Sichuan Province (E)

I reached Panzhihua late afternoon after a long and tiring bus ride in the cockroach infested bus. Panzhihua is by far the ugliest city I’ve ever seen. The air is polluted and stinks like hell, industry and power plants define the area, streets & houses are in a state of decay. Luckily I was able to get a train ticket to leave this city the same evening and I treated myself with a ticket in the comfortable 4-bed soft sleeper compartment. After a good night’s sleep I reached Emei and transferred to a guesthouse on the foot of Emei Shan Mountain.


Emei Shan Mountain is one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains of China and pilgrimage paths lead all the way from approx 500 meters to the peak at over 3,000 meters above sea level. I teamed up with a Dutch guy and we set off to climb the thousands of stairs in thick mist and constant drizzle. After 7 hours of exhausting walking we reached Elephant bathing pool, a monastery which provides simple accommodation and food. The next morning we were enjoying blue sky and warming sunshine, the monastery sat a hundred meters above the sea of clouds and the panorama was spectacular. We fought our way through the army of hungry monkeys and reached the top of the mountain after a few more hours walking.


Walking back down would have taken one more day so we decided to take a bus back to Emei and another one to Chengdu, the provincial capital with over 13 million inhabitants. Marc left the next morning and I set off to explore the town on my own.
Later that day I met with Sini from Finland and Elsa & Jakob from Sweden who I met the week before in Lijiang. Sini and her boyfriend live in Chengdu and have all the local knowledge so we could take advantage of it. They took us to an excellent spicy dinner and we enjoyed Chengdu’s nightlife until the wee hours of the morning.


Visiting Chengdu would not be complete without seeing the Panda Breeding & Research Center. I visited early morning when they are usually most active. Most of the pandas were chilling or sleeping but a few were up eating bamboo and playing around.