Going Home

Immediately after our departure from Hongyuan the floods that caused such chaos in China and Pakistan cut the road between us and our bikes. We were stuck in Chengdu, not knowing when our bikes would arrive and worrying about what would happen to Nico and Sarah. This waiting gave Ed a chance to recover and we made the most of our time with a bit of sightseeing.

Chengdu has plenty of monasteries:

It is also home to the famous panda research centre:
And the Sechuan opera:
The Giant Budda at Leshan:




The park is a giant temple complex with hundreds of huge carved Buddas
Best of all, we organised a trip to go tea picking!!



Sechuan is famous for its spicy food.
And then one day, after 3 weeks of waiting, as our hopes of ever seeing them again faded, our beloved bikes arrived. We were together again!

In the mean time, nico and sarah had turned up after an epic adventure where a landslide had almost wiped then out. We were very relieved to see them. There was nothing keeping us in Chengdu so we set off for Beijing where a friendly face was there to meet us!!
Thanks Blick Ed for a fantastic last couple of nights in Beijing :-)

Some Beijing highlights:

On the 390th day of our journey we got on a plane and flew 8 hour to Dubai and another 7 hours to London (where we stayed with Ed's brother). 5 and a half hours on the train and 15 minutes in a taxi took us to the front door of Helen's parents house in Glasgow. We were home!