Category: Travel

Off the eaten track – Mirissa

March 21, 2019April 23, 2019
by Jono

Mirissa! What an incredible place – an unparalleled stretch of beach with hundreds of places to eat, Mirissa really got us excited when we arrived 🙂 Time to go hunting! Read more about Off the Eaten Track here.

The problem with finding food gems in Mirissa was quite simply, the sheer volume of restaurants available. If you are into grilled fresh seafood cooked over an open fire, Mirissa has literally about a hundred restaurants that will do you a stunner of a meal, and being able to sit on the beach with your feet literally in the water is just the cherry on top.

With that said, by the time we’d arrived, we were needing something different, having eaten grilled fish 2 nights in a row. This presented a problem – there wasn’t much variation on the menus here. We had an oily carby dinner one night at Big Belly Roti Hut, which was tasty and filling, but nothing special.

Delicious, local fresh vegetarian food – totally our thing!

For lunch we managed to scout down a fantastic lunch and curry place called Dhana’s curry pot – they serve vegetarian rice and curry buffet for Rs400 – as much vegetables as you want for that price? Amazing!

They had a surprisingly good selection of curries, including 2 types of rice, dal, tomato curry, jack fruit curry, green mango curry, okra, pumpkin, and banana flower curry – all were good, green mango was a tad sour.

The other food gem we discovered was a little café called plantation café in Welligama, on the A2… they had the usual stuff, but also a surprisingly wide selection of other food, and really big, delicious salads – Marna was in heaven 🙂 I had a traditional sri lankan chicken curry in coconut milk, and it was excellent. The chicken was succulent and perfectly cooked, and the portions were generous.

By far the best salad we’ve seen outside Negombo!

If you are planning a trip to Mirissa, do go check out one of the above spots!

Off the eaten track

Off the eaten track – finding hidden food gems!

March 18, 2019April 23, 2019
by Jono

We’ve been wanting to do this for a while – write a post about how and where we decide to eat when travelling.

This is an introduction to a series of posts, each one about a specific town, how we experienced the food, how to avoid tourist traps serving stale overpriced food, and how to eat like a king on a limited budget!

There are a couple of general principles, by no means exhaustive.

Understand the local food culture – this is a very broad statement. Basically what I’m saying here is that you will be able to make more informed decisions about your food choices if you understand what the local dishes are and how much they usually cost. The only way to do this is:
Eat around at a bunch of local places first – this will give you an idea of the general flavours you are dealing with, what you should expect to pay, and what each dish actually is. There’s no shortcut to this one – take the first few days in a country as food research time.
Once you have an idea of what you like and what you’ll be eating a lot of, start being more selective and looking for places that offer something different. Try not to eat the same thing twice until you end up with a menu with nothing new on, by which time you’ll be at step 4 below.
By now you’ll have an idea of the local cuisine, so the key is now refinement – finding the spots that do it exceptionally well or exceptionally cheaply, or that offer you a twist on local flavours – a vegan version of your favourite curry, vegetable juices with unusual herbs, etc. This is the hunt, the difficult part of this exercise, and here we use all the resources available – guide books, google, tripadvisor, local recommendations, etc. We’ve found that TripAdvisor is very useful, but not necessarily for their top choice – finding up-and-coming places with fewer, better reviews is difficult, but rewarding.
Once you’ve narrowed down your choices, take a stroll through town in-between meal times and look at the menus – this is usually the clincher. Think of it as your pre-dinner warm up, get your steps in and earn your supper at the same time!

That’s about it for general principles, upcoming posts will deal with where and what we decided to eat and how we got there!

As a start – go check out where to eat in Mirissa!

Travel

6 secret beaches in Arugam Bay, Sri Lanka

March 13, 2019March 13, 2019
by Jono

Arriving in Arugam bay brought mixed emotions for us – we had to admit, the main beach really is gorgeous, but it felt… Resorty.

Marna strolling down Arugam bay main beach.

One the one hand, you have a perfect semi-circle of sand with the odd palm tree knocking around, but on the other hand, almost all of the infrastructure is aimed at tourists, with very little of that local flair that we love so much.

So we chatted to a few people, and decided to go hunt down the hidden gems! Beaches, in this case 🙂 There are 6 of them, 7 if you include Arugam main beach.

We’ve listed them geographically from north to south.

