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Published: February 7th 2010
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Another train.
I seem to be collecting a pose from each new train journey The Sichuan province is surrounded by mountain ranges on all but its eastern side, with the Himalayas on it's western side. These mountains are Holy to the Tibetans who inhabit them in villages and monasteries. Naturally its very high altitude, and is full of rivers, lakes and gorges. Its home to a 500km2 nature reserve and is the native home of the giant panda. Intriuging? Thats what I thought...
So the time came to say goodbye to the charismatic Xi'an, for a week or two anyway. I left Tom, my friend who I will be spending New Years with in Korla, with the money to get me a train ticket when he buys his. One thing that is frustratingly flawed about buying train tickets in China is you can only buy tickets leaving from the station you are buying them at, and it must be within the next 10 days. This makes planning ahead and premptively buying tickets very hard. Especially as the trains are so busy this time of year.
Anyway we decided Juizhaigou (literally "Nine Village Valley") would be a good place to begin exploring Sichuan. So after labouriously finding out what the options were for getting
Thats right.
Another frozen waterfall. there we decided the cheapest and quickest would be a 15hour train to Mianyang arriving at 3.30am, find the long distance bus station by 6.30am for the one off 10hour bus to Juizhaigou. To total journey from one hostel to the other was 28hours. The bus ride from Mianyang was at least accomponied by some pretty spectacular views as we slowly climbed higher weaving between the great rocks.
However we arrived at the wrong bus station, which was actually quite impressive as we found no evidence of a another bus station for hours either way when planning the journey. Talking to the taxi drivers, well at them, I managed to finally locate a bridge, which is apparently nearby the hostel. So I handed out a few rollies, picked a driver at random and we were off. 47km later, with the sun finding a spot to settle amongst the many surrounding peaks, we arrived. Thats what the driver told us as he handed me a cigarette. I looked around. Arrived at where exactly, I thought.
I got out of the car to look around. Ok, I was standing on a bridge, I'll give him that, but we had only
Sunrise
If you looked hard enough, you could just about see the shadow moving just left behind open road replaced by unusual looking white buildings, the lamposts became bizarre lanterns, but more importantly everywhere looked closed and there wasn't a person in sight. The driver watched me impatiently as I spotted what looked like an open shop. An old woman watched me approach. I tried.
"Excuse me....? ummm... Duì bù qǐ....?"
She just shook her head and pointed away from the shop. I decided to be optimistic and started walking the direction she pointed. I couldn't see what she was pointing at but I didn't know what to say to the driver if we couldn't find the hostel. I was about to give up and turn back when I saw the telltale Tibetan design of a single building in the distance between a row of buildings. Tibetan buildings try and cram as many colours and patterns onto the wooden structures as they can. Useful when your hostel is designed as such, amoungst plain buildings. Relief made the basic handmade bed more comfortable. Hunger made the small overpriced food more satisfying and layers of thermals just about compensated for the lack of any heating. They near enough have a monopoly in this ghost
The clearest water
You can see every detail of the suprsingly deep bed. town though so standards don't have to be pushed.
So we were up dim and early the next day to explore the Juizhaigou Valley Nature Reserve. Suprisingly there were quite a few native tourists visiting the park too. I was impressed such an eeirily deserted town seemingly spawned such a flock of tourists. But once we were in the park and the bright sun began to reach over the summits, driving away the cool of the night, we began to wake up. We payed extra to use the buses for the day that go in big ciruits through the park missing out some of the thick stretchs with nothing unique to see. It felt like cheating in some ways but to reach the most of the picturesque areas in one day walking would be far from possible. The park is incredible. It has 118 lakes! The mixture of lush green, waterfalls and mountains, all in altitudes between 2000-3000m above sea level. I hope some of my photos could capture better what is so hard to in words. My only regret in going this time of year wasn't the temperature, but because its high risk fire season, lots of long
I wish...
...I could build a house right here. walking areas are closed. Felt abit caged in a few places. Despite this, I had a really relaxing day. A good contrast to the travel time to get there.
Another cold night in the company of 3 American lads around a stove and before we knew it we were back on the road this time for the nearby Songpan...
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Kt
non-member comment
wow
hey man, the photos of the lakes are amazing!!