The Stone Fort at Tashgurkan I felt like I was in Tajikistan not China. The clothes, the food, the way people dressed, all were just so Tajik. Yet I was in Tashgurkan, the first Chinese town on the Karakoram Highway which I had been travelling on since Islamabad. ...

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A great new travel book published just in time for Christmas. A selection of travel stories from the more unusual parts of the globe that you can explore from the comfort of your armchair. These are places that you will never see advertised in a travel agent's window. ...

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It had to be a mirage. A large frosted glass full of beer with a frothy head standing ten metres high in the Gobi desert, as the sands beneath were being blown into small drifts by the strong winds. ...

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It is easy to lose things. I have lost count of the number of decent pairs of sunglasses I have lost in my travels around the world. Yet to lose an arch, and not just any arch, but the largest arch in the world, which could easily fit the Empire State Building in New York into it with room to spare, well that...

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US Dollars. The greenback is useful in so many places in the world, not just of course the USA, and proved to be the means for my escape from Sost at the Pakistan end of the Karokaram Highway. I had been stuck at this frontier town due to a tit-for-tat dispute between the countries which had led to the international border being closed...

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The Karakoram Highway, connecting Pakistan to China, regularly makes it into the top 10 most dangerous roads in the world, alongside the Kolyma Highway, or ‘Road of Bones’, in Russia and the Yungas track, the ‘Death Road’ in Bolivia.  The Karakoram Highway, connecting Pakistan to China, regularly makes it into the top 10 most dangerous roads in the world, alongside the Kolyma Highway,...

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Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan the legendary warlord who subjugated China from his Mongolian stronghold, built the Xanadu palace complex as a summer retreat from the heat of the Forbidden city in Beijing. The palace is arranged in a pattern of three concentric walled circles. Standing on the outer crumbling wall little remains of the buildings that once stood inside, only...

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Waiting for Mr Wong I looked through the Jinlianchuan hotel gift shop. It had the a delightful array of essential products seen to be required by tourists. No toothpaste or mineral water, but huge quantities of local brands of alcohol, sharing shelf space with stuffed squirrels in tasteful poses. ...

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  The benefits of traveling in an emergency vehicle were becoming quickly apparent. Apart from the comfy leather seats and air conditioning, having sirens and flashing lights gave us the the ability to evade the many tolls on the road heading north. The method Mr Wong used was to slow down as he approached the toll booths, and then turn on the sirens...

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The hotel travel desk was not being particularly helpful. Run by the ubiquitous government agency CITS (China Tourist Bureau), when I explained I wanted to go to Xanadu I was met with big smiles and an enthusiastic "Yes". I got quite excited. Unfortunately they thought I wanted a car and driver to take me to the Great Wall, a common request from most...

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"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, where alph, the sacred river, ran ...

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