Trip to Sichuan Day 1

October 1 was Chinese National day so that meant a week off of work and trip with some friends. We set off for southern Sichuan, and thanks to some research on some Chinese travel blogs we found a place that wasn't severely affected by the May 12 earthquake and wasn't a tourist hotspot.

Kangding 康定

We wanted avoid one of the tourism hotspots because when a country of 1.3 billion takes their fall break simultaneously, with year on year double digit increases in tourism and economic growth that gives more people some cash to travel, you quickly run out of places that haven't been overun by tour groups. A lot of my friends go to southeast asia to travel, and some don't go on vacation at all just to avoid the hastle, which is unfortunate, since there are plenty of great places to visit in this country.

The first stop was Kangding, a small city in southwest Sichuan about seven hours from Chengdu. The place is almost entirely ethnic Tibetan and the people are devoutly religious. Unlike many parts of China you don't have to buy a ticket to enter temples and the temples and monestaries are occupied by actual monks and buddhist practitioners. It's sad, but many buddhist and taoist templest in east and south China have become tourist destinations only, and have lost their religious meaning. Places like this were effected by communism and the Cultural Revolution just like the rest of China, but there beliefs and practices are still going strong.

Wild mushrooms for sale

In a temple courtyard

We started off in Kangding, but then went on for a three day hike around Yala Mt, and then hung out in a really cool little place called Danba for a day. I'm going to try to update my blog with the rest of the trip, but if you like the pics, check out my flickr stream.