The Young Pioneer Magazine Launches Today!

Hello friends, I'm the creator and editor of a brand new online magazine that's all about extreme travel, and it just launched this evening. The idea was born by Gareth Johnson - the guy that took me on a tour of North Korea, and all of the content is seriously badass. I mean, I feel honoured that these people sent me their stuff, and I'm incredibly proud of how the whole thing has turned out for this first issue. There are some really poignant written pieces and also some breathtaking photography.

The Young Pioneer is an online magazine featuring the writing and photography of extreme travellers. Specialising in destinations that your mother would rather you stay away from, content is always well-informed, well-written, and badass. 

Anna Apuli, the genius behind my poiseonarrows header you can see right above here, designed the site from scratch so that it actually looks beautiful too.

Anyways, it would mean a lot to me if you guys would head on over and have a look at it - you know, just get a feel for the thing, see if it's 'up your alley' so to speak, at all.


The Facebook page for it is here.

The actual site is here.

This is the twitter.


Thankyouverymuch.

The Whisky Diaries - day 3

The lateness of this post is due to a gigantic python.

I'm not even kidding. Totally serious.

Let me tell you the story...

Phuong and I were sitting quietly on our bungalow balcony, staring in rapture at the tiny laptop screen playing the third piece of the Star Wars saga (we were only up to the part when Padme tells Anakin she's pregnant, and despite the obvious lack-of-chemistry-or-acting-skills we were already completely absorbed) when I heard a loud rustling in the scrub from the back side of the bungalow. I leaned back on my rattan to inspect, and caught a glimps of a very long, very shiny, very thick tail. It was awkwardly slithering through the dry leaves and roots of the steep slope, but struggling and slipping -
     "Phuong! Look! A gigantic snake!" I said to her, slapping her arm to get her attention, and as soon as she leaned back to follow my gaze we heard a loud kind of thump-slap, and the snake had fallen from the steep hillside and down under the stilts of the house so that it was directly below our feet. In that moment we were frozen - watching this massive thing through the gaps in the bamboo slats of the floor as it was panicking and hissing and crazy slithering. Phuong started panicking and then we realised that it was coming up over the railing, just a couple of meters from us. I pushed Phuong behind me as I watched it heading into the bathroom area and as its tail disappeared through the doorway, I crept forward for a good look at our villain with my heart pounding and when my eyes rounded that corner I really saw it in full for the first time and let me tell you this motherfucker was no joke. Three metres long, give or take a couple of hundred meters, a shiny silver that I-shit-you-not was like the moon, and it's body the thickness of an English breakfast muffin. The moment I saw it there it also saw me and it did that freaky thing snakes do when the breathe really loudly and hiss and say "Fuck of or I'll mess your shit up." So that's when I decided that we should probably fuck off, because there was a good chance that if we stuck around this babe would really mess our shit up. (Read: by 'mess' I mean 'bite / kill' and by 'our shit' I mean 'our faces'.) We made our way down the steps to get to the bottom of the hill where reception was, listening to the thing knocking shit over in its slithery bumbling confusion as we went.

We were laughing by this stage, you must understand. The release of too much adrenaline into the body in not-so-serious situations results in humans feeling wack and so the receptionist was quite alarmed when I declared that there was a "big-ass snake in our bathroom". She took us relatively seriously and yelled out something to the nearby gardener in Thai, then turned back to me and simply asked "how big?" My reply was a little less laughter-filled as I held my arms up as far apart as I could - and that's when things went into action-mode.

Suddenly everyone (read: all the Thai people) were yelling out to one another, and motorbikes were pulling up with dudes carrying long poles. I turned back to the lady and she told me that she had seen one five days ago. "It was black?" She asked me.
     "No, it was a shiny kind of creamy white." I replied.
     "Oh." Her brow furrowed.
We both paused. Silence.

Well this is greeeaaaatttt, I thought to myself. This place is pretty much a big snakey party town.

So Phuong and I stood around and just waited. Occasionally breaking out into nervous giggles, and occasionally laughing at the other, poor, unsuspecting visitors who were walking up the jungle path to get back to their own bungalows - blissfully unaware of the monsters lurking in those deceptive afternoon palm tree shadows.

