Part 8

Day 10: Lijiang

This morning, we have been able to visit the old city of Lijiang, where we spent the night. It is inscribed on the World Heritage list and it deserves it. The flip side, many tourists, all Chinese, we are still to see our first caucasian, not that we are realy interested. I do not describe the city too long on a damged keyboard set for Chinese typing. We hit the road for Shangrila, Dege etc.. with our first sampling of real mountain.

In Yunan, along the road to Tibet

Part 7

The last few days have been spent driving. Leaving early, arriving late. I explain.
There are two routes to go to Tibet from Sichuan. The North and the South routes. We were supposed to take the South route. However both had been severely damaged during the 2008 earthquake. The were to be reopen at the time of our journey; the were not. We had to go through Yunnan, meaning going South then back North along the Burmese border. This is a much longer route, but our timing is still the same which explain why we are driving a lot. The highways are very good, sometimes. Sometimes they are full of pot holes, or rather large steps and sometimes there is only one lane for both directions trafic. That creates huge jams that can iddle the cars for hours. Our 2CH are pretty good for navigating between the trucks and we arrive at the hotel around 10. 30 pm however the larger support vans get stuck and they arrived yesterday at 5.30 am for a departure at 7.30. Hard life. However the roads are spectacular, green valley covered by paddy rice or maize being cultivated in terraces. Small villages with white houses and black roofs, buffalos, goats and mules, that we may meet on the road too.
The logging cannot be better, either international standard, while their name may be misleading, the last one was called “Rong Impression Hotel”, or old Chinese mansions that would make Holywood jealous. It is not easy to use internet because we arrive too late or we are very tired or both. I still cannot connect to the blog and I cannot upload, someday I will and I will update all the blogs with pictures, I took hundreds already and we are not yet in the Himalaya.

Part 6

Still unable to connect directly to the blog, my daughter takes care of posting my emails. Unable to upload pictures, I may be able to do so int he future.Today day 4. Xian, Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. If was a driving day, about 14 hours including the stops. So no much to report ecept for the gas stations. In itself it is a story. They are huge, they accomodate score of 20-wheelers. There is a restaurant, and of course toilets. We use the restaurants to have a hot soup. Basicaley it consists in dried noodles and dried kind of meet. You add hot water and you have a soup. They are very good and sometimes very hot since there is no way to understand what is written on the label. No one speak English, let alone French. So no communication except smiles. The truck drivers are very nice, they look at our cars which look like toys as compared to their truck and have alway a grin on their face. We explain that we are going to Tibet and their grin become larger. When they see our car engine, their grin becomes a laugh. The toilet must be described. They can host 100's people, they come in all kind of shapes, sometimes very creative, with efficiency in mind. No paper, no door but usualy very clean. if I had time I would create a catalog of them. Time is what we lack the most, we arrive late at hotel where a banquet is awaiting us with the city official, we go to bed late and wake up very early (6am this morning, 5am tomorrw). So it is hard to squease an email.

Part 5

Day two: After a short night in an historical hotel inside the walled city of Pingyao on a wooden bed, feeling like being in the “Red Lantern”, we thought we were going to visit the city. Not so, first we had to go through the welcome of the Mayor and the TV routine. Finally we went in the narrow streets and the houses that had been undisturbed for centuries, some dating back to the Ming Dynasty. Extraordinary travel in time.
Then we hit the highway to reach Xian along a long road with heavy traffic. Highway driving is quite simple in China, you do anything at anytime to gain some distance. We learnt fast. Example: we cut off a police car while passing a group of trucks from the right emergency stop lane. In Texas we would have gone to jail for the rest of our life. Here, not so, you pass or you get passed, no aggressiveness, no insult, you just keep moving. By the way the roads are filled with trucks carrying anything you may think of, in quantity. There are no 18-wheelers, rather 20 or 22-wheelers. The industry activity is palpable, besides the trucks, you may see road workers everywhere and cranes filling the horizon. If there is a crisis, we cannot see any clue of it from our vantage. Tomorrow no driving, we are going to visit Xian and among other the Terracotta Warriors. I have no time to upload pictures, we are getting to the hotel too late and leaving too early in the morning Love Dad

We haved safely arrived! Part 3

We arrived safely in Beijing, eventless trip. We had a Peking duck for our first meal. Yummy. Today we spent time in the sunday flea market and in Tien Amen place. I have not been able to access my blog for unknown reason. I will keep trying. Hope everything is fine in France LoveDad

FIRST DAY OF THE JOURNEY Part 4

First day of the journey: We finally arrived in Pingyao around midnight. It is the most preserved walled city in China that had never been destroyed or damaged. To reach it was a serious Challenge. But let start at the beginning. The day started with a bang, let me explain.
On October 1st, it will be the 60th anniversary of the People Republic of China. Our trip to Tibet is one of the rare if not the first car raid in this region. So the Chinese Government has decided to consider this raid as part of all the celebrations for this anniversary. So for our departure we had representatives from the City of Beijing, the French Embassy etc… and of course the media. Unexpectedly, Phoenix TV that is nationally distributed in the PRC decided to join our group as far as Tibet with six 4x4 vans to cover this event live. To make it more exiting, they added in the group six contestants for Miss TV China pageant. I love this trip. So we left Beijing for a long to eventless highway trip to Pingyao. We started as a group convoy and went through the six consecutive loops that circle Beijing. Of course the traffic is massive and all the cars got separated, then the highway was cut off from times to times and we found our self in the countryside without any idea where we were. Obviously we had no way to communicate with the people we could find and we had to seek the help of three consecutive police cars to lead us to the right path. (One took us the opposite way). Night came and it was even more difficult to navigate. That was the easiest stage; I wonder what going to be next. Love Dad

Departure Tomorrow Part 2

Departure tomorrow. Wake up times 4 a.m., quite early to start a journey. Flight to Toronto, then connection to Beijing, if everything goes according to schedule, the trip will last 20 hours, and all of this on a jet, imagine if we were already in our 2CV.