Saturday 29th August. Tour Day 7

Our cruise boat had set off along the Yangtse River tonight. The boat was a large, public boat and full of locals rather than tourists. The two-bedroom cabins were basic and small, with barely functioning a/c, but clean and tidy. The bathroom was very small (out of necessity I suppose) and you could even have a shit and shower at the same time! The boat, I later found out, was actually a 4 star boat, blimey! The first part of our journey was through the first of the Three Gorges, however, this was during the night so we wouldn’t see much of it.

Sunday 30th August. Tour Day 8

We were due to pass through the second of the Three Gorges (Wu Xia) at about 6 in the morning, so I woke up ~6am and headed to the observation deck at the front of the boat. The scenery was stunning and we caught the sunrise too. It would have been interesting to have been on the cruise before the Dam was built with the water level much lower to see the difference. I'd read descriptions of the "before", of steep, towering gorge walls and torrential waters (described by one poet as "a thousand seas poured into a single cup"), but it all seemed a lot calmer now.

At about 10am, we arrived at “New Wuhan”, one of the towns built to replace one which was flooded and house all the displaced people. There were a heck of a lot of steps to get to the entrance of the town, and a load more to get around in town, so I gave it a miss. As you can imagine from the surrounding scenery, the town had been built on the steep banks of the river.

In the afternoon, we passed through the third of the Three Gorges, Qutang Xia, again the scenery was stunning. We stopped off at another new town, New Fengjie, where we got off and had a wander around, but there wasn’t really a lot to see and we soon headed back to the boat. On the way back, we saw a photo of old Fengjie. These old towns were now largely underwater and had also been demolished to ensure boats passing nearby did not hit any of the old buildings. On the way back to the boat, there was a guy selling beer really cheap so I stocked up, seven 630ml bottles for 28 Yuan, about £2.50, the cheapest round I’d ever bought!

There was a half decent sunset (for China anyway, normally, we didn't see the sun due to the smog), then an evening meal with some delicious selections – sweet and sour pork (this turned into our favourite group dish), chicken and peanuts (another favourite), fried beef with chillies. Afterwards, we consumed mucho beer and played drinking card games with the forfeit being a down-in-one of Chinese rice wine, 38% proof and nasty with it!

Monday 31st August. Tour Day 9

There wasn't much new to see today - some pagodas, new/old towns, scenery. I had noticed that there wasn’t much wildlife along the banks of the river, just some water buffalo and a few egrets, geese and ducks. I suspected the Chinese farmers had either shot most of it or eaten it, or both!

At ~4pm, we disembarked at Old Fengdu from where we would be getting a bus to Chongqing. This was called the “City of Ghosts”, with many interesting statues of hellish figures. I was looking forward to visiting it after seeing a report on a travel programme, however, this part of town had been flooded and knocked down now. The rest of the town wasn’t much to look at, and it was a hard slog to lug my (wheeled) luggage up the huge number of steps - fortunately, one of my fellow travellers took pity on my plight and helped me carry my bag up.