13 days in China - part 1: Sanxia (3 gorges), Xi'an (terracotta army)

Looking at what I have written so far I started to think about what I still wanted to write here and I came to realise that its simply not possible to describe all the impressions I had. For one there are far too many. Secondly they don't just stay in my mind all the time, but usually just pop up whenever they feel like it, when they get triggered by something. And thirdly, also if I just wrote a few of them (besides that it can be difficult putting it in words), the text would still get too long and most people won't even bother to read it.

Therefore I decided to just give a short account of my journey, with the most important impressions and leave the rest the pictures I took and give extensive comments on those. And if somebody is really interested we can sit down for a tea/hot chocolate/beer/etc (sorry, I don't do coffee) and I'll tell some of the stories. So here we go:

Sanxia, the 3 gorges
I took the overnight train from Guangzhou to Wuhan. As May 1 is the main travel day in China I didn't get a sleeping compartment anymore and had to take a seat (pic). I did sleep for some time, but somehow it wasn't that comfortable (guess why). Then from Wuhan I took a bus to Yichang where I got on the ship. The next two days and nights I spent going up and down the river, seeing some magnificent views.
On the last day we got off the ship where we had started and had the opportunity to look at the 3 gorges dam.
Generally I have to say that I really enjoyed the trip, though I was also a bit disappointed as I didn't realise beforehand how much the water had risen already and how much of the was therefore already lost.

sanxia - the three gorges

Xi'an & terracotta army (Wikipedia about Xi'an)
On the way to Xi'an I stayed in Wuhan for one day where I also saw a friend of mine. During that short day I just had a look at the yellow crane tower and got my things organised. Then I took another overnight train to Xi'an, this time with a sleeping compartment fortunately. After checking in, I just had a look around an then went to see the terracotta army, which is located about 1h from the center. It was quite nice to see, but unfortunately not as impressive as it seem to be on the pictures seen beforehand.
The rest of the day I spent walking around Xi'an and discovering a lot of small alleys, really enjoyable.
The next day I walked up the HuaShan (see next heading). The day after (Tuesday, May 8) I came back in the morning, went into town once more and then finally caught the train to go to Beijing.

Wuhan and Xi'an (terracotta army)

HuaShan - One of the 5 holy mountains
The HuaShan mountain is one of the 5 holy daoist mountains in China. It has 5 peaks and is incredible concerning the way the steps had been carved into the granite stone. It is located about 2 hours from Xi'an. Due to that it is a massive tourist attraction, though most people don't walk up, but rather take the cable car (Doppelmayr, Austrian made) and just walk the last 2h. Still, there also are quite a couple of people that walk up all the way and then stay the night in one of the various hostels to see the sunrise in the morning. Which is exactly what I did. Enjoy the pictures.

HuaShan

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