Slowly up the Yangtze

Guilin is located in the area of China made famous by artists who come from al over the country to paint emblematic high domed karst limestone formations. Add in a couple of thickets of bamboo to the foreground and the inevitable mist swirling around the upper half of the tree-covered dome and you have the classic traditional Chinese watercolour. The downside is that the areas dramatic beauty is no secret and has longer been a tourist attraction - reflected in the exhorbitant prices charged to hapless visitors.

Then from Guilin it was on by a surprisingly comfortable 'hard sleeper' (it wasn't at all hard) train for 14 hours north to Wuhan. This is another multi-million person city that few outside of China have heard of - 8 million people to be (roughly) precise. Peter went of in a taxi to look at the centre. I, feeling jaded of amorphous big Chinese cities, lingered around in the hotel room, watched Kevin Costner being tough in 'Wyatt Earp' on cable TV and then eventually ventured forth a couple of hours later.

I was adopted by a local 14-year old boy (he looked at least 20, being about 5 foot 10 with a moustache and confidently articulate in his perfect English). We swung by his cousins flat, picked her up and proceeded onto the Yellow Crane Tower (too expensive to go in) and then onto the huge bridge over the Yangtze that connected to the city centre. In the smog-filled air, a gloomy grey sky arching above and an inhuman skyline of vast grey oncrete blocks, it looked like a vision of hell. We walked across the 110m high, 2km long bridge and got a bus back from the other side.

The next morning, it was a five hour bus ride along the Yangtze up to Yichang to find a boat ride upriver. That went smoothly and we were booked on for the next morning. So, then it was three days and three nights of cruising upriver. A very pleasant interlude. The first day of river trip included an excursion to see the Three Gorges Dam, that is now almost completed and has displaced 2 million people from their flooded homes. On the upside, the flood control provide should avoid a repeat of the one million deatsh from drowning that have happened from the Yangtze bursting its banks over the last few decades.

It was dripping rain and quite misty, but we got a blurry view of the concrete behemoth rearing 600 ft over us. Then our boat made the labourious, 3 hour journey up the series of 5 huge locks to the 500 km long reservoir above this dam - the largest in the world.

We passed through the flooded, but still dramatically beautiful Three Gorges and then we came to the upper Yangtze with its million-plus soul cities - disgustingly ugly concrete jungles all, belching factory chimneys and non-stop coal barges sending fuel downriver to the energy-hungry coast.

Our cruise ended at the city of Chongqing. You've never heard of the place? What?! How can you not have heard of the biggest city in the world - 30 million people!! More gigantic concrete apartment blocks and giant bridges spanning the Yangtze. Really, China has some very beautiful countryside, but the big cities have all frightened me in their look of despair. The surprising thing is that the inhabitants seem unaffected by their surroundings and they are frequently very friendly and helpful.

So, tomorrow we're off to a reserve to hopefully see some Giant Pandas

All for now