Note – to get to most of these beaches you’ll need your own transport. We had a rented Tuk tuk, but a scooter, motorbike, private taxi/tuk Tuk etc will all be fine. Not possible to get to these with public transport, unless you are willing to do a LOT of walking.

Whiskey point:

Lovely section of beach, with some good surfing during season.

13km north of Arugam bay along the A4 highway, the whiskey point beach is becoming more known now as a less crowded surf spot during high season, and many eco-resorts have sprung up near the beach.

With that said, when we visited (march) it was totally empty, with gorgeous palm trees and chilled locals – we sat in a deserted beach bar and had a free coconut – no wifi out here obviously 🙂

Pros:

Loads of shade to sit in, good surf during season, less crowded than Arugam Bay.

Cons:

Far from town, not totally undiscovered.

Pottuvil point:

This really was a lovely bit of nature, very clean and quiet with the odd fisherman at the very point, but most of the beach itself totally empty.

There are 2 ways of getting here – the first is to drive in from the road that starts here: 6.884312, 81.84169. There isn’t a road on Google maps, but maps.me has it. This road was too rough for our Tuk tuk, so we had to take the second way in, which is to walk down from Whiskey point.

This turned out to be a lovely 40 min. walk which takes you past Mohammed’s Beach Bar, a very casual low key place that can whip up a cup of tea and a samoosa for you (if there’s anyone there).

Pros:

Gorgeous, empty beach, a chance to chat with the locals at Mo’s beach bar.

Cons:

Not quick to get to, but if the road is dryer or you have a larger vehicle then you can drive in.

Pottuvil beach:

This is a massive beach – we visited 2 sections of it. The first section we did was the northern part – we parked at the Pottuvil beach mosque and walked north, sat down for a picnic under a palm tree with a few friendly goats and nobody else on the beach. There are a few palm huts on the outskirts, but we didn’t see any signs of life.

Pros:

Friendly goats, loads of shade, fairly clean.

Cons:

Strong currents in the ocean, be careful.

The second section we did is around the muhudu maha viharaya – some ancient ruins nearby a Buddhist stupa, worth a visit if you are around. Note that the ruins are to the left of the stupa, be sure to check out both!

Pros:

Interesting Buddhist site nearby, good road access with parking.

Cons:

Beefwood trees don’t feel as tropical, not as clean.

Pasarichenai beach:

A massive section of totally untouched coastline, this is the only one reachable on foot from Arugam bay – walk south along the beach and around the point and you’ll get there. You can get there by road as well, but it’s confusing and the roads are in really bad condition. Great for a long walk early in the morning, and you leave all the tourists and touts behind.

Pros:

Reachable on foot from A-bay, huge beach.

Cons:

Not a lot of shade, difficult road access.

Elephant rock and beach:

This one was a real hunt, with no signage or roads on any map 🙂 drive south of Arugam bay for about 7km until you see the turn-off to the military base, where you’ll be turning left. Don’t enter the base (obviously), the road will split to the left first, and then after the base it splits again and this time you’ll take the right side. If you take the wrong turn you’ll end up at an archaeological site and Buddhist school, just turn around and take your first left.

This was a beautiful beach, with a lovely rocky out crop and a Buddha hidden in a small cave – go see if you can find him!

Pros:

Gorgeous beach, Buddha hunting, nice waves for swimming, totally empty.

Cons:

Difficult to find.

Panama beach point:

This is a really lovely piece of bay nestled between 2 rocky points at the end of the Panama main road, the majority of the beach is accessible if you stop anywhere along the way and walk to your right, but the little bay at the end of the road is really special. There’s even a deserted eco-tourism building with outside stairs, so you can sit in the shade on the roof and look at the picture perfect bay in front of you.

There are also a few nice trails to walk over the rocky point where you can get views of the main beach. This wasn’t as undiscovered though, there were one or 2 other people around, but still very quiet.

Pros:

Good road access, beautiful bay, good swimming, great chill spot on the eco-tourism building roof.

Cons:

Having to share with one or 2 other people – we were here in off season, during peak time it might be busier.

There you have it! Been to any of the above beaches? Let us know in the comments 🙂

Off the eaten track

Off the eaten track in Kandy!

March 9, 2019April 23, 2019
by Jono

The drive to Kandy in our mighty red Tuk tuk from Negombo was a lovely one, going through beautiful hills and rainforest towns, we took it slowly and enjoyed the scenery. Arriving in Kandy we were greeted by crazy, bumper-to-bumper traffic, the worst we’ve seen in sri lanka so far. If you have your own transport, try to avoid mid morning and late afternoon – it’s anarchy.

