China

We got held up in the morning by an accident on the road between Duoshaguan and the motorway, and the planned visit to a Taoist temple was a bit of … Read more

Travelling south-west out of Chengdu we passed mile after mile of high-rise flats including the biggest building in the world, and proceeded through some rather boring landscape of Sichuan Province. … Read more

We went to see the Panda Research Centre in the morning. We went six years ago and, as expected, the number of people visiting the pandas has increased geometrically as … Read more

Slept in in the morning and went to see the Wenshu Monatery in the afternoon. The main prayer hall was beautiful, but somewhat disturbing as a young girl was in … Read more

The drive to Chengdu was uneventful. A big city of 8 million, or 18 million including its satellite towns. People live in massive tower blocks and the motorways cross each … Read more

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