Our big trip
A few thoughts and photos from our travels
-
Day 77 – Macaques in the mountains
11th November: Zhangjiajie, China I think I used all of my mental capacity for dealing with heights yesterday! This morning, we got the bus out to the south gate of the park for an alternate view of the pillars. This meant yet another cable car! Even Kaja struggled with the height on this one but…
-
Day 76 – Zhangjiajie and the real-life Hallelujah Mountain
10th November: Zhangjiajie, China I’ve got a new translation app on my phone, which is astonishingly good. The hotel owner helped me to install it and was very surprised that I had the various pre-requisites. It was worth the effort of the time spent in Qatar bypassing the app store (and its warnings) to do…
-
Day 75 – A sense of the old China
9th Nov: Wushan, China to Zhangjiajie, China It was a damp morning in Chongqing Province. Clouds clung to the dark green mountains as we darted underneath through tunnels back towards the regional capital. Occasionally, the dense trees were interrupted by rice paddies and vegetable gardens. We successfully managed to get food at the station in…
-
Day 74 – The Lesser Three Gorges
8th November: Wushan, China This hotel is one of the more interesting places we’ve stayed so far. There wasn’t a huge amount of choice in Wushan, so we’ve ended up in a place where the shower in our room is directly above a squat toilet! It’s just about manageable but I do wonder how many…
-
Day 73 – Into provincial Chongqing
7th November: Chongqing, China to Wushan, China Looking out on one last morning in Chongqing, coal ships pootled on down the Yangtze. Fog shrouded the mountains and their human equivalents in the foreground. It was time to leave the 8th dimension. I still felt very fragile and even more so when I smacked my head…
-
Day 72 – Real-life Cities: Skylines
6th November: Chongqing, China Another day of exploring the layers of Chongqing. I caught the metro, drifting and still completely devoid of energy, but still keen to see as much as I could of a city that I’d been most excited about visiting. Kaja decided to chill today. I began on the monorail along the…
-
Day 71 – The 8D Magic City
5th November: Chongqing, China A very short walk from our building, under the skywalk of the Raffles Centre, is the confluence of the Jialing and Yangtze. We spent a good while looking on in awe at the longest river in Eurasia being joined by one of its great tributaries in front of the never-ending towers…
-
Day 70 – First sight of the Yangtze
4th November: Chengdu, China to Chongqing, China We were up fairly early to jump on another fantastic train eastwards to Chongqing. I was still weak and exhausted but felt up to travelling. Once again, the scenery was beautiful as we passed citrus fruits growing in more steep, verdant hills. The usual haze kept the horizon…
-
Day 69 – Laid low
3rd November: Chengdu, China Very little to say today. We got back from the hospital at 6:30am. I managed to eat some melon and keep down most of the liquids I’ve drunk. This is the third time in three weeks I’ve had serious digestive issues, plus some minor ones. I’m not sure what the solution…
-
Day 68 – Ti jianzi and a trip to hospital
2nd November: Chengdu, China Looking down from our precipitous seating area felt as if playing a game. Kids showed off their tricks on the rooftop skate park, still 60 or more metres below us. Smaller blocks of flats all had water tanks on their rooves and cars moved on the lanes between them. People looked…