Cruising the Yangtze

Having left the dizzy and neon filled heights of Shanghai we travelled down by plane to Chongqing perched high up on the banks of the Yangtze river. We met up with Simon, one of our fellow trans-siberian travellers and after spending a day exploring the city we booked our trip down the river towards Yichang, Guilin and beyond.

After getting off to a slightly shaky start after the travel agent claiming we would be picked up from our hotel and taken down to our boat then led us with all our bags to a public bus stop. The bus then stopped in the middle of the city and we were ushered off the bus by the slightly embarrased travel agent who then led us down several more streets, our bags getting heavier and heavier then only to communicate to us that it 'wasn't very far to the docks'! We decided we'd had enough and hailed a cab to the dock and it turned out that the purported 'short walk' would have been at 20 minute slog down the hill! Once we safely made it to the river we thought it couldn't get much sillier, but then she didn't know which boat we were due to board....and so it went on!

Once finally aboard our ageing yet seaworthy Chinese tourist cruise boat we settled in to our comfortable 2nd class cabin complete with toilet and shower ('heads' for the yachties) we began our journey downstream. Despite the next morning being on the chilly side we ventured out onto the decks (we were the only people crazy enough to be outside in the weather - obviously still hardened from Siberia!) to take in the the amazing scenery. This cruise was all a huge contrast to the urban areas we had so far encountered. Small villages lined the river, with only the occasional cow and farmer to be seen for miles. On the river we encountered only a few tankers and local fishing boats during the first morning - all very tranquil!

One of the most bizarre features along the river were numerous signs marking the water level the river will reach after the completion of three gorges dam. The dam is due to be finished withing the next year or so and it will make a huge difference to the landscape we travelled through with many thousands of people being made homeless and with a great deal of archaelogical and evironmental damage to follow - it is also strange to think that the cruise we were on will no longer run once the dam is completed. It's tragic, and a classic example of communist might - the most important engineering feat of our time etc etc...

The first higlight of the cruise came at around 6am on the second day. Bleary eyed we ventured out onto the windswept foredeck to witness the hugely impressive Qutang Gorge. The scale of this geological phenomenon dwarfed our boat and it was an amazing sight to behold. Once we passed through the Gorge we arrived at a small riverside town to disembark from our cruise boat onto a smaller ferry for the lesser Three Gorges trip. Again we were the only people insane enough to venture out onto the deck to get a full view of the jawdroppingly spectacular gorges for the whole tour and despite the rain it was an awesome sight as we explored the many narrow passages of the area.

Having only booked our small ferry trip on board our cruise boat the same day, we had joined a chinese tour group and throughout the lesser Three Gorges tour we were subjected to the loudest tour guide commentary (in Chinese) I have ever heard - complete with singing, an award ceremony for certain members of the group and a book auction at the end - all received with rapturous applause by the Chinese contingent while we looked on with bemused smiles not having understood a word of what was going on - a surreal twist to the day!

Back on board, we continued through the Wu Gorge - even bigger than the Qutang Gorge, it looked very impressive through the mist, but unfortunately it was raining hard and we could only venture on deck for a matter of minutes. Grem watched from behind glass as Simon and I got soaked through taking the photographs...

Further down riverwe arrived at the Three Gorges Dam itself - unfortunately at 8.30pm, meaning that we were cloaked in darkness but were assured that the dam would be lit up enough for us to see. To fufill our curiosity about this beast of a project we again joined a Chinese tour group which visited the dam up close by bus. The guide was not wrong about it being lit up and it certainly puts the St Saviour's reservoir dam into perspective! The tour was scheduled to last until midnight and after having visited two viewing spots and a visitor centre dedicated to the Dam we were a little confused as it was only 10pm. Our tour bus then whisked us away to a huge Sturgeon Aquarium which not only held the fish in varying sizes in tanks, as you would expect in a regular aquarium, but also sold them tinned, in chunks, dried, in packets or in many other formats in the shop at the end!

The best bit was yet to come as we were led out of the Aquarium towards a showground for the final part of the tour. We were treated to 'The War Horse Battle Show' which consisted of a dozen guys dressed in Ghengis Khan outfits (yes, I'd thought we'd left Mongolia too) with flags and swords riding horses around an arena acting out what we can only imagine was a famous Chinese military victory - complete with booming Chinese commentary and hilarious sound effects! Brilliant! What made it more strange was that it was 11pm - long after the aquarium and arena should have been open and in the thousand person showground we were the only tour group, consisting of a mere 30 or 40 people.

Doing anything else after this surreal event would only have been disappointing so we went back to the boat to finish our journey to Yichang sleeping safe in the knowledge that we had seen a mighty big dam, met the best fish in town and had witnessed the pinnacle of Chinese tourist historical reanactments - what an adventure!