How it all began…

My first little series of posts will tell the story of my 2 week trip, with a friend, into Kham Tibet in Eastern China in October 2017. We started in Chengdu in Sichuan province and travelled overland by car through Kham Tibet to Zhongdian (also known as ShangriLa) in Eastern Tibet. An absolute highlight was our visit to Yading National Park, but we enjoyed all of the places and stops along the way.

 

What a beautiful region! The trip was wonderful, if a bit fast paced, and it was organised for us by our friend, Henriette at China Minority Travel in Dali, China. Henriette had organised 2 trips for us in previous years, and both of them had been wonderful with their visits to beautiful places and meeting interesting people.

I saw some photos on Henriette’s Facebook Page of a few new trips that she was offering and immediately wanted to go to the places in the photos.  It took about a year and a half before we set off, but we got there. Here’s a link to one of the trips that inspired me http://www.china-minority-travel.com/south-china-tours/sichuan-yading-national-park/

To be honest, I am usually a lot more involved in planning my trips than I was with this one, so I can’t complain about the pace, I gave Henriette some parameters, she met them, we approved the schedule and the trip was wonderful. However, next time (or if you’re thinking of planning a similar trip) I’d say go a bit more slowly and either spend a bit more time overall or go to fewer places. We could have stayed longer pretty much everywhere we went. Still, this was the trip of a lifetime: wonderful, wonderful.

We started off quite slowly, but pretty soon the trip was wonderful, wonderful and each day we were saying “I must come back here.”

The trip was actually coordinated by Samtours in Chengdu. They provided our guide (briefly), our lovely, enthusiastic driver and wonderful phone backup support from a young woman named Worley in their office.

The adventure started with the flight from Sydney to Chengdu, then a day slightly lost but enjoying it in Chengdu.

The Journey Begins…

The first part of the adventure was the direct flight from Sydney to Chengdu. This is a twice weekly service, since Chengdu (only 17 million people) is a regional flight. It was perfect for me since I was starting my trip in Chengdu.

The quirky China experience started at check-in, where most passengers were Chinese and, just like in China, everyone was pushing. No one wanted to get in front of anyone else, they just all wanted to move forward. So, we all just got squeezed in tighter and tighter. I was laughing because it reminded me of so many times in China, lots of other people started laughing too.

The same thing happened when we were getting onto the plane; made me smile. I love travelling in China and I love Chinese people, so this reminder of one of the foibles of China travel also reminded me of the joy of travelling there.

It would make sense to just let all of the Chinese people get on and then go on after the pushing has ended, but my experience of travelling in Chinese planes has taught me that if you want to put anything in an overhead locker it pays to get on early. I can’t begin to tell you how much hand luggage people take on Chinese flights, but it’s a lot!

The flight attendants were, in the beginning, a bit brusque to those very few of us who weren’t Chinese, I think they were very anxious about their English. Once they understood what we wanted, though, they were very happy to do anything for us, and got past their anxiety.

China Air has the best green tea of any airline I’ve had green tea on, and it’s always available, whereas on other airlines you have to wait for ages (maybe I was getting the attendants’ own tea) anyway, good tea. I know that this is not important to everyone….

The other thing I enjoy about China Air is that they have slightly older planes, so there’s a little bit more leg room.

The best bit of the whole flight, though, was the exercises just before we landed. There’s a film that shows exercises to stretch neck, arms, legs, hands and feet to get you started for the next big adventure. The flight attendants do them as an example and almost everyone on my flight joined in.

At Chengdu airport I met up with my travel companion, who had come from Scotland. This was surprise since she’d arrived 2 hours before me, and we’d organised for separate transfers to our guesthouse. It seems that the man doing the airport transfer had made her wait for me: apparently he didn’t want to make 2 trips. This man turned out to be our guide for the trip, and (although we didn’t realise it at the time) this was a hint of strange behaviour to come. Still, it was nice the share the long ride into town with my friend.

Chengdu

It was wonderful to be back in China, and wonderful to be back in Chengdu: home of the Chengdu Panda Sanctuary, the most wonderful place in the world! It also has great food (Sichuan), great tea, wonderful monasteries, a Tibetan area, friendly people and lovely parks where people sit at outdoor tables drinking tea, eating snacks, playing complex card games and sometimes singing Sichuan Opera.

We stayed at Sam Cosy Hotel which turned out to be quite near the main Buddhist temple and a lovely nunnery. We didn’t realise that, though, until we’d walked past the temple quite a few times. Being humorously unaware of our surroundings turned out to be quite a theme of our trip.

We would be meeting another friend after our 2 week trip to Zhongdian so decided to keep the panda sanctuary for the end of our trip. (To be honest, though, I could go to the pandas every day and not get tired of it.)

Our plan for day one was to visit the site of an archaeological dig showing remains of a village from more than 2000 years ago (if only we could find it).

For that story, read the next post….