September 29, 2016
Dammed if You Do, Dammed if You Don’t.
Yichang is a relatively small provincial city (a ‘prefecture-level city’) in the Hubei province with a population of just over four million, but it’s several times larger than London! It’s famous mostly for its Three Gorges Dam, which I told you about yesterday. The view of it from my hotel room looked like this:
And here’s the view from the other side of the hotel:
And a few more panoramic pics taken from the plane. I apologize for their quality; they were taken through a dirty plane window, plus, the air in China is hardly the world’s cleanest and clearest. Plus there’s the climate: humid, with constant cloud up above – so in the pics it’s not industrial smog. Still, in some places transportation/industrial foulness gets added as a bonus.
All around the city it’s endless agricultural rural scenes dotted with the odd bit of industry, and a bit further – mountains, cliffs, rivers and reservoirs. And all together it’s a very pretty sight indeed; rather – I guess it would have been a very pretty sight if not for the perma-fog cloaking everything; and if only they’d wash plane windows once a blue moon…
Oh my Greek! Cooler than the Meteora!
So many tunnels cut through the mountains for both railroads and highways. Here, for example, I’ve marked a few out:
So what fun stuff was there?…
Well there was this here new road. Looks perfect. Only problem: it goes from nowhere to nowhere. Wow – now that’s some seriously long-sighted town-planning: make the roads before the residential buildings. Only in China :). The signposts are even installed already!
Gezhouba Dam. Nothing compared with the Three Gorges, but still impressive:
And here’s another dam not far from the city – Geheyan Dam. More like Wey-hey Dam by the looks of it set in the surrounding mountainous landscape. It appeared to be high, but turned out to be 25 meters shorter than the Three Gorges!
The scenery here is of course stunning. For example, here how it all looks from down on the ground:
A bungee-jump again. They seem to be following me around…
And this is the FangWeng restaurant – a local attraction built into the cliff face:
Very tasty tuck is served here, including local specialties. Like this I’m about to consume. Can you guess what it is?…
Just in case – from the other side:
And what about this… item? What you reckon?…
All righty. That’s another quick China trip done and dusted.
The things I missed this time, and which are thus saved for my next China mission: Tiger Leaping Gorge and the Three Parallel Rivers. Judging by the photos: mandatorily must-see…
