First week of October is China's big national day celebration. It's a great little break after settling in and working in China. Last year, I was able to travel with my sister to Southern Sichuan and had one of the best trips ever. Sichuan, the fourth most populated province in China with a population about 87 millions, has a vast land area of 485, 000 km squared, ranking the fifth of all the provinces in China. The province where I live, Chongqing used to belong to Sichuan until the Chinese government designated it as a direct-controlled municipalities along with Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai.
From the district, Yongchuan where I live in Chongqing (there are 19 districts in total), it takes about 4 hours to get to the capital of Sichuan, Chengdu. Personally, I like Chengdu much more than Chongqing, as it's much well planned in terms of public transportation, city structure, and that it is foreigner-friendly (many travellers go there as a jump off point to Tibet).
Going back to planning for the October trip this year, I have had difficulties deciding where to go as there are just too many wonderful places to visit and explore in China. I just enjoy exploring the majestic scenery and meeting its warm, friendly people. The other choices that I have are: Yunnan and Inner Mongolia. But at the end, I was sold to go to Northern Sichuan.
The trip is composed of two parts mainly:
-Songpan + Ruoergai/Tangke + Langmusi
-Huanglong + Jiuzhaigou
I was pretty much sold when I saw pictures of Tangke and later had one of most wonderful and unexpected trekking experience in Langmusi. With the second part of the trip, I have had some reservation about it initially (as they are one of the most well-known tourist attractions in China) but I found that I did enjoy it as well.
Additionally, I was planning to go by myself as my sister couldn't join me this year. But at the very last minute, my colleague, Linda has decided to join me. Without her, I don't think I would have been able to trek 8 hours at Langmusi and had this epic trip! Linda has named us the Warrior Women! My other UBC classmate, Jenny who works in another city, was able to join us in the second part of the trip and we had a good time together.
In all, it was a very well-planned trip that I was quite proud about it. Everything went according to plan and it was under decent budget about 3500 RMB. We travelled through beautiful landscape, met great locals and travellers alike, had good old hearty Sichuan cuisine, saw great wild/nomad life (yaks, goats, eagles), had epic hikes -- it was just simply wonderful!
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