"Tibet" here I come

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Just a quick update before I eat my dinner. My time in Chengdu is finally coming to an end. This may very well be the longest I stay on one place on this trip ( with the exception of Beijing) and I didn't really do anything (other than the very large buddha and seeing the pandas yesterday). However, this is one of the nicest hostels I've been to, and I spent a lot of yesterday running around because my camera went missing and I thought I was finally going to have to make the transition to digital ( the camera turned up at reception this morning). I also finally got a real hotpot, which was deliciously spicy, though I did end up with oil all over myself. And the weather has turned nice, though the polution means the sky is permanently invisible.

In any case, tomorrow I head to kangding, a town in western sichuan and my first step on my ethnic-Tibetan ( but not Tibetan autonomous region) adventure. This is probably the most off the beaten path I'll go in china, as I make my way over 4000 m to shangri la in Yunnan. I'm traveling with two Israelis and hopefully will meet others along the way ( the Israelis are turning back to Chengdu) but most people seem to be making the trip in the other direction.

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