Our hotel was a non-descript affair in Richmont Hill – slightly too far out of town for our liking, Kandy has a lot to offer so next time we’ll stay closer to the fun. Bags dropped, we headed into town for some exploring!

First thing we did was obviously to grab some fried street snack, wrapped in a greasy piece of sri lankan newspaper – perfect. Having refueled, we then walked into town starting at Bogambara – an old fort now being used as a local veggie market! Marna and I love local markets, eyeballing the interesting fruit and veggies for sale, and maybe trying a few:)

We also discovered an amazing local food joint, just next to the road on the west side of the lake – for an incredible eating experience go here: 07°17′29.95″N 80°38′14″E

Trust me – it’ll blow your mind. There are about 30 stalls selling every kind of sri lankan snack and fast food imaginable, and they are fresh, hot, cheap and delicious.

We then grabbed a whole durian fruit (not recommended, it’s massive) and walked along the promenade on the north side of the lake to eat it – we were there in March, and everything was covered in pink blossoms – unreal.

Feeling slightly sick from all the durian, we walked around a bit in town looking for a good place to have dinner, and eventually found café 1886 – looks fancy on the outside, but the food is delicious, prices reasonable, setting lovely and portions big. Try their low carb grilled fish.

Not a bad plate of food for Rs440 ($2.5)

Day 2 breakfast was at Sri balaji – a chain of south Indian restaurants serving idli and dosa at giveaway prices – there’s a good one in the southbound section of road B519.

A short Tuk Tuk ride Southwest of town got us to the Royal Botanical Gardens, where we spent a lovely few hours eating tropical fruit and wandering around the well manicured grounds.

After Bot Gardens, a good spot to chill for an hour or so is the ceylon tea museum just south of town, which has a tea café upstairs and a small shop selling tea. We managed to skip the museum entrance fee by saying that we just wanted to go to the Restaurant – didn’t vibe another expensive tourist trap, and it was lovely. Hordes of school kids arrived while we were there, which brought loads of energy, excitement, selfies and hi-how-are-you’s to an otherwise peaceful affair.

We then headed to Degaldoruwa temple behind town, which is a cave temple with beautiful hand painted walls and a large reclining Buddha – entrance is free, and in fact one of the local monks had to go get a key to open for us! Beautifully preserved, a wonderful little spot without any touts or popcorn sellers, it felt like a little slice of local Buddhist life.

For one last thing to do while you still have time, grab a coke zero and some arrack and head to the Kandy View Point for the best views over town – also lovely at night if you still have energy after supper 🙂

Travel

Yoga teacher training in Rishikesh

March 8, 2019March 18, 2019
by Jono

Rishikesh is undoubtedly the yoga capital of the universe, and with over 300 schools to choose from, you have plenty of options 🙂

Because there are so many schools, everyone has a different experience doing yoga teacher training.

It’s not possible for me to summarize all the available options, so this post is about our experience at Rishikesh Yog Dham, and some advice about doing TTC (Teacher Training Course) in general.

Before you go :

What to expect
Choosing a school
Choosing a program
What to pack

Going:

Getting to rishikesh
Things to consider

Staying:

Course structure
Seeing the town
Avoiding illness
Extra activities

What to expect:

Rishikesh yoga TTC is a month that will probably change your life, and most people have a very positive experience here. With that said, your enjoyment of the course, how much you learn, your personal growth and development, and your overall experience depends entirely on YOU.

You have to come to the course with an open mind, and you have to make a conscious effort to be positive.

There were people who skipped class, didn’t put effort in, and even though they got the piece of paper, they walked away unsatisfied with the whole experience, because they didn’t grow and develop as much as the rest of the class.

The certificate is secondary to what you will be learning here – far more important is your personal growth, discipline, understanding of yoga and the yogic lifestyle, making lifelong friends, and, of course, your inner peace. 🙂

Nobody can force you to do anything, but my personal opinion is that if you are paying for a course that will help you in some aspect of your life, you should try and maximize the benefit you gain from it – most people who go and do TTC only get the opportunity once in a lifetime, so make it count!

The course is difficult. Not just physically (4 hours of yoga asana per day!) but also emotionally and psychologically. We were exhausted at the end of each day, going to bed at 8:30-9:00 pm every night.

