It's great to be back in New Zealand. Something was different in the air coming out of the plane in Dunedin after crossing the Tasman and I let out a great good sigh.

People ask me what the bike trip was 'like' and in a sentence it was like a great big long meditation. So much happened and so much was seen and so many kilometres covered that now I take ridiculous pleasure in staying in one place for even a couple of weeks. It's also really nice to know what I want to do after the trip - I enjoyed chasing the stories and presenting them so much I want to chase a job doing just that.

I spent a week in Dunedin catching up with friends from my film course and am now tucked away in a lesser known corner of New Zealand called Golden Bay, where I'm wwoofing on a farm for a while before heading to Wellington to wriggle my way into its film, media and/or journalism world.

Of course, The Book of the trip is on the way. Wish me luck! Thanks to everyone who supported my project; part of the pleasure was to see how inspired others got from the stories I collected and the weird, quirky (and sometimes crummy) things that happened.

The stories from the trip are my favourite part. You can look through them by clicking here. There are four more coming, which I need to write up.

Cheers!

Nick

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When I walk into town each morning, I pass everything from small crumbly buildings with classic Chinese roofs curved up at the ends, short, stooped wrinkly old men and women, people resting by their carts or slurping up noodles, villagers coming into market with baskets on their backs. But over everything is the Can Shan mountain range, parallel with the Lake Er Hai which Dali is built beside.

Tonight I'm going to climb up to a small guesthouse at 3000m, perched above the town. I'm going up with a French friend I've made in town - he's here setting up a trekking company and putting together a guidebook for the remoter regions of Tibet. We'll spend a few days up there, and use it as a base to climb to the peak of the Can Shan mountains.

After two weeks in Dali, enjoying a rest, time to write and potter about and best of all make some local friends, I've decided to finish the journey. The mountain peak will be the point of return.

Of course, it's been a big decision.

I'm a happy man. I've always gone on big bike rides when there's been something on my mind. In a way this one wasn't much different - just a little bigger than before.

After 7000 kilometres, shortly before arriving in Dali, something went click. To work out quite what the click meant to me took a week, some good long phone calls back home (for which I'm very grateful) and I don't want to know how many pages of my diary (I've got an almost-blister from writing)...and now I'm a happy man.

The decision is that I don't need to be alone any more after several years always looking for so much space to myself. I'll head back to Tasmania to see my family and drop off the bike before a month or so in New Zealand to wind down and start writing something out of the journey and interviews.

I'd like to say a huge thanks for the huge amount of support in the last week and for my expedition as it formed and progressed. I think I've managed to reply to all your emails. It meant a lot to me that so many people went to the trouble of writing to me, and I wanted to thank you individually.

It's been a fantastic experience. The highs were superb, the lows were the pits. Some places were beautiful, others apocalyptic. I think the most valuable experience was to be able to meet the people along the way who let me into their life for a minute, an hour, a day, a week. These people who had the time to smile at a passing stranger helped me learn so much about themselves and their cultures, and about myself.

For those in town, I'll be in Hobart for roughly a week from the 13th of January.

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Hello everyone...I've wheeled into the town of Lincang and decided that it's nigh time for a Christmas entry....a quickie while I'm on the road, photos to follow. Happy Christmas to you all! Hope you're all having happy holidays and enjoying the sunshine.

It's almost 7000km since I left many of you on that snowy Mount Wellington. Three thousand kilometres ago I was standing over the sausages of a suburban Darwin supermarket deli, talking to a friendly Maori woman. We got talking about where we were each from, and where I was going. She ended with 'Well, if you keep smiling like that, you'll be OK!' I took it to heart and almost got knocked over from all directions in Thailand, where every person seemed to be as happy as Larry and keen for a laugh. Laos was similar, perhaps the most laid-back place I've been. Outside the main street of Luang Prabang, which felt more like Provence than Asia, the locals sat on their stools and watched the world go by. Unfortunately Luang Prabang was alos memorable for the worst case of the trots imaginable, though after a week I was still alive, and eating again.

Coming down hills into villages I had to dodge people, chooks, pigs and potholes; suddenly I was in China. All the blue trucks in the world appeared to be on the road from Laos to Jinghong, and when I had the bright idea of taking a side road to Jinghing they were on it too, only it was steeper and more narrow.

The man in the internet cafe in Jinghong wasn't so friendly. He simply said 'maiyo!' 'Don't have' and shoved his hand in my face. There were plenty of computers free, but he wasn't going to let a foreigner use one, nor explain why. 'Well!' I thought, 'what sort of a country is this?' I was furious and stalked out, and so began Love And Hate in China, as Ester, a Dutch cyclist I met summed it up. I tore myself away from Jinghong's two travellers' cafes and headed out up the lesser western road towards, eventually, Dali.

In this part of China the hills build up the further north you go, from one-thousand and something to 3000 plus metres here. They're covered in magnificent terraces of tea, fallow rice paddies, sugarcane in blocks, veggies, a tumbling stream or two and a road winding its way up to one of a variety of passes. That's the Love in China bit. It's magnificent.

The Hate bit is down in the valleys, which contain polluted towns entirely of new buildings less than 50 years old and ubiquitously clad in white bathroom tiles. The people are less friendly and more likely to simply turn away when you stop at an intersection feeling rather lost. It's frustratinga and baffling...I kept going and found sanctuary in tiny mountain guesthouses, like the one under the pass at Fuyong, where I was waved over in the dusk to sit by their fire and warm my knees, and my hands with a cup of tea. It was jolly cold that morning, and I set of down the road in two jumpers and trousers.

The road - by then it had turned into cobblestones after a previous incredible day bumping, winding, ploughing my way over gravel, around potholes, pits, piles of gravel, landslides and two-inch thick dust that came up in clouds from my wheels as from a puffball fungus. Coming into a hotel that night they laughed at me - and in the mirror I was eyebrows to toes covered in muck, just like Sputnik the bike. That road was hard, awesome fun. The cobblestones were crap. My personal hell would be an eternal uphill on a cobblestone road. You creep along in you lowest gears putting half your energy into a monotonous jarring up-and-down. Ah well! I got there.

The last few days have actually been incredibly hard. The attitude of so many people to a traveller coming through has been to stare and call out 'Helloooo!' in the tone reserved for talking to a parrot or a small kid...in one town yesterday looking for a feed I cycled up the main street to find people pulling their friends out from the shops to get a better view of the travelling freak show...and all the way down they laughed. Horrible.

Hats off to the man in Quannai, father of the cook who was stir-frying up a storm of a late lunch. He had terrible red teeth, enormous ears (they stuck out at least 3 cm, and flapped as he spoke) and must have been about 70. He sat and watched me eat, with a smile on his face and chattered away to me in Chinese. He must have seen that I liked the tea, as he wouldn't let me leave without stuffing a handful of leaves in my handlebar bag. With the leaves he gave me the feeling that, perhaps, China was possible after all.

About five days to Dali and a Christmas break. I'm looking forward to getting up into the big mountains. A huge hello, and Christmas hug to everyone. Thanks to everyone who's helped me out with emails, texts, advice (yes, Gav, I'm keeping my knees warm) and support.

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