See What Tim Is Doing: The fresh air I needed – Jiuzhaigou (July 29

This was the China I was expecting. Within a couple hours out of the city, we were greeted with huge rolling mountains and fresh water rivers. Finally out of the grey smoggy cities. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the cities but I was ready for some fresh air.

The bus ride unfortunately wasn’t as easy going as the previous train trip. I was the only English speaking person on the bus, which meant everybody looked at me every time the bus stopped and I got off, and also I was jammed into the back right hand seat with next to no leg room. It was a fun 10-hour ride…

Blue skies, rolling green mountains, Tibetan prayer flags and the honking of taxi horns greeted me as I stepped off the bus. This was what I was looking for (minus the horns). It was already 7pm so I jumped in a cab, found my hostel (which was an amazing Tibetan style house. All wood, colourful, characteristic and complete with luxurious squat toilets) and sat down with a beer to plan my next day. While I was planning my day I met a couple who were two of the other 5 guests at the hostel and turned out we were in the same room, so we chatted and got on well and decided we would all head to the national park together in the morning.

630am rolls around and we poke our heads out the window…rain. Not happy. So went back to bed and thought we’ll sleep in and go tomorrow. After another few hours sleep we got eat breakfast and the sun comes out and I decide I am still going up (the park entrance is around £30, so getting there and only spending 6 hours in there may of seemed like a waste to some, but the sun was shining and I wasn’t going to miss it). Ramona and Craig decided to join and we ventured into the Jiuzhaigou National Park.

The Jiuzhaigou National Park is UNESCO listed and it deserves it. The park is home to some amazing waterfalls and easily the bluest water I have ever seen. The park itself is massive, covering approximately 720km² and also has several Tibetan villages inside the park. They say you can spend two days inside here and I don’t doubt that you could. From the park entrance to the top of the paths it is close to 30kms, so that’s a lot of walking to cover in a day.

We spent the whole day walking and taking photos, barely stopping for food or water to toilet breaks as we wanted to cram as much of the park in as possible while the weather was still shining. And that we did, although we didn’t exactly get out of the park at 6pm like we were supposed to, but ended up walking three quarters of the way back down the mountain as the buses had finished and we missed them. It wasn’t until we met a sweet Tibetan monk, who shared his extremely tasty sweets with us, and he let us know that a bus would be coming in twenty minutes that would take us to the entrance to the park. So we sat by the road with the monks, took some photos of them, enjoyed the beautiful scenery, with a village at the base of the mountain to our left, and then one of Jiuzhaigou’s many blue lakes to our right, it really was stunning. But the bus turned up and we were whisked back to our hostel and ready for some dinner.

One of the staff members walked us down to a local restaurant, read the menu out to us (as it was all Chinese) and took our order, if it wasn’t for him who knows what we would’ve ended up with. The food we did end up with was amazing. Plates of vegetables, corn, eggplant/aubergine, peppers, beans, some weird stuff that tastes good but we still don’t know what it was. Then followed a big bowl of chilli beef and tofu and then the final icing on the cake was a whole fish, which was divine! It would have to have been the best tasting fish I have had in a very long time, possibly ever! I don’t know how to describe it except amazing! We got through just about all the food (the fist was nothing but bones) and left with full bellies and tired legs from miles and miles of walking.

The next day the plan was horse riding in the mountains, as we had seen majority of the park and couldn’t justify spending another £30 to see the little bits we didn’t see the day before. Again though we woke to some pretty sub standard weather, cold and rain. So of course we slept in.

After lunch the weather cleared a bit and the three of us ended up going horse riding with some Chinese who were staying at the hostel and also a few of the staff from the hostel. It was pretty amazing.

We arrived after a ten-minute drive up a dirt road and waiting for us were the guys in charge of the horses, and then some really cute old Tibetan folk who looked like they’d never seen a white person before. They were so sweet though. They were only too happy to pose for photos with us and keen to see how they scrubbed up in the photos, and then ask for more photos to be taken. They really were beautiful, friendly people with faces that just had so much character.

So the photo shoot with the elders was done and we were given our horses and ready to go riding.

We rode for a couple of hours and saw some breath taking views of the mountains and the city below, as well as all the trees and greenery around us on the ride. We stopped off at an old religious shrine in the middle of the bush that was pretty special, and saw some extremely large, old trees that were apparently important to the Tibetan folk. It was a really fun little outing. Meeting some locals who had lived there their whole lives, and some who were not much older then us, seeing some untouched scenery and also learning a little more about the Tibetan way of life.

We decided to cap off our day with a trip to a Chinese/Tibetan Opera in the night time. At first I thought mmm I really am not into opera, but I am so glad I went. Bright colours, crazy costumes and some really spectacular dancing (although some of it was a little weird) and not much opera style singing were on show. I would’ve classed it more as a musical then an opera, but that’s besides the point, it was an amazing show and it topped of a good few days in Jiuzhaigou.

Now for another 10-hour bus ride back to Chengdu for a couple of days before heading to Guilin and Yangshou. My time in China really is flying by!