The course material wasn’t intellectually very challenging, but if you are someone who struggles to learn things that are outside your worldview then you might find it difficult.

Choosing a school:

Choosing a school can be tricky, since there are so many options, and each school usually has more than one program that they offer.

What I would recommend, is consider the factors at play:

How much time do you have?
What is your budget?
What style of yoga are you interested in learning?
How much experience do you have?

Based on all these things, narrow down the available options to the top 5 or so schools, and then compare reviews, see what their class size is (smaller is better – don’t go for anything over 20), compare leisure time etc.

We ended up with Rishikesh Yog Dham, since it fitted into our boxes nicely, and we had a wonderful experience – they teach traditional Hatha yoga, and we loved getting in touch with the basic principles of yoga. Also, their food was awesome 😎

Oh, and you must be ok with vegetarian food and no alcohol for a month – rishikesh is a holy town so no meat or alcohol is permitted. Relax, it’ll do you good 🙂

One major problem with our school was the payment for the course – they had a card machine available, but didn’t want people using it – presumably because of tax evasion. They also didn’t want to use PayPal because of the fees and processing tine, and didn’t accept bitcoin 🙁 basically, they want cash in hand, which, in my opinion, is a bit ridiculous when you’re handing over so much money). If you can pay before the start of the course, do so – you will save yourself lots of hassle.

Choosing a program:

Depending on your time available, there are various options – from drop in classes on a daily basis at most ashrams, to retreats of any duration, as well as 200h (1 month) 300h (6 weeks) and 500h courses.

We opted for the 200h TTC, over 4 weeks, and it was perfect – long enough to really settle in, but short enough that you can leave feeling satisfied, and maybe still wishing you had a little bit more time 🙂

What to pack:

Rishikesh gets cold in winter! Don’t be fooled!

We came expecting summer and heat in India, but even in February it was still chilly enough to need your jacket every day, and the mornings were downright cold.

A basic first aid kit is essential, with rehydration salts, anti-diarrhoeal medication and flu meds, as well as hand sanitizer. Consult your doctor before leaving to top up your vaccines if needed.

Malaria isn’t a big problem while we were there in winter, but if you are going in summer or if your doctor recommends then rather take your prophylaxis – malaria isn’t fun for anyone.

All the other usual asia travel advice – don’t bring suitcase on wheels, pack light, mosquito repellent, hat, power bank etc etc.

Going:

Getting to rishikesh:

There are several ways to get to rishikesh, depending on your budget and where you’re coming from.

You will have to bear in mind that most of the yoga schools and ashrams are not in Rishikesh Town itself, but in a suburb 5km north of Rishikesh call Tapovan

The closest airport is Jolly Grant airport in Dehradun, about 20km away – from here you can either take a Tuk Tuk (+-Rs1500) or walk 2km to the main road (running between dehradun and rishikesh) and flag down a public bus going left to rishikesh town. From rishikesh town your best best is a shared Tuk tuk, called a Vikram or a Tempo, into tapovan – costs about Rs20.

If you are coming from Delhi you will probably end up in Haridwar by train or bus, from here your most convenient option is a vikram/tempo (as above) – it’s about Rs50 per person and an hour long bumpy ride, and if you’re lucky they drop you all the way in tapovan 🙂 there are also public busses to rishikesh, just stand on the main road and flag one down.

Things to consider :

Download the area of rishikesh and tapovan / laxman jula offline on Google maps, and drop a pin where your final destination is – if you are unable to get a sim card while in India (or if it stops working for whatever reason) then at least you’ll be able to navigate to your destination.
Always negotiate a price first, before getting into any type of private transport – public busses are fine, you can just jump on, but any Tuk Tuk (shared or not) you have to establish the price first, or you’ll end up paying triple or quadruple the actual price.
If you take the trains, the class options can be confusing. Also, booking trains can be confusing. To book directly with the IRCTC you’ll need to register on their website – a long and painful process that generally ends in frustration. The only registered online travel agency that bypasses the need for your IRCTC registration is 12go asia, and they charge a nominal fee – totally worth it.
Train classes – anything with AC behind the name is fine. The AC officially stands for Air Conditioning, but is actually just the fact that the windows are closed so you don’t get the smell. Also, you get some semi-clean bedding in AC berths. 1AC gives you a private 2 person berth, 2AC is 4 in a room, 3AC is 6 in a room – best value for money in my opinion.

