This week I've been in Dali, northern Yunnan. It's an old town flanked by 4000m mountains to the west and Lake Er Hai to the east. I've been doing little else but get up in the morning, enjoy my sunny guesthouse courtyard, and walk to one of the coffee machines in town for the luxury of dwelling in my mind and writing screeds of crap in my diary.

There'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 cycle north for a week from here, to a place called Zhongdian; it's the edge of Tibet and a good place to finish. From there, 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.

Hey! I've been cycling the world. A funny thing happened in my hammock today: I fell asleep and snoozed, in the middle of the day. Lately, the middle of the day has seen one sweat-soaked, grubby cyclist on the road, heading north, vaguely towards Helsinki.

Right now, I'm in a place called Pai, which is found in the hills of northern Thailand. You can buy a T-shirt here, with the bold words: 'Do nothing in Pai'...and that's precisely what I've been doing.

Well, almost. After being on the go for quite a while now Pai (and that handy hammock) has been a great place to let the buzz in my mind unravel. Sometimes, travelling by bike is so intense, and so physically draining, that a week long break becomes a neccessity.

It's a wonderful way to travel. You're forced to spend most of your time in the smaller, rural towns that most tourist busses whizz on by. You might not spend the whole day gazing at this ruin or that temple; instead you spend a whole lot of time (apart from frowning over a map or grinding up a hill) meeting a whole lot of local people, whose language is full of fiddly tonal subtleties, finding food and a place to plonk your head for the night.

A big objective of this trip is to collect local people's stories...it's been a bit of a lesson to find how hard it is to find people to talk to, when I'm on the move and kind of rather tired each night!

From here, the next move is back down the hill to Chiang Mai and onwards to the Laos border. Hanoi in Vietnam will be a great place for another break, this time to make sure I have all the gear I need for crossing the Himalaya in China. Europe, while still an awfully long way from here, feels much, much closer.

Tasmania is looking beautiful. Cold clear mornings which waken into still, sunshiny days. There's a lot of sitting in cafes and lying on lawns going on; this is a time of either settling down and going to roost or spreading wings and flying.



Last weekend I finished my guiding job on Tasmania's Overland Track, with a mixture of some relief and gentle nostalgia. I've lost count how many trips I've done; over the last 6 seasons it would be around fifty-five.



This last trip just fits easily into the crummiest-trip-ever basket: Elyse my co-guide and I had eight lovely people who put up beautifully with four days of rain and rather revelled in amazing winter colours, massive waterfalls and enjoyed each others company. They bonded really well and pitched in with washing up, cleaning, sweeping and had a great time.



Two others were quite strange. However much we tried to include them, they really didn't understand how to operate in a group. I think they had a very definite view of how the trip was going to be, and wouldn't change it. They sat on the couch and watched the others wash up and help out; that really didn't help engender them to the others. Things blew up later down the track, and I found them incredibly rude and dominating, and unappreciative of any attempt to include them. They had a miserable time, and just didn't understand that a simple contribution and interest in the other people in the group could have given them an amazing time. You can't buy your way into a group just by paying money.



I'd really rather be writing about the amazing weather we had, and my mind keeps getting taken over by them. Like now! Sometimes, I just feel like screaming arrrrggggghhh! Ah well. Deep breath, Nick.

(The weather was amazing. I was very glad of a sunny first day, where we had great views down to the south. You can see the next three days walk, over the plains towards Lake Windermere and Mount Pelion West. You can then trace the route around the Forth River gorge to Pelion Plains and over the gap into the realm of the Mersey Valley. It's a quite incredible place to realise that you're walking into 3.5 million hectares of World Heritage Area, and that all you can see, stretching right to the horizon, and beyond to the South Coast, is National Park. The next day, and the next four days, it poured with the most amazing drought-breaking downpour.)



I love rain. You walk along, snug in your raincoat (mine's snug, even though now it just sieves out the big bits. It's a snugness of familiarity) with the rain blatting down around you. At this time of year in Tassie it's not too cold, and the snowgums have peeled their bark. The secret is that the best colours on the snowgums are seen when it's pissing with rain - it's as if they've been varnished. Brilliant reds and yellows and greens look like they're borrowed from a Dali painting. Then there's the fagus: it's Australia's only winter deciduous tree. At 2 metres tall and with a penchant for steep, rocky gullies and slopes, it covers whole hillsides in brillant gold for several weeks over autumn.



And let me tell you about those waterfalls! I stood at the base of Fergusson Falls with two words in my head: 'HOLY CRAP.' The water was screaming over the 15 meter drop, as if the drop wasn't there at all. In fact, the rocks I crouched on were vibrating with the force of the water falling. Normally, in summer, there's a great waterhole at the bottom surrounded by high rock walls. That day, the walls were hidden by boiling, tumbling water and a swim would be a very quick way to go.



