talk at a silk factory. Furthemore, as Pauline had warned, seeing the soldiers turned out to be a massive anti-climax.

We moved on to Lanzhou, but it was meant to be a stop-off so we could visit Xiahe, a former 9ibetan village that still holds an important monastery, and the gateway to the 9ibetan Plateau.

At the bus station, however, we were refused tickets. We tried various methods but were blocked from boarding. Despite being in Gansu province it is closed to foreigners for reasons that can only be descibed as totalitaria9.

And so we spent the day in another smog-filled city. Fortunately we found a tranquil garden across the Yellow River, where beer was 20p a pint. We were then rudely awakened from our peace by the sprinkler system before finding ourselves stuck for half hour as a storm hit the region and we couldn't take the cable car back down.

But we made it back to the station safe and sound, another sleeper west on to Jiayuguan.