Staying:

Course structure:

Our days looked like this:

6:00 – wake up,
6:15 herbal tea
6:30 cleansing/breathing exercises
7:00 asana practice
8:30 breakfast
9:30 anatomy
11:00 meditation
12:30 lunch
1-3:00 free time!
3:00 philosophy
4:00 another asana class
6:30 supper

Evenings were free, but most of the time we were too tired to do anything! We loved that our school gave us lots of free time to explore the town, drink tea, get tattooed etc 🙂 – some schools are very strict and won’t let you leave the ashram during free time.

Seeing the town:

Very important, of course! Every afternoon we went to drink tea, explore the thousands of “organic shops” selling herbal shampoos and other natural odds and ends, finding the best street snacks (hint – they are just over the laxman jula bridge to the east!) and just generally enjoying the India-ness of it all.

Tapovan is a very sheltered environment, not at all like India. Reminded me a bit of Pai, in Thailand – loads of dreadlocks and tofu everywhere.

There are a few great cafes, too many to mention, but ganga beach cafe, shanti shanti, shambala and Mango Garden spring to mind as being reliably good. Also, you can get a Bhang Lassi at Shambala, but keep it discrete.

Avoiding illness:

This is unfortunately a very important topic – because you are in close contact with a large group of people, diseases tend to spread very quickly.

There is no hard way to avoid everything, but the following can help minimize your risk.

Wash your hands. Obsessively. Hands are probably the most important vector for the spread of diarrhoeal illness, so wash them regularly and thoroughly, and definitely before eating anything.
Hand sanitizer – as above. Use on top of regular hand washing, is not effective on dirty hands.
Avoid sharing utensils etc
Don’t drink the water. Ever.
Zinc 20mg/d will help protect against viral illnesses, and probiotics might provide some benefit against bacterial sources.
If you do get very ill, ciprofloxacin 500mg twice daily for 3 days – can be purchased without a prescription from the pharmacy in Tapovan.

Extra activities:

Do them! We had a few day trips that were organized by our school, and they were all unforgettable!

We went rafting down the ganges (ganga) river, visited a small temple in a village on the hill, went to an international yoga conference, and did a cooking course.

Try pick a school that gives you lots of opportunities to do things and bond with the other classmates – we really enjoyed the off time, it helped balance out the intensity of the course! If your school doesn’t do any of these activities, then make a little effort on your off days to explore and experience what you can 😋

And that’s basically it! If you have been to rishikesh, or done a ttc in another part of india, let us know what you thought!

Took a day trip to a local village temple – lovely views!

Travel

1 night stopover in Sigiriya (without climbing the rock!)

March 8, 2019March 8, 2019
by Jono

Yes it’s possible! Come to Sigiriya and have a great time without doing the big rock – we’ll explain how.

Marna and I aren’t big fans of tourist attractions, and especially not when you have to pay loads of money for them. We decided to stop over and see Sigiriya for a night after Kandy, and are very glad that we did – there’s plenty to keep you entertained for a day 🙂

On arrival we went to our guesthouse, the Sigiri Lake Paradise – it’s a bit out of town so you’ll need to grab a Tuk tuk if you don’t have your own transport. With that said, it’s 110% worth the effort, being one of the best places we’ve stayed so far, and the home cooked food was to die for….

The view from the mini rock at our guest house!

From here we headed back into the village – there are 2 sections of the village, about 3km apart – the local shops at Kibissa selling Tuk tuk parts and plastic buckets, and the more touristy shops and cafés close to the rock monument.

Marna with an iced ceylon tea – no sugar 🙂

We went to the tourist village first for lunch, and discovered a cute café, literally called café cute, which does a wonderful iced tea just the way we like it 🙂 happiness.

After lunch a stroll through the local village was what we needed, and along the way we discovered the ruins of an ancient stupa, with lovely paths leading through the surrounding forest – Ramakale stupa, on the left side of the road driving west from sigiriya village, free entrance.

The ancient stupa – now covered in grass.

The fun doesn’t stop there though, by now it was getting to mid afternoon, and we needed to head up to Pidurangala! Turns out there’s another rock just behind the main one, with the best views of sigiriya short of renting a hot air balloon – entrance is only Rs500 (very cheap by sri lankan standards) and its a lovely place to go for sundowners.