That day with the waterfalls was the day I said my goodbye to the track. It's my favourite - an ancient temperate rainforest cloaks the valley walls, with the waterfalls on the Mersey river below. It's what is called a callidendrous rainforest: a mature rainforest growing on good soil, remarkable for its closed canopy yet open forest floor. There's very little undergrowth; rather, a park-like quiet, sheltered forest of upright myrtle, leatherwood and celerytop trunks. The path meanders around large trees, fallen logs, and traces a route along a natural shelf in the valley. To the left, you look into the canopy of the trees growing from below. To the right, you instinctively look up, up, up from the massive roots along gnarled trunks to wispy foliage that's hard to see because it's so far up.



Elgar's cello concerto was the order of the day. It's my favourite piece of music, given to me by a friend called Paul, himself a very gifted cello player with whom I went to school in New Zealand. I love listening to music as a I catch up to a group after cleaning the hut. So Jacqueline du Pre accompanied me through my favourite places on my favourite day, and then I sat down in a little mossy corner for a few minutes until it was over.



Now, it's the time of plans and leaving. The end-of-season guide party was last Friday. It was a little flat. The neat people I remembered from several seasons ago weren't around, and some people from this season had left already leaving a small gaggle of us diluted by a lot of people I didn't know so well. I liked the next day, which began with breakfast at my sister Naida's house, where 6 people I really enjoyed working with were staying. A long breakfast was followed by a long midday chips and icecream at the docks, which was followed by a long coffee. It was a good day with good people, enjoying a final time of being together before everyone heads off on their various adventures.



KT and Penno are heading to Central Australia. Penno had left for a 4 month mission to Nepal, Tibet and India. What he says is that he broke his toe rafting in Nepal and that there was a public holiday in Tibet that meant he'd have to wait around for a while and that it was going to cost lots of money to go into Tibet and and and ... but we all know that he's just fallen in love for the first time and wanted to come back to KT. She and him are a great couple. She wouldn't hurt a fly, yet can happily tell you tales of hard marches in the army with a heavy backpack.



"What was in the backpack, KT?" you might ask.

"Ah, my gear, my machine gun..."



It's unusual to meet someone who's been in the army in my circle of friends, and KT is an unusual person to be in the army, I think. But I'm getting sidetracked...so many stories. KT and Penno headed north yesterday, KT to do a masters in remote health to complement her nursing, and Penno, well, he's in love and is also looking for guiding work in Alice Springs or Darwin.



This morning, I'll head out for brekkie with Vicky, who leaves today to Sydney, then New Zealand. I reckon she'll stay there for a month or two, and after that she's on a mission overland to Ireland. We have plans to rendezvous (what a great word that is) somewhere nice and exotic like China or Northern Thailand. Plans change at a moment's notice in Vicky's world, that's what's great about her. She's just herself, and full of beans, brimming with missions and ideas and doing things from making secret huts by the Hobart Rivulet to hitching all over Tasmania, playing minigolf in the mailroom while working as a temp to arranging dates with random Germans in three years time in the oldest church in a small town in Mongolia (apparently he wasn't actually that spunky, so she's standing him up).

Adam and Scotty are back on the track, for two more weeks work, repairing tank stands. Then there's eight weeks of holiday for them, and golly they deserve it. Between them they kept the whole guiding world ticking over. Adam has plans to throw himself down snowy slopes in New Zealand, and Scotty will hibernate in The Marsh, also known as his house in northern Tasmania. They might also quite enjoy seeing their partners, whom they've hardly seen over summer.

Kate, and Tim, leave next weekend for a five-month cycling mission from Islamabad to Kathmandu over the Karakoram Highway to Kashgar, the Tibetan Plateau and Lhasa. Typically for Kate, she's decided they shouldn't have to backtrack from Lhasa to get to Kathmandu, so they'll take a detour of a few thousand kilometres on the backroads of the remotest bit of the Plateau and enter Lhasa from the north. Happy cycling!



Naida, my sister, is staying in Hobart for the time being, and making up her mind about Serious Jobs. She's also getting into art again, and made me the most amazing wee picture to take with me on my journey. She appears to be dodging boyfriends quite successfully and loving living in her funky sharehouse (who put up with all those people crashing in late on Friday night after the guide party).

And that, in all its length, is the round-up of the guiding season. I'll miss the places and the people. But really, both are always there: the places are lying waiting to be visited again; people may come and go but the memories of good times stay with us.



Images by Rob Blakers, a fantastic Tasmanian landscape photographer.

Beware the bike bore! I've become one. The scenario: a party, or perhaps just at that local band gig that plays down in town every Friday. What happens? You just CAN'T talk about anything else except the exciting fact that last night, that very last night, you did it.

That's right, all the way. A phone call, all the way to England, to order the most smashing, beautiful, lovely, well-made bike for Good Big Adventures. By gum, it's exciting though, and that thrill of commitment to a Big Trip has me bouncing off the walls.

No wonder I can't talk of much else. I've worked out a great route that I can picture over all the maps in my mind, from here at home all the way to Helsinki, involving good adventurous winter escapades to the source of the Yangtze and playing dice with the Taklamakan desert, not to mention visiting Borat in Kazahkstan. Read all the details, if you've got a jolly good atlas handy.