Just emerged from behind the great firewall of china in full force around Tibet. Such an amazing place even with the gazillion checkpoints, spies, CCTV and men/boys with guns. Here’s a taster picture (can only upload pics from this iPhone at the mo), Mt Everest, 4k from base camp at altitude of about 5200m. I spent two days here in the crystal clear air, finally realising a dream!
Well right now we should be in China heading for Tibet, probably somewhere around the Terracotta Warriors about to get on the world’s highest train to Lhasa. Unfortunately we’re stuck in the UK like a few million gazillion others. Our STA flight to Beijing was booked for last Friday but by Thursday morning we all know what had happened. Iceland used to be my favourite place in the whole wide world 
.
We phoned STA on Friday and rebooked for this morning, and engaged smug mode as, by then, we thought it must all be over and we had a confirmed flight ahead of the hoards of people there must be in the backlog. We’d even (via STA) managed to potentially book two tricky internal flights from Beijing to Xi’an (Terracotta Warriors) and Xi’an to Lhasa (a flight you just can’t book yourself on the internet it would seem) so we could catch up on our expedition. We held off actually booking though just in case, and that was just as well. It would appear our five star, ”Defaqto” rated travel insurance from American Express is anything but “Remarkably Good” as it says on their website, and is actually rather poor and very similar to not having any insurance at all or just buying anyone else’s out there. Basically they wont cover anything not related to industrial action, adverse whether or public transport breakdown. So we wont be using them anymore.
Just had a call from STA though asking when we’d like to re-book to (quite impressed, that was right out of the blue). Looking like a few weeks off now to fit in with our hectic schedule. Just emailed our travel co in Tibet (www.TibetanExpeditions.com) though to see what the damage would be if that old volcano keeps going and we needed to cancel. We’ve been really impressed with them so far. They’ve changed dates, shipped tourist permits accross the country, cancelled trains and generally replied to a million emails over these last few months very very well. Lets see what happens now!
Tibet here we come! Not entirely content with missing Tibet off our trip earlier this year it’s time to start planing to put that right with my lovely Kath. After much research and feverish checking of weather patterns (read “looked it up in Lonely Planet”) we’ve plumped for March\April next year. Hopefully far enough away we might have some spare money by then too!
Now just need to decide on a transportation and route. Hitching, biking, bussing, 4×4, trekking? One thing I do know is, I really want to go via Everest, and if possible up to Everest basecamp. Do we go in via China and catch some terracotta warriors and great wall? Straight in to Lhasa? In over Nepal border and see Everest first? So many things to think about!
