Participants:
Nigel Croft,
John & Jemi Holmes
Itinerary
23 & 24th Oct
Chengdu
13th Nov
Jiaju Tibetan Village
Danba
Introduction
This was a four-week trip around Sichuan Province with Nigel Croft, who flew directly to Chengdu from Bristol via Amsterdam. We visited seven sites. Of the seven, five were places Jemi and I had been to on our June & July trip:-
Only Danba and Dangling were new places for us. We wanted to compare Tangjiahe, Wanglang, Bifengxia, Labahe and Maerkang in the different seasons in the hope that autumn viewing conditions would be easier than in summer, with birds in larger flocks and in thinner undergrowth. We hoped too, that the cooler autumn weather would drive some species lower.
Bifengxia and Tangjiahe could be counted as mid-altitude sites with birded elevations of 1,000 to 2,000 metres. At Wanglang, Dangling and Mengbi Shan the birded areas were mainly above 2,500 metres.
The above reads as though we were on a closely-planned, rigorously-organised trip. However, as usual, we were very flexible and made on-the-spot decisions about how long we would spend in various places.
Even if you don’t speak any Putonghua, you can usually get a bus ticket for where you want to go by showing the destination characters in Chinese to the person (usually a woman) behind the ticket counter. Most bus tickets are electronic print-outs with the time of departure, your seat number and the amount you paid printed clearly in roman numerals.
Most bookshops in anywhere bigger than a medium-sized town sell provincial maps for 5 – 10 RMB. You can also get motoring atlases in Chinese highlighting the scenic spots and nature reserves of Sichuan and other provinces.
Dangling, Sichuan Province November 2006
