We’re a long way from the sea, 1200 air miles from Dalian, in fact. Our flight from Tianjin Airport (near Beijing) to Chengdu took three and a half hours, marginally survivable for me in a middle seat near the rear of the aircraft. This is the price one pays for journeys such as ours and one we’ll likely pay three times more before our final in-country stop in Beijing.
We’re in a group that is participating in the Chengdu-Lhasa-Xian extension to be followed by the Beijing extension to the extension. None in our group was with us in Mongolia, so by my awesome powers of deduction, Frances and I are absolutely the only ones associated with this Viking trip to sign on for the full monthlong experience. The irony is that we are also the only ones getting along (barely) with carry-on luggage only. We used the free laundry service on board the Yi Dun three times, but that won’t be an option these next eleven days. (As it turns out, it is still more convenient to check the carry-ons than not.) AirTags keep us confident that the bags are making the trips, probably with as much space as we have in steerage. (I’m too harsh. Meals and beverages are served by efficient flight attendants and, so far, the occupants in the seats in front of us have minimized the seat back lean—as we have for those behind us.)
Our leader for the extension, Richard (his English name—all the guides have one), is an experienced guide and speaks relatively clear English, for which I am grateful. I only miss half of what he says. Hopefully, Frances hears the rest, but is as unable to retain the information as am I. So far, we haven’t been left behind.
We were kicked off the Yi Dun as scheduled at 8:30 a.m., were driven the hour and a half to the Tianjin airport, survived the long flight to Chengdu and arrived at the city’s new airport. Long corridors, four escalators, and a train may have been the longest transit distance ever in an airport. Another 90 minutes through chock-a-block traffic to our hotel finally delivered us there in time for a rushed twenty-five minute dinner before we reboarded buses to attend the Sichuan Opera. It’s a good thing the opera was a wonderful experience or we may not have survived the evening without falling into a coma.
If we have a regret it is not having more time to enjoy our hotel, the St. Regis. Because the next morning we were to be on the bus again by 7:45, we had only a few awake hours to luxuriate in the room.
The dinner and breakfast offerings in the hotel matched the rest of our experience. I would love to have had another hour to over-eat.
Chengdu is a city of 21.5 million and the capital of Sichuan Provence, known for its moderately spicy food. (Go to Hunan province for the full fire.) A few decades ago, the population moved about town on bikes, as did all of China. Now? There are 6 million cars registered in Chengdu. I believe most of them were on the highways our bus was attempting to transit.
On to the opera.
So why did we stop in Chengdu for one night. It was not to see the opera, as fun as that was. It was to visit the Panda Base Chengdu, the largest and most populated panda nursery, breeding and captive dwelling place in China (which means in the world, of course) for both giant pandas and the unrelated but equally cute and fuzzy (but smaller) red pandas. We got the desired panda fix all visitors seek. Time for a slug of panda photos.
Now for the pandas, starting with the red pandas.
On to the giant pandas. We saw about a dozen of them, including some older cubs.
From Panda Base we were bused to lunch (a lazy susan for tables of nine affair) and then bused to Chengdu’s older (and closer) airport for our flight to Lhasa, Tibet. China airport security is the strictest and most thorough since Egypt and flying to Tibet required a pseudo-visa as rigidly enforced as the China visa itself.
I don’t know when this and following blog postings will be published. I’ve only been able to get full internet access via cellular. (Virtually nothing was accessible via the hotel WiFi and I would lose even nominal service if I tried to invoke VPN.) And by a miscalculation on my part I cannot hotspot our iPads to the phone. (Maybe I’ll bore you with that explanation in a future post.)
So, as I write this note, we’re on our way to Tibet, the country, er, autonomous region, the roof of the world!
(We’re in Tibet and once again, no internet access through the hotel wifi. Our contact with the rest of the world is via my iPhone cellular and VPN. If this note is attached to the posting it’s because I successfully completed a process designed in the third ring of hell: I take my photos on the iPhone and later airdrop them to the iPad. I slightly edit them (I can’t take a level picture) then use a collage maker to reduce their file size. I’d never get them uploaded otherwise. I compose the written part using offline Notes. I then airdrop all the collages and text back to the iPhone, then log into posthaven for the uploads. Sound tedious? Worse than that as I have to do final edits in the iPhone, where my fat fingers attempt to hit one-eight inch square letters on the iPhone keyboard. Oh, forget the editing. I’m not very good at it anyway. But you got this post, at least I hope so.)
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