I'm going to Pakistan.

I went to the Pakistan embassy today which was a fascinating experience, because part of the process included an interview. In the interview I was immediatly confronted about my nationality and, in a way, asked to defend my countries actions. I imagine it will be a pretty common conversation if I am forced to reveal where I'm from in Pakistan. I stood out painfully among the crowds applying for visa's but everyone was very polite. I may go back to the embassy tommarow to talk about American foreign policy with one of the government officials seeing that it looks extremely rare, if ever, that Americans stop by.

My trip looks like this now. I will head west, by train, through the Xianjang province until I reach Kashgar. In Kashgar I will bus to the Pakistan border and cross over. Supposedly I will cross peaks as high as 7000m (21000 feet) on my way to Islamasbad. I hope to get in some good hiking in these areas seeing that the lonely planet has a trekking guide for the area. After Islamasbad I will head down into India. I will probably decide to head towards South East Asia at this point, making a giant circle on my travels.

Bejing is fascninating. There are more foreigners here than anywhere else in China that I've been. It's also very exspensive so I will probably try to get out of here as soon as possible. I may even skip the great wall around Bejing so that I have more time to hike it when I am traveleing west.