So about fifteen minutes later we saw the hoard of heroes slumping back down the steps towards us. No snake in their hands. "It is gone now." The lady said to me.
     "Oh yeah. Okay. Well. Um-" I was entirely unsure whether this was supposed to be a good or bad thing.
     "We not see it." She said solemnly, "but we know snake can be problem right now."
     "Yes. Snakes, I suppose big snakes can be a bit of a problem." I replied. More silence followed. "So can we go back now? Do you think it's safe now?" I asked.
     "Yes should be okay now. No snake there now."
     "Alright!" Phuong and I just looked at each other and laughed, and headed fearlessly (read: we were giggling like idiots again) back up the steps. There was a man with a gigantic broom sweeping the forest floor all around our bungalow, banging the butt of the handle on the ground and on the bamboo walls occasionally. He had really gappy teeth and no English, but was intensely cheerful and rambled at us in completely incomprehensible, but surprisingly reassuring Thai. We made a quick sweep of our surroundings, decided for ourselves that we had no reptilian company and then simply sat back down, hit spacebar, and watched the rest of Star Wars whilst the gardener "swept" around the area.

Oh wait - Phuong updated her Facebook status to mention the event, which prompted a frenzied call from her mother about 2 minutes later. Then we finished Star Wars. I mentioned the event in an e-mail to my mother later that evening and received an informative response about the snakes currently residing in our house out in the Australian countryside, and about the kinds of snakes my mum and dad used to encounter all the time when they were younger and lived on an island in Papua New Guinea. Yes I know what you're thinking, and yes I do have the literally the coolest parents in the world.

So now the story moves on to later in the evening.

We had finished the movie, and I decided to go for a run. Phuong and I agreed to meet up at 7:00pm for dinner at the restaurant, which we did, and then we went together to return to our bungalow. The evening was warm and our bellies were full and we were discussing the plausibility of chemistry between Padme and Obi Wan Kenobi. We kicked off our thongs at the edge of the steps, climbed onto the balcony, and Phuong pulled out the key to open the door with me talking about something to do with Anakin's hunger for power, when my ramblings were interrupted by Phuong screaming "SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE!" Then I heard her slam the door, then I heard a loud thump from inside the bungalow, and then I saw a screaming, panicking Phuong run towards me and grab me and say "What do we do!?"
     I looked at her seriously and said "Calm down. Okay focus, Phuong. Are you sure it was a snake?"
     "I think so."
     "You think so, or it was?"
     "I think it was."
I made an angry/serious face at her, "What did you see?"
     "I opened the door and I saw it's body slithering around the corned of the door, then I slammed the door closed."
     "Did you drop anything or did anything fall down?" I asked.
     "No."
     "Because I heard a thump-"
     "You heard a thump?"
     "I heard a thump."
     "Okay."
     "So there is a gigantic snake inside our bungalow?" She paused. She looked at me.
     "Yes there is," she replied - and we both started giggling stupidly again! But then I realised we should probably get going, so we bounded down the steps once more and announced ourselves puffing and laughing at the desk, that "the big snake is back and this time it's inside."

Well, you can imagine the ruckus this time. The owner came to talk to us and explained that the snakes were in mating season and so extremely active, and as men with all manner of poles and bags passed us heading up the steps, we were offered a change of bungalows to something a little more ground-level and seaside and generally less-jungly. There was apparently something special about our particular abode that attracted the damn thing, and so if it wasn't caught we'd have to move, lest we be killed in our sleep. Literally.

Ok. Cool. No worries! They catch it, we go back. They don't catch it, we move to a seaside bungalow. Simple enough. We sat down at the restaurant chatting and bursting out into sporadic laughter at the absurdity of our dilemma. It took a long time until the men came back, I think about half an hour, and when they did they were empty handed. Far from silent, though, as one of them walked back into the kitchen and announced something loudly in Thai to which there was great uproar and response.
     "Who sleep on the bottom?" The lady at the desk asked us,
     "I do," Phuong replied,
     "You are very lucky girl tonight! The snake sleep near your bed!"
I burst out laughing and Phuong quickly joined in. Somehow the whole situation just kept getting funnier.
     "So you saw it this time?" I asked her,
     "Yes," she nodded vigorously, "we have lot of people but it too big. Gone up and away again. It too big."
More laughter from Phuong and I. But then silence. What now?

The owner joined us again after a few minutes and essentially begged for us to move to a different bungalow, and of course we felt obliged to oblige. You know, just because she asked us. A man escorted us back up to the bungalow to get the things we absolutely needed and his level of alertness and wariness gave me a bit of a hint that perhaps we should be taking the situation a little more seriously than we were. Nevertheless, we quickly grabbed pyjamas and toothbrushes and just as we were about to leave, the man shone a light towards a small gap between the wall of the bungalow and where Phuong's mattress and mosquito net were placed. "That is were snake is," he said, "you are very lucky tonight." And so she was. And so goes this story, of Phuong the 'lucky girl' who might have gotten into bed beside a big-ass python.

