Thoughts

Here am I on the 5 th June in an aircraft 90 minutes out from Heathrow. No luck in publishing blogs yet but will do so as soon as I reach Englefield Green ( Ruth and Robin). My thoughts on the trip

I could have done without the Aral Sea and the Southern Silk Route. Nothing added to my knowledge there and it was very uncomfortable. More of Krygzistan would have been good and more gardens in China would have been very good. Especially in Suzhou. Somehow the Silk a route got lost after Uzbekistan. More about caravanserai in China would have been good. Instead we got too much about the desert. We did not get as much about textiles as I expected and also of the group of 12, only Debbie and myself were really interested in them.

Other items were the food. Particularly in China. We ate a lot of vegetarian food in China and it was mostly very good. Only two meals in China were mediocre. Of special merit were the dishes of aubergines. No two were alike and we had one which I am sure used plum sauce. The other dishes which were favourites with the group was one of French beans and chilies, and one which had chopped up fragments of vegetable plus peanuts. The food in the other countries was of the same type although the bread, when fresh, was best in Turkey.