Chengdu

The train journey here was about a day long. It was our longest trip on a train since the Trans Mongolian. I'd forgotten the joys of cabin fever.

We had booked into a place called Sim's Cozy Guesthouse. We had been told that this was the place to go to organise Tibet visa's so we went straight in and took the bull by the horns. This time there was no drama's. It was Saturday however, so the ball would start rolling on Monday.

With our minds at rest we decided to go to the Panda Sanctuary the next morning. We'd met some Scottish people both in Xi'an and the train station in Chengdu. So with them and Anna and Pete we headed off early. The reason for going early is because Panda's are lazy buggers who sleep most of the time and you can only be guaranteed to see them early at feeding time.

The place turned into a real treat! They are being extremely well looked after in the sanctuary and we learned a great deal about them. They are unfortunately on the decline and hopefully the current efforts haven't come too late! Their staple diet is bamboo, but they are very selective and will only eat a few types of bamboo, so due to this their numbers are waning. Humans haven't helped of course, alot of their traditional grounds were dug up and it forced them out. Another problem is that when Panda's are born they are tiny, and extremely helpless and due to this many don't survive.

Actually I came across something at the sanctuary that I didn't even know existed, Red Panda's! They're about the size of a raccoon and ginger! Like human gingers, they too are endangered so I felt a certain connection with them! All joking aside though, they have a similar diet to the giant panda's and thus have the same problems as them.

We booked the tickets to Lhasa on the Monday. The cost was very good, we got the permit for about 350Y and the train tickets for 1100Y which was considerably less than we were expecting. The way it works is that you get a permit to allow you go to Lhasa only. If you want to go anywhere outside of here you need another permit. They do not allow individuals enter so you have to go as a group. What Sims do is they wait until they have a sizable number of people booked through the guest house and send them all as a group. Once you get in you can go your separate ways. Very complicated but thats the idea.

We did have a small problem though. Our visa's were going to expire in Tibet so we needed to get them renewed. There was still 11 days on them but if they ran out in Tibet we wouldn't be able to renew them and we'd face a stiff fine. We were told to go to a place called Leshan where the PSB could do this in an hour.

Next morning we got up early again and headed to the bus station. Bus journey lasted 2 hours. When we got there we headed straight to the PSB to get the ball rolling. We encountered the most unhelpful prick I've encountered for a long time. We handed him our passports and he started to shake his head straight away. He said we had too much time left and he wouldn't renew them. We explained our situation and he demanded to see our permits. We didn't have any yet and he just started shaking his head again. It would have cost him nothing but he was just for the sake of it. We were now going to struggle to get to do Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Leshan has a giant Buddha, biggest in the world apparently. Our mood was fairly poor so we didn't appreciate it at the time. We just went for the sake of doing something, and the day not being a total loss. Looking back, it is a good hike through the hills and giant Buddha is impressive.

Over the course of the next couple of days we just wandered around Chengdu. Had a look at the giant Mao statue and took in some supplies for Tibet. WE needed a place to relax before Tibet and Everest and for that it served its purpose perfectly.

The night before we left we met the guys from Jersey who we'd met in Beijing. We'd a great laugh with them again. As well as that we got talking to some Canadian guys who were just back from Tibet. One of them had to turn back from the Everest trip because he got altitude sickness. Its a real possibility and a cause for concern so fingers crossed!

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