TRAVEL | jiuzhaigou 九寨沟

It's happened! I can finally cross off Jiuzhaigou from that bucket list and move on with my life. Its been sitting there for the better part of a year and certain circumstances have always stood in the way of my going despite the fact that my dad lives in Cheng du--a mere 1 hour flight away from Jiuzhaigou valley.

Anyways, believe it or not, but these photos have barely been retouched. The waters were really that blue, and the trees were really that green. I mean, for the first hour or so I could barely comprehend what I was seeing--everything was so overwhelmingly beautiful and serene.

TRAVEL | tibet in china

My trip to Jiuzhaigou valley took me through the Ngawa (Aba) Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in northwestern Sichuan, China. I've never been so far north in China before and it was interesting to observe a culture so different from my own. 

One of the funnier incidents involved my tour leader, who happens to be from Aba herself, completely shocked by the fact that I am 25 and unwed. In her village it is still common for women to marry around the age of 18 and have children by the time she turns 20. So the fact that I'm still childless in my mid-twenties was unheard of. She told me—jokingly I hope—that I should "hurry it up, before it's too late". 

Noted, Ah Mu!

TRAVEL | huang long 黃龍

Finally back and recharged from a pretty brutal three days on the road to the Aba district in Sichuan to visit Huang Long and JiuZhaiGou National park. The bus ride was about 7 hours—we started driving at 5:30am, but including the stops organised by the local tour company, we didn't reach our destination until 2:30 in the afternoon.

I was very impressed by how efficiently everything ran at Huang Long. Due to Huang Long/JiuZhaiGou being one of the more popular tourist destinations in China I was expecting long lines with even longer waiting times. But no, when we alighted from the bus we were immediately directed to cable cars that took us halfway up the mountain within a half hour.

When up there, we followed a single path that took us all around the park and then all the way back down again to the buses. I can't imagine how long it took to build that walkway. Finally, I would recommend taking 4-4.5 hours to hike around the area, with plenty of time to stop for photos and a snack in-between.