china part i - fengdu, the three gorges and the shennong stream

the second week of january, my mother and i traveled to china with a sort of danish group tour called albatros travel. we were a group of 30 people and i believe i was the only one under 50. which was a bit awkward at first, but they were all really nice and entertaining and some were very "danish" - sitting in the back of the bus drinking beer and discussing the low alcohol-percentage they have in china.

the trip started in chongqing and ended in shanghai, which is about 1700 km (according to google maps) and since i took a million photos for every metre we travelled i'll split up the posts.

we didn't have the best start though because when we arrived helsinki, where we were going to fly directly to chongqing, the flight said "peruttu" - or cancelled in finnish because of "technical problems". which meant we were booked over to a flight to shanghai instead. i don't know much about how airliners do things but i, and several others, thought it was a bit suspicious that they managed to fit everyone from the chongqing flight in the one to shanghai. as if they maybe thought there were too few on the one to chongqing and they had room for more on the shanghai flight, and suddenly the one to chongqing had technical problems... i don't know, but ending up 1700 km from where i was supposed to be has made me hold a slight grudge against finn air.

anyway, when we got to shanghai, we were flown to chongqing after waiting maybe 13 hours in shanghai. which meant the whole day in chongqing was lost. Also, we had to catch the cruise ship that was going to take us down the yangtze river but luckily they waited for us, if not we wouldn't have made it in time. it was supposed to sail at around 8pm and we didn't arrive until around midnight.

moving on (writing about it just frustrates me). We were sailed down the yangtze river and the next day we docked at fengdu, also called the ghost city. there we saw temples and buddhas and scenes from hell and demon statues. it was all very fascinating. some figures were pretty grotesque though, like a man being sawn in half from below.

after that we continued our trip down the river. it was a nice sized cruise ship, not too big and with a cosy atmosphere and very polite crew. i loved falling asleep to the sound of ship engines and splashing water. the next day was the one i had looked forward to the most, where we passed two of the three gorges, the qutang and wu gorge. the mountains were spectacular and the conditions were perfect with the slight fog and the sun shining through. just standing on the top deck, freezing and staring at those tall, steep mountains slowly pass by was pretty mesmerizing. later towards the evening we were taken by a smaller boat down the shennong stream which was just as amazing. just writing about it makes me want to go back!


fengdu:



















along the yangtze river







the qutang gorge























the wu gorge











the shennong stream