BootsnAll Travel Network



Pandas!

Just a quick update. We left Chengdu on the bus on Thursday having been told that there were roadworks and so the journey to Wolong would take 6 hours. What they didn’t tell us was that about 3 hours would be spent at the side of the road waiting for the road works to finish for the day. So we set off at 12.30 and finally arrived at gone 7pm! Katie didn’t feel very well so it was a bit of a trial – too much chilli in the hotpot I think! But it was worth it because the last part of the journey was along a spectacular gorge and the next day we went to see the pandas at the Wolong Panda Research Centre. They have lots of pandas of all ages from a tiny pink one about the size of my hand in an incubator to some older ones who are part of the breeding progamme. The best ones were the younger ones who were kept in two big enclosures and were enjoying themselves climbing around on their climbing frames and rolling around with each other. They also chomped their way through vast quantities of bamboo and carrots while we were there. They make you laugh just looking at them. The breeding programme is apparently very successful and they are releasing some pandas into the wild.
We had wanted to carry on further west but the road is closed at the moment so we were told so we came back to Chengdu today and then caught another bus to Emei Shan. This is a monutainous area where there are lots of monasteries (Buddhist) where you can spend the night. So tomorrow we are setting off on a 3 day hike to the top (about 3000 meters)staying in monsteries along the way. The idea is to be at the top for sunrise on the second day.
All for now.

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