The seaside bungalow has superior hammocks and a dinstinct lack of reptilian infestation, and unless the moony beast is caught, we'll be moving there for at least a few more nights. I'm struck by the amusing idea that all of this trouble is just because Mr. Snakey can't get a girlfriend and I'm tempted to draw parallels between this saga and that of Star Wars, but I think that would signify a consumption of too many coconuts on my part... if you catch my drift.

So that's what happened on day #3! I'm writing to you having just finished a delicious fruit salad and Americano coffee, and as I'm also just about to order a fresh coconut. Tonight we'll go for a walk to get a wood-fired pizza and then watch the fourth Star Wars - but I'll tell you all about that a little later.

my "testimonials" and advice on exchanges

My uni (University of Queensland) asks that its students write them "testimonials" about their time on exhange. Most of the time the students say the usual things which are true like "it's the best time of your life!" so I tried to say things a little different. My testimonial from semester one wasn't anything breathtaking because I realised that it's difficult not to fall into the usual trap for these things. It really will "change your life" and it really is "the experience of a lifetime". At least the photos were cool. I can't believe they even put up that one of me giving the camera a 'thumbs up' in front of that gross skinned thing on the road... kudos to UQ Abroad. Lol.

So the time rolled around to write the testimonial from this (my second) semester, and this is what I submitted:

"This is my second semester here in China and it’s been super different to the first primarily because Jinan and Shanghai are completely different cities.

I mean, life in the mean city streets of Shanghai is fast and hardcore, and the locals are tough and the teachers are tougher. The other exchange students will all drink you under the table while telling you not-so-tall tales of organ theft, and you’ll feel lucky when you wake up with only your wallet missing. Conversely, Jinan presents you with beautiful lakes and rich philosophical history and friendly local taxi drivers who actually take you where you want to go. The teachers and classes here are wonderful and the other students are far more easy-going than their ‘big-city’ counterparts. All in all, I almost feel like I’ve spent the two semesters in two different countries. The second one being much more… peaceful than the first.

Of course, this might also be because I learnt a lot of life lessons during that tumultuous first semester, all of which I brought with me here to Jinan. I suppose my Mandarin proficiency has also slightly improved and I have come to almost appreciate many little Chinese idiosyncrasies that used to totally freak me out – like loud yelling all the time and people being allowed to smoke everywhere and classes five days a week. My partiality and affection for Jinan and Shandong University is also heightened by my increasing awareness of just how fast the year has gone. Which leads me to a big piece of advice – if you think you’ve got what it takes (and your arts program allows it) then you should without-a-doubt apply to do two semesters in China.

The full year will do wonders for your Mandarin and it really allows you to actually settle into life here. From a travelling perspective too, the full year allowed me to visit a total of 9 provinces as well as a beginning month in Hong Kong, the semester holidays in Beijing and an insane trip over to North Korea. Now that it’s December and my time here is coming to an end, I really feel like I have achieved what I set out to and I’m ready to come home. Most of the kids I talk to who only have one semester end up trying to extend their exchange because they feel like it just isn’t enough. Although maybe that’s a different kind of good thing… I dunno – maybe Jinan is just gettin’ me all philosophical. Anyways, if you can do two semesters (either in two different cities or the same city twice) then DO IT!!!

If you do have to choose between either Fudan (Shanghai) or Shandong (Jinan) then my personal recommendation would be to go for Jinan. Shanghai as a city can be understood from a short visit, but Jinan is a great place to experience Chinese life on a local level for several months. It also places you within a very fast train ride from both Beijing and Shanghai and is a great vantage point from which to undertake national travel. My teachers here are all Care Bears and the old couple who do street food outside the university gates know me by my order. (Tomato and egg stir-fry over steamed rice, in case you were wondering.) Apart from being FREEZING right now, Jinan is a nice home-away-from-home and I really like it here."

This is where I stopped for the university testimonial, because I didn’t want it to be too long or anything, but I didn’t feel like I’d said everything I wanted to. Here are a couple of things I wish people had really told me. Chances are they did actually tell me, but I didn’t listen. I know, I kick myself for something every day, but anyways, here are a few other notes of recommendation I would make to any student going on exchange:

Things to decide before arriving:

·         Find your focus/niche.

