It was a Wednesday that James, Julia, Ursula and I left Lijiang for Chengdu. We arrived three days later...We took a bus early in the morning to a town called Panzhihua, just inside Sichuan province, from where we hoped to take a train onward to Chengdu. Like most other journeys in this part of the world it was long, 8 hours, and incredibly scenic. A short distance from Lijiang is a place called Tiger Leaping Gorge. This is where the young Yangtze flows through one of the deepest gorges in the world, and is a sight not to be missed. I'm sad to say that I did miss it however.
The weather was getting worse, time was dragging on, and I was certainly not prepared for any kind of hiking.Still, I did get to see something along the lines of the gorge through the bus window as we wound our way up and down steep valley sides to cross the river and continue our journey. The view was impressive.
8 hours and a Jackie Chan film later, the landscape began to change. From green fields, farms and terraced slopes we went to mines, chimneys and heavy industry. Hello Panzhihua...
I've not been to too many industrial cities in China (with good reason) so it was interesting to see the contrast here, but we did not plan on staying long.
We went directly to the train station to get our tickets. We went up to the counter, asked for 4
tickets to Chengdu and were told there were none.
No tickets available for two days. All the trains were fully booked due to the volume of traffic at this holiday time. Hmm. Bit of a problem...
Luckily there was a tourist information centre by the station, so we took shelter there from the hecklers and touts while we planned our next course of action. Interestingly enough, the touts were offering taxis to Chengdu, but for 2000 yuan. We talked to a few and tried to negotiate, but they outnumbered us greatly so we bid a hasty retreat. Back in the office the lady recommended we fly - at about 800 yuan each and a tidy commission for herself. We asked about buses, but were told there were no buses because the roads were so bad. I found this a little hard to believe at first, as I'd read that Sichuan was investing millions in a new Expressway network, and as the woman was starting to book hotels for us anyway, we made a quick getaway before we had to start paying anything.
Back in the city centre we weighed up our options. Neither of us fancied spending two days of our vacation in a town whose main sights include an opencast mine and half a dozen power stations, and while flying was certainly too expensive, a taxi began to sound more and more appealing. Either way, there was not much we could do that night, so we booked ourselves into a hotel and got a good night's sleep.
The next day, as we watched the morning smog lift (see pic above!), we talked to the hotel's travel service and got ourselves a taxi. Still 2000, but that didn't matter so much anymore. We were on our way!
We were lucky. Our driver was a nice guy. His name was Zou, and you can see him here with his taxi at our lunch stop, a couple of hours out of Panzhihua. Julia had been studying Chinese in Beijing, and between her and James' manic gestures we managed to communicate quite well. For the first half hour he was phoning everyone he knew and we could tell the conversations were all along the lines of 'Guess what I'm doing? Driving four foreigners to Chengdu!!'. Not the usual job for sure. One of the first questions he asked us in the car was whether we were all 'together'. He asked Julia if I was her husband or her 'didi' - her little brother. She said didi. And all 
of a sudden that was it. We were a family! I had a new mother, father and elder sister. You can't blame the poor guy. We looked a pretty convincing family unit. From then on, everywhere we went people automatically took us for family, at least until they asked where we were from and got the names of four different countries in reply!The first part of our journey was spent driving down small tree-lined roads through intensively farmed countryside. It was really beautiful. We soon came to the expressway I'd read about, and a sign saying 'under construction - opening 2008'... Great. A year too early. It was then that we considered this may take a little longer than we'd thought.
We kept on going, and going, climbing upwards,
until very quickly we went through one mountain pass and the scenery changed. We went from sub-tropical fields of peas, strawberries, bananas and oranges to a quite barren treeless landscape of dead grass, rocks and goatherds. The difference was considerable.
Now, the landscape was simply astounding. Whether tall snow-capped mountains, broad open plains or narrow winding valleys, you never got bored with the view. And no matter where we went through this landscape the roads were bloody awful.A good proportion was unsurfaced, sometimes dry and dusty, sometimes thick with mud but at all times rutted, pitted and strewn with rocks. A four-wheel drive would have been perfect. In our city taxi we just prayed that the thing wouldn't break down before we got there.
8 hours into the trip we came to a large-ish town that we could find on the map. We weren't too happy with what we saw. We weren't even half-way. Maybe a little more than a third. We knew then this was gonna be long-haul.
We drove on into the night. Zou reckoned we could make it by about 3am. We weren't so sure. The roads weren't any
better and of course were not lit, so we'd be right on top of the pot-holes before we saw them, slowing down to a crawl to negotiate the way before speeding up again. It just seemed to be getting worse and we had severe arse-fatigue, so after stopping for dinner at about 9pm, we persuaded Zou to stop somewhere for the night. He said he'd like to try and make a certain big town first, maybe only an hour away, and that we could stop there. We agreed, but had driven no more than a few minutes before we came upon a police road block. We parked a little way from the barriers themselves, because I'm sure what we were doing anyway was not entirely legal, and Zou went to have a look. He came back with bad news. We couldn't go through. It was so late by now that turning round and finding another way just wasn't an option, so when someone ran out of a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant across the street and offered us a room, we took it.
This was no four-star hotel. We were four to a room (for safety more than anything else - no door locks here) and it was basic, but comfortable. We had to go outside to brush our teeth and use the toilet (pictured!) and didn't even bother asking if they had a shower. And the price for one night? 10 yuan each. To put that in UK terms, about 70p. Breakfast included.Bargain.
Next morning we were up bright and early, the roadblock was gone, and we continued on our way. This time we were going straight up. Soon
enough we drove into low-lying clouds and wound around this mountain in almost zero-visibility for about an hour before we reached the other side and began to climb down again. It was cold up there. All the trees were covered in a thick layer of frost and I couldn't help thinking that we were lucky to have stopped where we were last night. Attempting that in the dark would definitely have been a bad idea.This stretch was bleak. Misty, wet and impoverished. Some of the small towns we passed through looked so desperate, but in the larger ones, everyone was out at the markets
busily getting ready for the festival. It reminded me of what I was potentially missing out on right now in Lanshan.We soldiered on for another 7 hours before we finally arrived in Chengdu. But not before a quick toilet stop at a random farm along the way. I have to mention this because it was just bizarre. The facilities were, well, not...really...there. It was situated in a tumble-down outhouse and consisted of an open pit, with a plank, a bucket, a god-awful smell and about ten enormous white rabbits watching you from hutches lining the wall. Julia was brave enough to stay in there long
enough to take a photo, which I'm very pleased to share with you lucky, lucky people. You don't know what you've got back home...So anyway, three days later, we arrived in Chengdu. We payed Zou his 2000 yuan (which he'll probably need to buy a new taxi with) and we'd barely said goodbye before he raced off to try and get back home in time for the new year. Pretty exhausted, we didn't do much more than dump our stuff and get some food. The cafe we went to had a guest book, and we decided to contribute. James drew a picture of our taxi and I wrote a small rhyme to go with it. If you ever go to Chengdu, check out Dodo's cafe next door to the Loft youth hostel and take a look for yourselves.
The journey so far...
Days: 15 Distance: 3480km (give or take shitloads - I'm measuring on a small scale map with a piece of string...)
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