My god, I am the first Westerner they've seen
Trip Start
Jan 30, 2007
1
419
617
Trip End
Dec 31, 2011
Loading Map
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
Xichang,
Sichuan,
China
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Given that Sichuan and Yunnan get tens of millions of visitors a year, including millions of foreign backpackers, flashpackers, weekend tripers, cyclists, motorcyclists, trekkers, hikers, botanists, researchers, students, English teachers . . .
and have been for more than two decades . . .
"
We're caught in bumper-to-bumper market-day traffic behind motorcycles and car, water buffalo and pedestrian-drawn carts, rusty bicycles and other ancient vehicles that still pass for transport in rural China.
As I look out the window of our four-wheel-drive, I watch scrawny chickens dart about, pecking frantically. Two mangy dogs scrap with each other in mock combat. Amid plumes of sunlit dust, children play. Their mothers and grandmothers, dressed in embroidered skirts and bright headscarves, huddle together, animated in conversation. The men sit by, smoking.
One woman stops suddenly, oblivious to the jostling crowd around her. She is unblinking, transfixed, her jaw ajar in cartoonish shock. Surely I can't be the first Westerner she's laid eyes on? Or maybe I am.
This is my fourth visit to China but the first time I have sidestepped the big cities and main tourist routes for a glimpse at some of the remote and rural parts of this vast and varied country.
There are five of us loaded into a four-wheel-drive on a two-week road trip of about 4000 kilometres: a driver, a local guide, a photographer and our host, Peter Schindler, a Hong Kong-based entrepreneur and former formula two driver who has turned his passion for switchbacks into a self-drive touring business in China.
I'm not on a tour; rather I'm taking a rear seat on a research trip for Schindler's Sichuan-Yunnan itinerary: heading south from Chengdu, the capital of the south-west province of Sichuan, to Yunnan province towards the Laos-Vietnam border, then to the Yunnan capital, Kunming.
More at http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-feature/slow-road-to-china-20090218-8ax6.html?page=-1