Mine was blogging and I’m so glad I did it. Now I have a complete record of the entire year of exchange. I took photos everywhere and wrote everything down and it forced me to really think about everything I was seeing and doing. It also compelled me to try and make my experiences more awesome. Some people focus on who they meet during exchange and aim to make new lifetime friends. Other people have a target locked on travelling to certain places, and many make their exchange about the language. Think about what you want to focus on during your time away, then get pro at it.

·         Decide how hardcore you want to be about the language proficiency thing.

I got really uneasy a few months after I had arrived and my Mandarin wasn’t progressing like I thought it would. I was travelling a lot and meeting so many new people and doing interesting things every day, and it took me a long time to realise that I valued these experiences more so than I did my Mandarin ability. I wish I had of been aware of those priorities before I arrived because it would have saved me a lot of questioning and guilt over lack-of-study. I’m not saying that it isn’t important, I’m saying that you should decide how important it is to you personally, before you embark upon your exchange and get swept away in everything.

·         If you want to travel, plan your ideal destinations.

I had a few destinations within China that I desperately wanted to go to before I went home, and I think the only reason I managed to get to them was because I was sure of them before I even arrived in China. Xinjiang is the perfect example, and it taught me that the kids you meet are usually open to suggestions. If you know of a place you think would be great to visit, then chances are someone will want to go with you when you tell them about it. It’s good to know a bit about these places early on so that you don’t miss out on any travel opportunities.

·         Skype is your best friend. It’s also your mum’s best friend.

I can’t speak for long-distance romantic relationships (thank god I’ve been spared from that particular hell for all this time) but keeping in touch with family and friends is super easy and it’s wonderful. A good Skype chat makes you a million times less homesick and your parents love it too. You’re in a crazy country on the other side of the world, for christs’ sake!!! Call your mum!!!

Things to remember whilst on exchange:

·         Home is right where you left it, and apparently just as boring as you left it.

I kept worrying about missing out on things back home, but everyone kept telling me that ‘nothing interesting was happening’ and that ‘everything will be exactly the same’ when I got back. (Well, apart from that time that Brisbane flooded… but that’s unlikely to be repeated.) And let’s face it, nobody actually sees each other in person these days, so if you just keep your Facebook and Twitter accounts active then you’ll get all the goss. It will be like you never left. Don’t worry about it.

·         You’re not the only one who thought you’d getter better at this language faster.

EVERYBODY thinks they’ll be fluent after a couple of months and they are ALL wrong. I have not met a single person on exchange who wasn’t slightly disappointed in their rate-of-improvement – so try not to let it get you down. Sometimes you don’t even realise how much you’ve progressed until you get home. You know, until you get home and loose most of it again…

·         No, sweetie, you’re not immune to culture shock. It’s lame but it’s real.

I always thought ‘culture shock’ was something that only lame or wussy douchebags got because they couldn’t handle the spitting. I was wrong, it goes way deeper than that and it affects all people differently. I know happy-go-lucky kids on exchange who seem to be immune to culture shock simply because they don’t think too deeply about what they see around them. If you’re the kind of person who observes and reflects, though, then brace yourself for impact especially if you’re heading to a developing country.
It’s going to hit you in obvious and rather shallow ways during that first week, but it creeps in slowly over the months and you’ll find yourself feeling alone and totally confounded. Usually this ‘deeper’ kind of culture shock comes when you begin to really understand the differences in attitudes and subtle ways-of-life that sit in such stark contrast to your own. I found it help to write it out, but during these times it’s good to keep in more-regular contact with home, or people from your country who are also overseas. I have found that the only cures for culture shock are perspective and acceptance – neither of which are always easy.
The great thing is that working through culture shock teaches you a lot about yourself as well as the world around you. It really is one of those trial-by-fire experiences in life and accepting it and working through it is the best way to get the most out of it.

·         Skype can be set to “appear offline”.

The inverse of the awesomeness of Skype and Facebook, is that sometimes you can really gain a lot by just cutting off from home for a while and actually immersing yourself in your location. I did this a lot whilst on my various trips to other places in China, and it was enough for me. I see a lot of kids who seem to stay too attached to their home lives so that they treat the exchange like a trip instead of a way-of-life. Of course, everybody has their own approach, but it’s good to try and keep yourself grounded in the place where you’re actually living. Make the most of being away from home. Really away.

·         This is the trip of a lifetime – but only if you want it to be.

Exchange is exactly what you make of it. Be awesome and be badass and do the most you can and enjoy everything about it! The fact that you’re planning it at all tells me that you’re a cool kid, and no matter your destination you can make it intensely great. Make yourself proud.

