About a year ago, Rajkumar, the most famous film star in Karnataka, the region Bangalore is in, died of natural causes. In an outpouring of regional grief, the local people rioted, which led to the death of 8 people, burning of over 100 vehicles and trashing of local offices (see BBC News article). Microsoft's office in Bangalore is a modern glass building, located 2 blocks from Rajkumar's home. This made it a prime target for the rioters, and every window up to the third floor (i.e. within rock throwing distance of the street) was broken.

Anyway, Rajkumar's fans decided to stage a repeat protest (read "riot") today in Bangalore. When I arrived at work this morning, the whole Microsoft building was covered in blue netting, like a large sack pulled down over the whole building. Thankfully the protest has now been cancelled, as the governor of Karnataka is out of town, so the fans are going to stage a mass fast instead. Which means I can spend the day at work without worrying about rocks flying through the windows.

After seven weeks, my internship’s come to an end and I'm leaving Bangalore tomorrow. From here, I'm taking the overland route back to London, travelling north through India and Nepal, over the Himalayas and across the Tibetan plateau, before I head along the eastern part of the silk route to Beijing. I'll then cross the Gobi desert and Siberia, before crossing the Ural mountains and into Europe. The full journey will be around 9,000 miles. I expect the trip will take around 5 weeks, which means I should be back in London around mid-September.

From there, I took a 3 hour bus through the paddy fields of Uttar Pradesh (see photo) to the India/Nepal border crossing at Sunauli, a rickshaw over the border and then an 8 hour bus ride to Kathmandu. I'm staying in Nepal until Saturday, to do some trekking, before heading off on a 5 day drive across the Himalayas.

I've finally arrived in Lhasa after 5 days travelling across the Himalayas. The first day we travelled by bus to the Nepal/China border and from there we travelled by Land Cruiser, along the 920km "Friendship Highway".

The Tibetan plateau, at 3,500m (11,500ft), is as flat as a pancake and interspersed with rows of mountains that rise up a further 1,500m. We'd drive for an hour on a completely flat straight road, then go over a mountain pass and go back to another plain which would take another hour to cross. And the scenery is spectacular: lakes, mountains, sand dunes, scrubland, grassland, farmland, meadows, monasteries, nomads, villages, cities - much more variety than I expected.

I've finally arrived in Lhasa, where I'll spend 2 days seeing various Buddhist sites, before taking the world's highest railway to Beijing.