Ascending Tianmen Today is our first day exploring the mountains in this part of China, starting with Tianmen.  The hotel advised that if it isn’t busy, one can normally turn up for the cable car before the timeslot that has been booked. We grabbed a disappointing breakfast around 0645 a couple of doors away from […]

Leaving Changsha Today is a somewhat fragmented day where we can’t afford to have anything go wrong.  And fortunately nothing did.  In short, we move from Changsha to Zhangjiajie city where we would then do a dinner excursion to Furong ancient town, all by bullet train. I chose to have breakfast alone in my room […]

Orange Island Changsha was meant to be a stop simply it was along the way.  The main sight was Orange Island and even then, it was more iconic rather than a must-see.  I did want to go to Dufu Pavilion if convenient but wasn’t keen on Mount Yuelu as we had many mountains ahead on […]

Bullet train to Changsha Today we move on to Changsha by bullet train at 1126.  With the station far away, we started around 0800 with breakfast at last night’s wonton shop.  We had specially made an arrangement for them to open somewhat earlier for us. We took two separate cars to Wuhan station where everything […]

Yellow Crane Pagoda E & BW had arrived late last night and despite the late night arrival, they were ready at 0830 to begin the day with breakfast at Hubu Alley before heading to Yellow Crane Pagoda. BW is fluent in Mandarin and can read.  Until now, I was the best Mandarin speaker amongst us […]

Qingchuan Pavilion With my bodyclock on New Zealand time, I woke at 0540, lazed around before having breakfast of muesli and coffee (from the machine in the lobby). I arranged to meet KL & M at 0900 downstairs before going out to explore Wuhan.  First up, we took a car to Qingchuan Pavilion.  There we […]

Continuing to Wuhan On the flight from Auckland to Haikou, I had about 4h30 sleep then sat with my eyes closed for a further 1h30.  We landed about an hour earlier than the scheduled time of 0500. Immigration at Haikou was super-fast.  KL & M had missed the arrival cards on the plane as they […]

Train to Urumqi I walked to Hami’s railway station around 0900 after breakfast in my room.  I didn’t have to wait long before the queues formed for boarding the train to Urumqi. Departing at 1010, time went quickly as I attended to online chores on my phone.  I chose to arrive at Urumqi South where […]