But feel free to not listen to (read: read) any of this and run into it all and make your own mistakes and have the craziest time ever and come out battered and bruised but a totally improved human being. I think that's kind of what I did. But I guess I won't know for sure until I get back. Which is really very soon.

 

some classic Chinglish

I was recently reminded of letter that came into my posession from a trip to Nanjing much earlier this year. A simple, small page full of hand-written reflections from a total stranger which came together to provide my friends and I with pure hilarity.

The short background story is that there were five of us Fudan University students who went to Nanjing together on a little see-the-sights trip. We had booked into a 6-bed dormitory at the hostel, and when we first dropped our stuff in the room we thought we had it to ourselves. When we got back later we found that there was actually a person booked into that sixth bed, and we introduced ourselves. He was a shy Chinese man, in Nanjing for some kind of conference thing and his spoken English was broken, but understandable.

That evening the five of us got greatly drunk in the hostel's bar area and when we finally returned to bed we stayed up talking to each other until the wee hours of the morning. You know, that classic drunken conversation between young people who only recently came to know each other. In other words, we were rambling.

Anyways, we had kind of forgotten that this sixth guy was in the room, and woke up late the next morning with him already gone and the following letter left on the table for us:

The letter, exactly as written:

Nice to meet all of you. And may you be happy everyday.
         In fact, it's the first time I have been with So many I perhaps not so... I foreigners. So I don't know how to express myself. I suddenly find it that my English is rather poor.
         David. You talked to much last night. Perhaps you love a girl, but she can't see you. However, whether she loves you is her business, not your business. Personally, I think it's a wonderful thing to love someone.
         Helen. You are just playing a role, aren't you? However, please don't lose yourself! If the world is a big stage, I am so grateful that we were once in the same stage.
         What's more. Staying up late isn't good for your health! You can call me "kid"! Because my birthday is the children's day!

You ask me whether it is worth loving you, but you know loving someone is no to ask worth or not!

I trust that it was a little more funny for the five of us than it will be for you, but I think it's still objectively hilarious. I mean, we were talking shit for several hours and he was just lying awake listening to these strangers who were the first foreigners he had ever really met, and then he wrote us a letter. I mean, the things he says are a little bit related to some of the things we were discussing, but it still doesn't make a lot of sense. Even to us.

People back home ask me how China is in general, and I find myself replying that it's "just crazy". When they request examples I often find myself at a loss, because everyday something happens that is just a little bit kook. This letter is the perfect example of that silly craziness that comes with spending time in China. I hope you think it's as funny as we did.

Kashgar - The Taklamakan Desert and Camel Trek, Part 4

Sometime in between putting the tents up, and getting a roaring fire going, we stopped for a moment to ask our guide about the impending evening’s weather. 

           “So how cold do you think it will be?” We asked, quite reasonably.

                “Don’t know. You want sleep bag?” He replied in a heavy accent.

           “Well that’s what we want to know. Do you think we need them?”

                “Don’t know. Maybe not. You want it?” I don’t think he understood the situation.

           “Okay,” we tried a different approach, “if you think we should have them, then yes, we want them.”
                “So you want them. No?” He was getting impatient.

           “Yes.”

                “Ok.” He shrugged.

Hang on. What just happened?

We didn’t know if we were getting sleeping bags. We didn’t know if he even had any. Maybe he did the tent-math again and only brought three sleeping bags for four people. And by the way, when we approached him about that he laughed heartily and then gestured between me and my male (platonic) travelling friend and then kind of bobbled his head and wiggled his eyebrows and then swaggered away. It was grotesque.  Amusing and condescending, yes. Butalso grotesque. And kind of off-putting.

Anyways, like I said, by the time the fire had consumed all our hard-scavenged wood, we were totally freezing cold right through, and pretty much ran back to our tent. I mean, I should have expected it, but some part of me still just presumed that, well, to be honest, I had just presumed we would have sleeping bags. I know I know. How can I still think in this silly manner where I expect things to go comfortably according to plan…

Well. We got into the tiny tent, zipped it up, lay down, and promptly realised that is was SERIOUSLY FUCKING COLD!!! Yeah yeah yeah. Surprise surpise. A desert in winter – cold! Shut up. We all make mistakes. Whatever.

