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Expedition Diary China 
Well, we have had a pretty tough time since Lhasa. The days have been long and the mileage huge - appro 3000km in 9 days! The Land Rovers have continued to play up due to the altitudes and the freezing cold which has, at times, sunk as low as -20oC. The diesel continued to freeze on an almost daily basis until we reached the slightly lower land and higher temperature of Lanzhou. We have also had to repair a broken chassis and Mutley's radiator has sprung a leak. We have ended up driving well after dark with some drives ending in the small hours and beginning only a few hours later in order to cover the required ground; China is huge! On one occasion we had no choice but to camp high up in the freezing cold as the Land Rovers simply stopped in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. Our breath was freezing on our sleeping bags and even though we were fully clothed inside, some of us were still not warm enough. On another night Guy, Toby and Sam were forced to sleep snuggled together in Pinky at about 4000 metres while the rest of us found shelter slightly lower down, Noel suffering from mountain sickness.
That said, having reached our most Northern point at Golmud and begun to head South, the wagons started coming back to life and we began to encounter more civilization. Lanzhou was a huge city, much westernised although it is still very difficult to accomplish the simplest things without our guide Xi Jun to translate. Very few of the Chinese speak English and if you are trying to explain that you need to repair a broken chassis or defrost your fuel, this can prove a little frustrating. All the cities in China are rather bleak looking and their architecture is seriously lacking in aesthetic qualities. 
From Lanhzou we made it through Yanxian county and onto Guangyuan and then to Chengdu where we celebrated Noel's 30th birthday, Noel treating us all to a black tie dinner in a very smart hotel. We then witnessed some Chinese Karaoke - one of their favourite pastimes it seems. We did not indulge ourselves but recently, on our nights out, we have begun to experiment and the results have been extremely amusing!
In Chengdu we visited the Panda breeding centre, a 2 million pound investment which sadly has not been as successful as the Chinese had first hoped and consequently much of the park is empty and the number of pandas are few. However, we were able to watch 2 panda cubs frolicking amongst the bamboo and saw 'lesser pandas' which look like racoons. On past Chongqing to Guiyang, more long, late drives with accommodation alternating between the most basic guest houses and 3 star hotels. On the way to Kunming, we stopped at the Huanguosshu waterfall, an impressive sight unfortunately surrounded by inordinate amounts of severely tacky souvenir stalls! Kunming was another much westernised city with a plush Holiday Inn. The team also visited the Bamboo Temple where they saw the 500 life size charicatures of Surfing Buddhas! We also visited the Stone Forest, a 380 hectare wide area containing limestone pinnacles of all shapes and sizes; an area which, it is believed, was under water at one time. It is an interesting and quite beautiful sight but one has to try to adopt the imagination of the Chinese when looking for the stones which are shaped like a 'Rhino looking at the moon' or a 'thousand year old tortoise'! Our last major city was Nanning, one of the most developed cities in China where, having realised that Christmas was not far away, we attempted to do some Christmas shopping! Pingxiang was our last stop in China, a small uninteresting town with wonderful noodle stalls, hawk dishes and snake spleens all of which we sampled! The next day we arrived at the border and after the usual paperwork, we left China and our guide Xi Jun after an exhausting but eventful month. |