The entrance also gets you into a temple with a few paintings, and a semi-restored large Buddha near the top. Bit of a scramble to the top of the rock, don’t attempt if your BMI > 30.

From Pidurangala, you get great views over Sigiriya rock, and even some shade to sit in!

After drinking brown cow (coke light mixed with vanilla flavoured milk) for sundowners, it was time for dinner at our guest house – little did we know that our host was an incredible cook! I got a great recipe for eggplant, which we’ll adapt a bit to Western kitchens and post when it’s perfect 🙂

We got up early the next morning and had a walk around our lake, watching birds, looking at farm life starting, and enjoying the peace and tranquility. Came back to a fantastic breakfast, and then packed the Tuk Tuk and left for Batticaloa!

Delicious brekkie of fresh fruit, roti and pancakes with coconut jam 🙂

Travel

Overland from Shangri-la to Chengdu

August 11, 2018August 13, 2018
by Jono

While we were in Yunnan province, China, we were tempted by the idea of going up onto the old Tibetan plateau – The idea of tibet had always fascinated me, ever since reading Tintin in Tibet when I was a kid.

However, getting into tibet is not that easy – Tourists are required to have a very expensive and difficult-to-obtain visitor permit, which requires you to have booked a tour AND a car for the entire duration, and there are lots of restrictions – no public transport, no hitchhiking, no doing your own thing, basically, which sounded like a bit of a buzzkill for us.

However, there’s a loophole in the system – The old Tibetan Kham regions were assimilated into Yunnan and Sichuan provinces to make the tibet autonomous region easier to manage.

This mans that you can get into tibet without a permit, as long as you stay in the Ganzi autonomous prefecture and don’t cross over into the Lhasa autonomous prefecture – and you manage to escape all the hords of Chinese tourists that were swarming around in Yunnan! 😀

We did it from Shangri-la to Kangding (Yunnan province to Sichuan province), but is equally doable the other way around.

Shangri-la (Deqen/Zhongdian)

Shangri-la was the first properly Tibetan town we got to, on the way up after doing Tiger Leaping Gorge (which really was magnificent by the way).

The “old town” was destroyed in a fire a few years ago, but they rebuilt the town in the same style, so although the woodwork and paint is new, it still feels authentic, and very pretty to boot.

PROTIP!
The old town is very walkable, and this is the only place to buy adventure gear from here on out (and the only ATM for a while), so make sure you stock up on cash and warm jackets before heading out.

We stayed at Shangajoy seasons in, which was clean, passable English and a cute restaurant attached with some hilarious items on their menu (Milk shit balls anyone??). There’s lots of accommodation in town, and outside of high season you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a bed.

Getting to Shangri-la : There is tons of transport going to shangri-la from “below”, both from Tiger Leaping Gorge (at Tina’s) and from Lijiang – just ask at your hostel. There’s also an airport, for those wanting a quick in or out.

Northbound: Bus to Xiangcheng, tickets and station in the north of town, follow google or any of the main arterials northbound and ask people along the way. Only one bus per day, there’s apparently a bus to Daocheng as well, but it wasn’t running when we were there. Bus leaves early in the morning, which is a mission to get there – public buses northbound are few and far between that time of the morning, but they do run – grab one if you see it.

Xiangcheng

We were eager to get going to Litang when we finally arrived after a crazy bus ride to Xiangcheng – push to sit near the front if you can, the views are unbelievable (and it’s long, so you might as well enjoy it). We had read poor reviews of the Xiangcheng, so we grabbed a shared minibus taxi as soon as we arrived – the touts stand and wait for the Litang bus to arrive, so don’t worry about not finding onward transport.

If you want to continue the same day to Litang like we did, you can get seats on a shared minibus, but having done so ourselves, we would recommend staying over a night and catching the public bus the next day: the shared minibus ride was unbelievably cramped, bumpy, the driver smoked constantly with the windows closed the whole route there, and the windows were tinted so we couldn’t even get nice photos. Rather stay the night and take the bus if you have the time.

Litang

The beautiful monastery at the top of town.

Litang was a gem. We arrived late at night and checked into an average hotel, if you go up the road immediately opposite the bus station for about 500m or so, there’s a strip with a bunch of neon lights and cheapish hotels, find one that doesn’t look too grimy and spend your time exploring instead of chilling there.