So the next thing to do, naturally, was to try and find those damn “sleep bags”. Tom ducked out of the tent and ran to the pile of equipment near the camel saddles, and came scampering back with – yeah you guessed it – one sleeping bag. We were giggling like fools trying to unzip the damn thing and figuring out how to get the most warmth-retention from it possible. I suspect that by this stage, the cold had begun to infect our minds, and we were getting a little ridiculous. Fidgeting and shivering and giving yourself early onset arthritis by getting into the tightest curl of a fetal position humanly possible.

We had, at least, realised that it was the sand underneath us that seemed to be sucking the warmth from our blood. It was as though (to overuse the metaphor) we were sleeping on a semi-solid ocean. Seeing as how there was the equivalent of a piece of cling wrap between us and the outside (read: tents were so so so super shit) every time you moved an inch, the sand circulated and freezing cold grains seemed to replace the ones your body had just labored to warm. Like swimming in the ocean. No such thing as being able to warm a special spot and stay there. The fully opened sleeping bag gave us just enough protection from the sand underneath, and we fell into a shivering, giddy, restless sleep.

For about an hour. You know, until the temperature dropped again.

          “Are you awake?” A whispered across to Tom,

                “Yeah, and I’m-“

           “Fr- Freezing?” I stammered out.

                “So. Fucking. C- Cold.” He replied.

Yeah. In the time from 2:00 to 3:00 the temperature must have dropped by several degrees, because it was now just totally unbearable. Actually painful. My body hurt from the cold.

           “What do we do? There aren’t any more sleeping bags?” I asked him – he was on the side of the tent that opened, ergo, he was in charge of reconnaissance missions.

           “Hang on. Be – I’ll Be right back.” I heard him swearing as he squirmed out of the tent and ran. 

Ran? What else was there? My crazy head began imagining all kinds of cozy warm things. He was going to come back with an electric heater. Yes. And some hot water bottles. Yes, that was it. Also some puppies to cuddle. Yep. That is what Tom is going to come back with. No doubt. Small puppies.

What Tom actually came back with was, upon first glance, no less welcome. He had two massive thick blankets folded in his arms.

          “Where did you get those from?!?!” I asked incredulously. I might have even yelled it out, but in my defence, I thought that maybe I was actually imagining things. Then at the same moment he replied–

          “From the camel saddles- ” he shook the first blanket out, and immediately I was somehow completely overwhelmed with camel-ness. My nose was screaming at me –

          “BRI! A THOUSAND CAMELS JUST STAMPEDED INTO YOUR TENT!” That’s what my nose was telling me. The stench was unbearable. It was like being smothered in camel. What does a camel smell like? Like eight trillion wet dogs who all just vomited. That’s what camels smell like. And that’s what the blankets-from-their-backs-that-are-never-washed smell like. It is a testament to how damn cold that night was, that I covered myself in that camel blanket. Letalone appreciated it.

There is a certain humble lesson that comes to you, when as a matter of survival, you must get really smelly.

So now, with the addition of aforementioned pack-of-camels-blankets, we could sleep. It wasn’t good, it certainly wasn’t comfortable, have you ever tried sleeping on sand? Its not that comfy at all. But it was sleep. And we got a solid four hours of it.

  

 

The next morning came around, and we moved quickly to avoid to sun getting too high. Bread and apples and cookies for breakfast, then taking down the tents, kicking sand on the fire, and taking some last photos before we left. I thought for a minute about how I would never, ever in my life, return to this place. Strange feeling. Another feeling, was getting back on my camel and being sore before the riding even began. I had bruises and wobbly knees already! I felt like I’d already earnt my going-home pass, but actually I still greatly enjoyed the trip back. More time to just think and look and appreciate, and that kind of time is always welcome.

The end.

Kashgar - The Taklamakan Desert and Camel Trek, Part 2

So what happened next?

We rode the camels.

And then, after a while, the situation was that we were still riding camels.

So we rode the camels further into the abyss.

Then after about two hours of riding the camels, we were still riding camels.

And then after that, we rode the camels for about another two hours.

And then I totally cramped up and couldn’t feel my legs or ass, and nearly fell off my camel.

Here is what I learnt from the experience: don’t ride a camel for four hours straight if you’ve never ridden a camel before in your life.

   

   

So I guess I’m at a bit of a loss for what to say about the desert. You know, as a destination. 

      “What is it like, Bri?”
Well, it’s sandy.

      “Cool. Anything else?”
Okay. Seriously then… it’s mesmerising.

   

   

When you descend one dune, and have not yet risen the next, and there is nothing around you but sand, you feel that feeling you get when you look up at the stars. Absolute insignificance – like the sand could swallow you up in any second, and you would be powerless to stop it. Every dune comes together to create this insurmountable area of void where there is so little life, and yet so much power.

