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Rainy Zhenyuan

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We are at our penultimate night stop in China. After nearly a month of incredible sights and sounds, tastes and sensations, faces and places, we are nearly through. Time does not allow a full essay, which I will contemplate over the next couple of days. Suffice it to say we have all been impressed by the sheer scale of the ambition, the organisational skill behind the massive civil engineering projects, and the delightful people themselves. Enough for now. Today started with the prospect of rain, but it held off until the last hour or so — and then, blimey, it let go. We came through a tunnel, leaving behind cultivation akin to Europe, and on the other side it suddenly became tropical: warm air, lush vegetation, and an ethnic type we had not yet seen — very like the Thais (which, to be fair, is not so far now). Eric organised for us a place to change the oil in all four cars, which was done with great charm and efficiency by the lovely Christopher Evans (well, for Ham and me), while Ni...
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(Salvador) Dali

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Rest day today. Rain stopped play yesterday, which meant what we had planned then was carried over to today: golf lost out in favour of greasing and cleaning (carburettors and clothes). In fact it poured with rain most of today, so Nigel and I found an underground car park to fettle whilst the others went for a walk and found some interesting flora.  We had a great lunch of beautifully presented noodles, to which we added some chilli.  Tonight we are waiting, with much anticipation, for a whole chicken cooked by Nellie and Chris. We have invited Eric to join us in our Airbnb, because he has never seen a whole cooked chicken. The style here, as with other Asian countries, is to smash the chicken to pieces, bone and all and westerners never know how to extract the meat using chopsticks and end up chewing the bone as well. Ugh.  This is called Bishop balls
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Welcome to China

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  We had thought we were through with the close attention of Plod since leaving Uyghur country, but having now crossed another provincial border—from Sichuan into Yunnan—we find there are a few more candidates for our little black book. At an ETC (electronic traffic control)—think  péage —the nice lady in the booth took rather a long time to process us (our car number plates do not register on the system), drawing the attention of a bluebottle who sauntered over to us with that special swagger some of them have. It remains a mystery how any of them think we have got this far into China (5,500 km since the border) without having the proper papers. But there we were, being given the full runaround, as if we had somehow escaped the ever-present and watchful eyes of the apparatus. Enough said before the compliance officer (or worse) complains. It was a short drive to Dali (Grandpa Steve likes to know), and on the way we visited a properly old city called Jinchuan, with reasonably ...
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Wrong turn (again)

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Having descended to 2,000m and arrived in the heat of the day yesterday, we all prepared for a warm day today. Ham was the most courageous and set off dressed for the beach. Others were a little more circumspect and, thankfully, donned a coat and a jumper — but even they complained of the cool air. Amendments were made, though not before we had lost Nigel and Tobs, so three of us trundled along through scenery that, frankly, we have become rather used to but still admire and gawp at. We passed a massive lake that was not on the map. We could see it from high above, but no amount of zooming in on any map type we had would show it. Most strange, we thought. When we reached it, we realised it was hardly deep, and there were wooden drying structures covered with hay or straw. Mr AI informs me these are called “tshog-khang”, or simply drying frames — used to keep harvested grain or straw off the damp ground and allow the mountain air to circulate. The raised, tripod-style legs help protect ...
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Top day (hyperbole, Ed)

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After a subdued dinner last night (see explanation in previous post), we all slept fitfully. It’s the altitude, see —self-evidently nothing to do with alcoholic intake, because there wasn’t much of that. Breakfast was as Oriental as we were promised. The mushroom was, in fact, a jam-filled dumpling. We set off, and blimey, it was bitterly cold. Lessons not learnt, we all stopped to add more layers, but the climb to another record-breaking 4,890m yielded a truly wonderful scene of the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. In my imagination, a plateau is sort of where you get to when you’ve stopped rising—probably a bit bland, then. Oh no! This plateau deserves capitalisation. This Plateau was vast and rock-strewn; skyline-grabbing mountains surrounding an eerie arena of mini lakes (somewhat like a Hebridean loch), with boulders as big as a house. In good Chinese fashion, the road was super-smooth tarmac, and we were the only cars there (this is not actually true, but for rhetorical purpo...
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Best day so far - part 2

  Best day so far- part 2 I copy below a message I sent on the family WhatsApp group. It tells the story.  Hi Kids. Just to let you know, I will be reporting in tonight’s blog a double incident that occurred to your mother and me today.  Result: all is fine, no animals were hurt in this production etc What happened: background first; we filled up with petrol at the start of the day. My car will normally do 250kms but with lots of climbing big mountains, I would expect to lose 10%, so good for 225kms.  We planned to fill up at 190kms.  Just before the petrol station, we entered a long tunnel (2.5km) and the unmistakable sensation of running out of fuel occurred. By some miracle (don’t believe in miracles) we limped into an emergency cutting in the tunnel.  Phew! We had a jerry can out in no time and poured it into the tank double quick time, in the somewhat scary situation we found ourselves in. Lorries the size of, well, lorries hurtled past. I have very br...
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Best Day So Far, Part 1

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Two blogs today: both stories being somewhat different. The day started early — at midnight, to be precise — when the hotel telephone rang in our bedroom. It is never good news to be woken by a telephone in the night, and whilst stumbling around, trying to work out what that noise was and then wondering where the blasted thing was, I woke with a start. Adrenaline pumping, I picked up. A Chinese voice asked what my room number was. Was this some honeypot scheme drawn up by the MSS (the equivalent of MI6), and was I being asked if I wanted something quite naughty? I was about to reply that I am happily married, thank you — and less important, but still relevant in the circumstances, my wife was in bed with me! Then came a voice I recognised. Ham! “What the blazes?” I said. He had lost his room key and couldn’t remember which room was his, so he instructed the poor receptionist to call every room for the  gweilos  until one didn’t answer! In the morning, I was informed by Nigel t...
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