In Urumqi

It's pronounced "uh-rum-oo-chi". You wouldn't guess, would you?

Urumqi is 3000km from Chengdu. That's actually a pretty long journey to spend in a tiny room with two people (a middle manager and a fashion designer, if I had to guess) who share no languages with you. Once you've covered "hello" and what your names are, there aren't many conversations you can have. The hours did not fly by.

Comic relief came in the form of a coin collecting member of the kitchen staff who called in at intervals to geek out over the euro and raid my collection of foreign coins. He didn't speak english either, but he didn't let that stop him hanging out in our room and telling me lots of things I didn't understand.  It passed the time and I got free meals any time he was pushing the food trolley, so it was all good.

Other than that, I divided the time between reading, sleeping and taking a crash course in tourist Russian. ("Is this the bank?" "No, it is the theatre". "Is the train station far away?" "Yes." See? I'm sorted.)

The views out the window were pretty great. Hours and hours of sandy desert with proper sand dunes. Spiky grey snowcapped mountains in the distance. Signs in this province include Uighur, which uses the Arabic script, so I can read at last. Alphabets! They're going to be huge! Of course Uighur is yet another language that I don't speak any of, but I have a bit of Arabic and that's enough to read place names and feel like a functioning human again.