When the wind blows and the dunes move they become waves, and you feel as though you are on a boat, in the middle of a vast and frightening ocean. You’re camel carries you in a slow, rocking motion, and you must look up to the sky to guide you. The similarities are uncanny. One place constructed of water, and the other devoid of it. Perhaps the strongest feeling to connect the two, however, is that as a human being, you are in a place almost completely out of your control. To an untrained eye, the wind can swoop in, or the moon can pull the tide out, and you’ll be gone. Just as the water and the deep planetary magnets control the ocean, the sky and the sand rule together to create the desert.

  

It is a place of serenity and yet absolute danger. Being in the middle of it is like a long, slow-motion sky dive. You’ve  jumped, and you’re pretty sure that the parachute will open, but something about the experience still makes you question your existence. What if it doesn’t open. The last few seconds of a falling skydivers life - don’t we always wonder what they think? Being in the middle of the desert gives you hours to think about it. As though those few seconds could be pulled like toffee, until you had plenty of seconds. Enough second, even, to come to certain realisations normally reserved for those near to death. 

   

 

 

  

It’s the deep kind of self-reflective thought that only a long train ride can induce, but intensified a thousand-fold, because there is nothing else to look at. As far as the eye can see - nothing but sand dunes that move like puzzles, and the sun that moves across the sky, and the occasional small lizard that scampers with silly hot feet. There is no external stimulation that can be pinpointed for the origins of the thoughts that arise when you are thinking in the desert. There is no catalyst for the wonderings, aside from your very self. The things you think about in themselves are definitions of who you are, let alone what you think about those things. Do you sit in the desert and deconstruct a failed romance? Do you sit in the desert and deconstruct your life goals? Do you sit in the desert and deconstruct Derrida and the creation of the very language with which you think and deconstruct? The desert confronts you with yourself. And at no time is this more true, than at night.

   

  

As though the desert itself wasn’t enough to make you feel small, the desert as a carpet with a thick velvet ceiling twinkling the brightest you have ever seen anything, will make you feel as though you never even existed at all. Aside from being in the middle of the ocean, there is not place in the world where you will see brighter stars, than in the desert on a clear night. They shone down, and to look at them was like looking into thousands of tiny midday suns. Even the smallest ones were definite in their shine. And the bigger ones burnt so bright they could have been flaming planets.

If I’m honest, I was kind of crying when I looked up at it. I just felt so at peace. It was as though I could feel the centuries, and I could feel the story of the earth, and I could feel time, and everything made sense. All of it was perfectly clear. There was nothing in my head to confuse the message because I just knew absolutely nothing. It was all feel. Like something much more important than myself.

  

  

I’m glad the notion didn’t strike me in a chapel, or I might have been “born again”, to coin that awkward religious phrase. As it stands though, I came away from the experience with a wonderful assurance of how profoundly ignorant I am. There is nothing that I, as a human, could ever even begin to truly comprehend about the universe, other than that which pertains to relatively insignificant and regular human existence.

It’s a miraculous thing, to be reminded of how small you are, and I recommend it to anyone suffering from a feeling of being cluttered-in-the-brain.

You don’t necessarily have to go to the middle of nowhere. Take a trip to the beach and swim in an ocean that might drown you. Take a drive into the countryside that could envelope and disappear you. Then wait until night time, and look at the stars until you can’t bear it. I can guarantee that something profound will happen to you – even if it’s just an actually good night’s sleep for the first time in a while.

     

my current (adventurous) whereabouts – Xinjiang is the new Tibet

Right now I’m on a big trip out to the final frontier of travel in China – Xinjiang province. Xinjiang is the new Tibet. It sounds douchey, I’m well aware, but let me explain.

A few years before China hosted the Olympic games, coverage of the Tibet controversies exploded around the world. People became aware of the atrocities against the Tibetan people and the struggle of the regional minorities in China. What happened then, which is possibly simultaneously the best thing and the worst thing for the Tibetan region, was an explosion of tourism. All tourists need proper permits and guides for a trip to Tibet (not unlike my time in North Korea, really) and I have it on good account, that the region is not what it used to be. A drastic increase in people-traffic changes a place awfully quickly. Please don’t interpret this as a snide remark about Tibet ‘selling out’ like your favourite indie band, and I am absolutely not dissing the people that travel there. This boom in popularity has brought some huge economic benefits and political stability to the region. All I mean, is that the people who originally wanted to see Tibet in all of its pre-explosion glory will not find what the image they harbor in their hearts and minds.

