An Eventful Trip: Landslides, mudslides, traffic accidents, then more landslides, rock falls and even more traffic accidents. Every journey we made this summer in Yunnan seemed to involve at least one of those mishaps and sometimes several of them.
From landslides to floods, earthquakes to collapsing bridges
Watching the news in China during the rainy and typhoon season can be like watching a disaster movie that never ends. From landslides to floods, earthquakes to collapsing bridges, the whole country seems immersed in an ongoing state of calamities that sometimes verge on biblical proportions. Yet, until this year, we had always been lucky. We were either somewhere completely different, we had already been and gone, or we were about to go, but we were never actually there, on the spot. We were quite used to watching all those disasters from the comfort of our hotel room. Yet, this year it was all different.
The worst incident was the massive mudslide in Puladi near Gongshan along the Nujiang River, where a whole village was wiped off the face of the earth. Many people were killed and lots of homes were buried. We were trapped for 3 days in the nearby village of Bingzhongluo before the PLA could open the road and get us out.
However, despite the difficulties in travelling we managed to explore a number, if not all the places we had planned to visit.
the highlight being the wonderful Nujiang Valley
Our trip to China this year was shorter than usual, as we were combining it with a visit to Myanmar. The China part was concentrated on remote villages in Yunnan, with the highlight being the wonderful Nujiang Valley running along the Myanmar border. In the next few months we’ll be putting up information on the following places:
Things to do in Kunming and around; the city where we based ourselves
The salt town of Heijing
The ancient Bai village of Nuodeng and the nearby town of Yunlong
The Ming and Qing dynasty town of Weishan and the nearby Taoist mountain of Weibaoshan
The Nujiang Valley and especially the village of Bingzhongluo
Some updates on Beijing
Can’t wait.