Litang is high up – we felt the oxygen deprivation as soon as we arrived. Simply strolling on level felt like effort, and any sort of hill had to be done very slowly, even for us as fit hikers. This fades fairly quickly though, after a day or 2 we felt much more comfortable.

The town itself feels very authentic and Tibetan, dominated by a large monastery at the north end of town – If you enter the main hall and turn left immediately you can climb the stairs all the way to the roof of the monastery, which is unreal.

There is a sky burial site just outside town. Please remember that this is a sacred site for the locals, and if you are lucky enough to see a sky burial, be respectful, stand at the back, don’t say anything and absolutely don’t take any photos, even if they say it’s ok.

We spent 2 days in Litang, and managed to see most of the town – apparently there are some nice treks in the area, but we didn’t have enough time to venture out.

Bus station is near the east end of the main road in town, and basically just run between Xiangcheng and Kangding (maybe one or 2 other places), buy tickets the day ahead. Most busses leave early in the morning. Shared taxis are available to most bigger towns in western Sichuan, the touts stand around smoking outside the bus station, just ask anyone who looks a bit scaly.

Kangding

We arrived in Kangding in the mid-afternoon from Litang on the bus, as before, the ride is long and hard, push to get seats near the front and enjoy the views – some unreal mountain passes over this area.

Kangding is a fairly big transport hub, with busses to and from most parts of western Sichuan, and even an airport.

We heard rave reviews about the kangding konka youth hostel, but weren’t that impressed. It was clean enough, but not as much value for money as we were used to, the staff spoke very little English and couldn’t give us info on the tours they apparently ran or didn’t care enough to try.

We hiked up to the grasslands, which was lovely, but a proper climb – don’t do it in flops. Easily doable as a day trip, around 4-5 hours round trip depending on how fit you are. If you are staying longer, there are other treks, but getting info in English can be tricky.

There are some hot springs up the river north of town, catch one of the public busses if you can, the taxis will try rip you off going there and back. There different rooms with prices based on cleanliness and size etc.

There’s a fair bit going on in Kangding, with dancing in the main square at night, enough restaurants to choose from and a nice monastery. We stayed 2 nights.

Emeishan

The monastery we stayed in. Beware of monkeys.

We decided to go climb emeishan after kangding – the tickets to emeishan were sold out, so we had to take a bus to leshan and then catch a public bus to emeishan. We stayed in Emeishan Jinmao hotel, and it was incredible, sparkling clean, the best showers of the trip so far, and a total bargain. Would recommend.

There is only one truly excellent place to eat in Emeishan, and that’s Paddy’s, at the north end of town. Paddy and his wife are wellsprings of joy and open-heartedness, and the food is some of the best we ate in china. All the other restaurants in emeishan are preying on the hordes of tourists and are average and overpriced.
Paddy also offers small intimate tours including tea picking (we aren’t tour lovers, but got talked into one and it was lovely).

The hike up the mountain is stunning, and well worth it if you have the time and energy. Leave your bags at the hotel and sleep at one of the temples – there are loads of ways up and down. Beware of monkeys. Take a stick, and don’t eat or drink anything if they are around.

Chengdu

One of the crowded narrow alleys! Delicious street food everywhere.

The capital of Sichuan province was a crazy frothing pot of fun and human activity compared to the last couple of days out on the Tibetan plateau, and we loved it – Chengdu is a very fast-paced city, with loads of delicious eateries and a surprisingly efficient metro system.

The dragon alleys and the wide and narrow alleys are fun to visit, but packed to capacity at almost any given time. There are also tons of great gardens and parks if you want a breather, and some physiotherapy/massage parlours if you need to recuperate after all the hiking and bus rides.
Careful if they offer you “cupping”, this left us with bruises for 2 weeks afterwards.

The panda base in the north of town is worth a visit – chengdu is bonkers about their pandas and you’ll need to hustle to get a spot to see the pandas around feeding time. They are very cute though, and the less popular red pandas are also a treat to spot.

Hotpot is a classic Sichuan meal, try find one if you can – the red ones are ridiculously fierce. Most of the eateries on tripadvisor do hotpot, and on a busy night people queue outside for an hour or more for a table. Mapu Tofu is another classic Sichuan dish of soft tofu, bean sauce and chilli, and it’s delicious.

Chengdu airport is a major transport hub, with flights to and from all over asia, as well as loads of budget domestic flights.