Month: September 2018

A long hard drive from Foping on the way to Chengdu with motorway all the way. The beautiful quality of the road surface saves a fortune on diesel, but the … Read more

A drive of 131 miles through the Qingling mountains took us to the small town of Foping. The road from Xi’an to Chengdu has 137 tunnels of varying length throuh … Read more

Torrential rain in the morning so, after having a rather tasty soup at a cheap cafe for Chinese workers, we got a taxi (amazingly cheap) to the Big Wild Goose … Read more

What more can be said about the Terracotta Warriors? Everyone has seen them on the telly, but to see them in real life is truly incredible. The only drawback being … Read more

The following morning we walked a short distance to the tourist centre for the fabulous Maijishan grottoes where the carving of Buddhas into the hillside of a mountain shaped like … Read more

Because we are all keen on roughing it rather than stopping at posh hotels, Green sorted out a lovely homestay place where we could camp in the yard and use … Read more

We got up too late for the 10.00 am guided tour of the Labrang monastery so booked for the 3 pm one. OAPs are free! Green took us up a … Read more

A herd of cows visited us in the morning accompanied by some men in Chairman Mao outfits. They were members of the Tu minority ethnic group who are Tibetan Buddhists. … Read more

The first two hours of the day consisted of driving painfully slowly through Zhangye, a huge industrial city which is growing very rapidly and high-rise blocks are springing up in … Read more

We got up early in the morning and drove to a fruit and vege market in Jiayuguan city to stock up with food. We then drove to the first watch … Read more