One of the most striking and consistent things we’ve picked up on during our year away is that all over the world people offer evidence of the effects of global warming. Weather plays an important part in so many lives, and generations have been brought up with the knowledge of local seasonal patterns like the start of the rainy season and so on. And they all report that these patterns have suddenly broken down in the past few years, adding an extra layer of uncertainty to their lives. Now, we’re not about to turn into Al Gore, although we did [View Full Entry]

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We like Americans, maybe not the middle-aged vacationers when roaming in herds, but on the whole we like them. But today we are glad that our passports are red and not blue because today we enter Tibet, and Americans are not allowed in. (This may have changed by now - information is hard to come by here.) For those who don’t know, Tibet is a province of China with some claims for independence. Sort of like a high-altitude Scotland. Based on hearsay, the latest edition of the Lonely Planet guide to China is routinely confiscated by officials because on the map [View Full Entry]

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Today we met with Pasang, Poo Poo (true) and the 4x4 - our guide, driver and transport until we reach Nepal in 3 weeks time. Independent travel in Tibet is not allowed, and since we cannot think of many things worse than joining some of the tour groups we have crossed paths with, we have decided to splash out and do this trip properly by hiring a Landcruiser and these 2 Tibetans. To start things off we have a 180km drive today broken up with 2 monasteries and 2 high passes. The first monastery is probably not the best of [View Full Entry]

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After a terrible night - Gemma not keeping any food down - and waking up to more and harder rain, the thought of walking down did not enthuse us too much. However it was the only way out so once we had donned our waterproofs we were off and sliding our way down the steep mountain. Some of the mountain scenery along the way made the experience worthwhile - at one point we could see about 3500m of vertical rock, from the river to the peaks, and that’s over 2 miles! After we’d met up with our car we did [View Full Entry]

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With both of us not feeling our usual selves probably the last thing we needed to do today was trek in the rain for 7 hours - so that is exactly what we did. After a two hour drive to a town at the foot of the mouth of the Tiger Leaping Gorge we started on our way up, and with Hamlet guiding us through the Yunnanese flora as we went it made for an interesting 30 minutes to start off with. As we steadily got steeper and higher the rain got heavier. One part was imaginatively called ’28 Bends’ [View Full Entry]

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Gemma was suffering with the cold that Ed had kindly passed on, so stayed in and around the hotel whilst Ed went off for a guided day around Lijiang, capital of the Naxi kingdom. Lijiang is a UNESCO site and the status actually refers to the old town, where we were staying, and a couple of historic villages nearby. Some highlights here included a camellia tree, supposedly with 10,000 blossoms, Black Dragon pool and lots of ancient murals. The best bit was meeting Doctor Ho, who featured in Michael Palin’s Himalaya series. When he found out that Ed was English (something [View Full Entry]

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Today is worse than yesterday...both feeling miserable, we stayed in the comfort of our lovely hotel room. At 2,500 metres high our sinuses have taken quite a beating, or is that squeezing, and neither of us really had a good nights sleep. With a hectic month ahead of us we both want to be a lot better before we head into this. Well we are treking for a number of days as the first activity in a couple of days time. We did have a little wander around the old town and saw many delights to whet our appetite. [View Full Entry]

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Another quiet day, well for blog material anyway. We both felt quite miserable today as we have seemed to pick up a bad cold each. This is what happens when you actually hang around the hostel, rather than what we do usually and only use the place to sleep in. We then flew to Lijiang in the evening. Arriving in this exquisite little ancient refurbished town, after an earthquake a few years ago. As a UNESCO Heritage site, a lot of money has been put into rebuilding the city as it was. The shuttle bus took us, not really that surprisingly, [View Full Entry]

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The plan today was to visit the small town of Huanglongxi, which is a traditional looking ancient town that was used for the set of the film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". The main attraction, as it were, that we wanted to see was the Gutong Monastery, actually seen in the film, however the week before, on May bank holiday, one of the busiest days on the Chinese tourist calender, an ancient tree had fallen down and injured a number of tourists. So it was closed for saftey work, it would be open next week! Disappointed about this...we were very pleased to [View Full Entry]

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Our early start was well worth it this morning as we made a trip to Chengdu’s Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. The best time to see the Pandas is in the morning so that you hopefully catch a glimpse of them before they sleep for the rest of the day or just go off and hide. The Centre is about 30 minutes outside Chengdu and is world famous for its ground breaking techniques in breeding Giant Pandas in captivity, to a very high success rate at that. There are a number of different enclosures, all housing different age groups of [View Full Entry]

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