A few pre-China shots, and lots of aerial photographs of Mongolia and China, taken from my seat on the plane.

When I left for China, I was half-way through a roll of film. I was lucky enough to get a window seat (I guess I have Gill to thank for making us check in so early!), and about eight hours into the flight I woke up from a short doze and looked out of the window. The last time I'd looked out it had been dark, but now morning had broken and I feasted my eyes upon the most incredible landscape I'd ever seen - and which I now believe to have been Mongolia, or possibly the tail end of Sibera, quickly becoming Mongolia.

We were at about 30,000 feet (I believe - someone correct me if I'm wrong), and it was perfectly clear: I could just see miles and miles and miles of this incredible, desolate, frozen landscape. It was an absolutely breathtaking experience, and I stared open mouthed for a full fifteen minutes before I remembered my camera. I then proceeded to finish the film... :-)

I've also included five shots I took before the trek, 'cos I think they're groovy: my friend Malc, and some graffiti in Cardiff.

Here we see the classic "frightened rabbit" look, ably demonstrated by its most famous proponent, Mr Malcolm Walker.

Some graffiti on a wall near where I live. This is my favourite of the four graffiti shots on this film.

More graffiti - Hubble Space Telescope, anyway?

More graffiti. I wasn't sure which way round this should be - that looks like a telephone on the left, doesn it? But having tried rotating it, I'm pretty sure this is the right way round... None of the other orientations quite look "right".

Final graffiti image.

A frozen wasteland: either Siberia or Mongolia.

As I stared down at this incredible desolate landscape, I wondered if anyone lived out here, and if so, who, and what did they do? Occasionally I saw tiny shapes which might have been regular enough to be buildings or maybe even settlements, but it was hard to be sure. Then I saw this. I still have no idea what they do, but they're definitely doing something.

Not much else to say really, is there?

It just looks like it could go on forever, doesn't it?

The ground's starting to get brown now, I think this is just before we started crossing the Gobi desert. Cool river, huh?

I mean, come on, this is just nuts, isn't it?

This is my favourite of the aerial shots. I think we're approaching the border with China here, in fact I think these mountains effectively constitute the border. I must investigate this further...

More mountains crossing from Mongolia to China.

My first sight of the Great Wall. I was looking out for it, unsure if we'd see it or not but reasonably hopeful on the principle that we'd have to cross it at some point. This isn't a terribly good quality picture but I think the fact that that's clearly the Wall makes up for it.

OK, I'm not completely positive that that is Beijing County, but it probably is, as we were very close to landing, and Beijing County's pretty big. Anyway, heres a bit of China from the air. :-)