The mighty mountain of Huangshan is another of the five sacred mountains like Tai Shan (see previous blog) created by the disintegrating body of Pan Gu. It is famed for its beauty and rightly so, for the views from the summit area are spectacular. The granite peaks of the mountain jut into the sky like […]
Archive | April, 2010
Nanjing: China’s ancient capital
Nanjing is a city that in Chinese means Southern Capital. It has been the country’s capital on several occasions over the years, the most recent finishing after the Second World War in 1949. It is one of China’s more pleasant and prosperous cities with wide, tree lined boulevards, chic apartment blocks and mile high towers, […]
Xi’An: City of surprises
Xi’An is a city of the unexpected. Nothing was quite how we imagined it would be. The historic city still has its ancient walls intact, The Terracotta Warriors seemed decimated, the Muslim Quarter complete with mosque was a complete surprise, we hadn’t expected to find pandas nearby and the smog was of epic proportions. After […]
Gateway to heaven
The mountain of Tai Shan is shrouded in mist, dominating the city of Tai An that is home to 800,000 people. It is the most significant of the five sacred Chinese mountains and its origins are shrouded in ancient creation myth. The myth begins with the birth of Pan Gu, when all was chaos and […]
Concrete, consumerism & the Great Wall
We land in Beijing (Chinese for North Capital) after a short stop over in Hong Kong. It’s cold. Six centigrade, overcast with that cold, wet fog that works its way into the bones. Fortunately, we had anticipated cooler weather and did not need to revert to breaking open the backpacks for sweaters but this weather […]
Last port of call: Perth
We flew into Perth, a small modern city and the capital of Western Australia. We were staying in Fremantle which is really a suburb to the south of the city which describes itself as home to artists, bohemians and lotus eaters but we did not see any of these strange creatures during our stay. Perhaps […]
Swimming with whale sharks
We landed at Learmonth airport, some 37km outside the town of Exmouth, our destination. If anyone is thinking of coming here, beware the car hire charges. We discovered that our daily allowance of 100km a day began in town, thus, we had already used 37km (and the fuel) before we sat in the car and […]