So where to go? You wanna see a part of China that not many people see. You wanna feel as though you have travelled back in time. You wanna get away from the hoardes? Xinjiang baby, Xinjiang. They’re calling it ‘The New Frontier’.

Top left. Well away from EVERYTHING else.

Xinjiang also works if you want something a little high on the political-interest side of things. This trip to Sichuan earlier in the year made me realise that a lot of shit still goes down, and goes down unnoticed, in regional China. At the moment, this kind of thing is happening in Xinjiang province, and it is a direct result of government policy. The Chinese government is keen to get rid of the minorities and all their hassles, so the in-a-nutshell policy is that they give financial incentive for the Han Chinese to move to these traditionally minority-inhabited areas and provide them with money, accommodation and schooling. This means that those recently migrated Han Chinese can work for extremely low wages, and the minority Chinese lose their jobs and their children lose places in schools. The in-a-nutshell result, is massive segregation between the ethnicities and, of course, a ton of violence.

What doesn’t help this situation is that this province borders on EIGHT other countries, and is vastly separate from the hub of the east coast of China. The minorities speak a language that is not Mandarin. It isn’t even a dialect – it’s a completely different linguistic family. The province is the biggest in China, and holds 30% of China’s oil reserves, and the capital Urumqi is the furthest place in the whole world from the ocean.

I digress. There is an infinite amount of easily accessible information about the political turmoil in Xinjiang (you know, now that it’s the new Tibet) but I really want to talk about the great things about it. The reasons I am going.

Historically, Xinjiang province was the gate from Europe to the East – one of the big stops along the famous “Silk Road”. Lonely Planet China says – 

“One short step away from the new New Frontier, however, and you get back to the old – way back. Along the Silk Road, the old towns, the camel trading, the blowing sands, the kebabs, the lively and beautiful mosques, and the unsurpassed hospitality of the Uyghurs are as timeless as ever.”

  

Couldn’t have said it better myself. I mean, I haven’t been there yet, but that’s what I think it should be like. The pictures of their famous deserts and mountain ranges and vast grasslands evoke the most adventurous spirit in me. Truly. The whole region is incredibly isolated, and yet represents the coming-together of so many different peoples and cultures and religions and landscapes and cuisines.

Ok so now it has come out. The real reason I’m going to Xinjiang. The food. ITS MY FAVOURITE!!! I talked about it here and did this class to learn how to make it, and basically I eat it all the time whenever I can. Xinjiang food is a marriage of Asian and Eastern-European cuisines. They can also make it super great without meat which suits me just swell. The nighttime food markets alone are enough to get me on the three-day train ride to Kashgar. The tea houses that sell big bowls of steaming noodles make me squirm with longing. Seeing massive chunks of dough being kneaded and then pulled and banged by the side of the road – then flung into a boiling pot of water with such artistry. It amazes me. Xinjiang food is an incredible thing. 

I know, I know, you get it. It’s great. Move on. Ok fine. But seriously, if you ever get the chance – OKAY ENOUGH.

Moving on.

Where exactly am I going in this massive province? I decided to spend most of my time in and around a city called Kashgar. It is a full 24 hour train ride from the capital Urumqi, which immediately cuts down on the number of tourists visiting, and I have no doubt in my mind that it’s well worth it. Kashgar itself should be full of old streets in old towns, beautiful mosques, night markets and great food. From Kashgar, we plan to take day trips to get to the Karakoram Highway, the Karakul lake, and ride camels in the Taklamakan desert to camp there overnight. Feel free to google-image those, or wait till I get back and just see my pictures. Either way. This is gonna be so epic. I’m talking Tolkien levels of epic.

I’m also very aware that this will be my last really harcorebadass adventure in China. One trip to Yunnan before I leave, perhaps, but nothing this hardcorebadasswicked. I am really pumped for this, as I’m sure you can tell. It’s quite frustrating, not being able to real-time blog about it (I can’t take my laptop on a desert trek on a camel) and these days I can’t survive without writing, so I’m taking my good old long-hand Moleskine journal and pencil case. I did the same thing when I couldn’t take my laptop to North Korea and it worked out fine. I get back and have all the memories fresh written daily, then I go through and pair them with the photos. At the same time as blogging and being warm and comfy once more, I will eat a lot of nutella sandwiches. That is the ideal end-of-tip debrief.

Until then, let the rough stuff begin!