After an exhausting bus ride, I teamed up with the only foreigner on the bus (a japanese guy) to attempt walking to a hostel from his guidebook. The heat was quite a shock, after the cool highlands of the south, chengdu did not have the high altitude to protect from the heat, the climate reminded me of perth in summer – except with a permanent thick smog cloud.
The hostel was large but impressive. Last time I was in chengdu it was the cold off-season, I paid $1/night for a dorm room, this time around I paid $6 (same fee for all chengdu hostels) during the peak season – regardless of seasons the growth rate of china is immense, I noticed that everything was much more expensive than 3 years ago, in general.
Highlights of chengdu were:
– Being hand fed sheep brain during a night of hot-pot (gas stove inside the table, huge pot on the top for boiling… anything, which we do ourselves). I think the young girl who was hand feeding us really wants to be a mother. The sheep brain was really bad, mushy in texture, pretty much as bad as it looks.
– My other shoe base fell apart, only days after I got the other one repaired in lijiang. I managed to get it re-stitched the same as the other one for exactly the same price… and using the exact same tools…. the guy looked pretty similar too… :O
– I bought a 1 person tent! for $40, yet to be used, better be worth it for that price
The hostel that I stayed in was the cental point for foreigners to find a group of backpackers to share the massive cost of tours and permits to tibet, which averaged at ~$500 per person. Some people were there for weeks trying to find enough people to team up with, else the fee would be even more. Restrictions which the chinese goverment only limit to foreigners, I’m sure they will never change this rule considering how much money they seem to be making off it, unfortunately the more people heading out there would just confirm that they have the correct system in place. Once in tibet, foreigners in the tours are unable to venture out on their own and must say in the scheduled towns and hotels/hostel. The other alternative, which I chose, is to head a little further west to the isolated and scattered tibetian villages inside the same provence.
I teamed up with a german girl and two Israelis (a note: there are shitloads of Israeli tourists in china, most head there straight after their stint of compulsory army) and we decided to head to a mountain range known as the 4 girls (or Siguniang Shan). 10hrs drive and 300kms later and we arrived in a very tiny and isolated tibetian village, my general friendly and random ‘nihow’ (hello in chinese) is actually ignored by the locals in defiance of the chinese occupation, I picked up a couple of tibetian words to remain nice and randomly friendly once again. It was a great town, but extremely cold.
We all planned on hiking to the summit of the first peak, which would have taken us to almost 4.5km above sea level. The first day we took a small day trek through the mountain valley, arriving in the end at a huge clearing of buffalo with epic mountains surrounding the area. Unfortunately the next day, which we planned to start our climb to the summit, was struck with bad weather. This was not all bad, as it didnt matter how isolated we were, there was still a hefty fee to climb and a chinese guide had to go with us adding additional fees which would total to ~$60 – the bad weather was a sign that the spontaneous decisions I was making were not in the good interests of the overall project. The israeli guy decided to stick around for a few days for the weather to clear, the israeli girl headed further west into the border of tibet; and I headed back to chengdu with the german girl, we ended up being great travel companions for the rest of china.
On the drive back to chengdu we passed over a different mountain range and through snow covered areas, my excited talking triggered the driver to stop for a while so I could get out and take photos; unfortunately not enough snow to roll around in like a crazy person, though. For the last leg of the drive we went through a tunnel in which we waited 30min before being allowed to pass through… at the end of the tunnel I understood why. We witnessed the blatant devastation of the 2008 earthquake, the chinese government left the damaged area untouched and moved the townsfolk to different areas of china, rebuilding new towns for them. The damage was so huge, massive powerlines were horizontal, the raging river in the middle of the mountain ravine was actually flowing over what used to be the old highway, scattered in parts with halves of houses and crushed cars. Unfortunately the makeshift dirt road carved into the side of a mountain was so bumpy that I couldn’t capture many photos.
Upon arriving back in chengdu, I purchased a smartphone for $150 (after reading a few reviews and wiping the chinese firmware, replacing it with a much faster and less completely-chinese-characters android derivative) and also fixed up the same one for my german buddy. Shortly after that we took a bus to the highly touristy but truely amazing and beautiful blue lakes and mountains of Jiuzhaigou.
well, as it turns out, I seem to be spamming people with posts instead of trying to strip everything down to a couple of posts – sorry :(
The 5000 Project 
No need to apologise, these posts don’t take long to read and it gives more of a narrative feel to the whole thing, rather than what you’d find in a travel guide :)
I agree with Ant. Don’t apologise. Write more – you will be glad you did, later in life.
The growth rate in China IS immense, it really has to be seen to conceptualise… The sheer logistics of the operations are staggering let alone the resource and human requirements for the expansion they’re going through.
That earthquake sounds intense. Would have been pretty incredible to see the ruins.