Us and them!

If all's gone well, by now our track has brought us to Istanbul and we're recovering from twenty eight hours of air travel. Our pace has been fairly leisurely of late, but all that's about to change - the Turkey itinerary's hectic!

Oh. In case you're wondering what kind of critter made those tracks on Tioman's Air Batang Beach, it was one of these guys. A much bigger one obviously, because at about 30cm from nose to tail, this is just a baby. One that needs to stay well away from his parents!

At work on Tioman Island, Malaysia

It's time to hang up the work clothes. No - seriously!

For the last six weeks, Amber's spent most days sitting in front of a computer churning out code, problem solving and fine tuning for the good folks back home. When she hasn't been doing that, she's been thinking about it. The job's finally done though and now we're looking forward to a holiday.

Not really about Tajikistan. Just sayin'...

I've just woken up, disoriented and lost, for about the 350^th morning in a row.

Slowly I fix myself, grasping at constants. The sound of a great volume of water rushing down rocks to my left. Futons and felt carpets beneath my head and hands. Unvarnished beams of poplar and willow, the faint scent of incense trapped in their grain. Dawn's light softly filtered through thin curtains, reflecting dully off whitewashed mud-brick walls. Much of that light is blocked by an enormous pyramidal shadow – one of many mountain heads closing the walls of this valley.

I am in Tajikistan. The range forming the gorge of Bartang Suu and the roaring of the cascades confirm it.

Tumbling Along

These blog-slack tumbleweeds figured they had better explain their current tumbles before you all give us up for lost.

I think we left off “catching up” in Jordan, which is a bit disgraceful because that was about 3 months ago and we've seen parts of seven more countries since then.

Temporarily skipping over Syria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - I know, it's a bit of a skip, 6000 miles or so - we're now in Kyrgyzstan, land of the nomad, squeezing in some laptop time in our suburban yurt. (The yurt is a very cool domicile).

The Chinese, in their infinite wisdom (ahem) have decided not to issue anyone in Kyrgyzstan with a Chinese visa, and have thrown our existing plans into complete disarray. Thankfully tumbleweeds are adaptable little creatures, and Kyrgyzstan one of the loveliest places on earth to be “stuck”, so we're not suffering a bit from China's rejection. There's nothing like gorgeous summer pastures, wildflowers, rushing mountain streams and enormous skies to help get you over the no-visa blues.

We now have a good many friends roaming various parts of the globe, so just in case there's a chance of crossing paths with any of you, here are the new, improved and entirely China-free plans: