Our last day on the ship (one more night, tomorrow early morning after arrival in Chongqing we’ll get off board and head to the airport to fly to Xi’an. Due to the expected fog (which will/would(?) force the captain to slow down), the afternoon tour (ghost city) got cancelled so everyone will make their flights tomorrow, but the morning tour to Shibaozhai Pagoda took place. Definitely a must – not only the pagoda itself, but also the view one has from the top. It’s a bit awkward to get up with what feels like a million other tourists around you on the narrow steps, but other than feeling like canned tuna a very pleasant experience. A few pics below:

in the next picture you can see the masses trying to get in:

The view is just fantastic. Like a lot of the older/ancient buildings along the Yangtze, the sites have been heavily impacted with flooding the dam; before the dam was built the pagoda was high above the water – today a dam is required around it to keep the floods away.

Next to the figure shown below (this is inside the pagoda, 2nd floor (i.e. 10 to go)) there are statues of important generals and the emperor himself – but I always deemed the one below underrated, so showing The Consultant / Advisor:

Some more beautiful views:

The pic below shows the bridge you walk to/from the pagoda:

Last picture from this tour shows the view from our ship to the pagoda island:

As stated above, this basically was the program of the day, so we enjoyed the rest of the day reading, watching the great scenery along both sides of the river. A few more pics below. In general you can get the impression that wherever you look you will find a construction site near. This country (or at least the part we’ve seen so far) is constantly extending, rebuilding, adding…just amazing. Already now I can state this is not my last time here.

That’s it for today, we’re now enjoying our final evening & drinks on deck.

Starting tomorrow night we should have better connection again, so stay tuned

/Chris