Rising from an uncomfortable night sleeping in a tent, we
continued walking down the road. The dwellings soon disappeared and we were
mostly surrounded by forest again, with good views of the surrounding pillars.
Going off road slightly we hacked our way to the edge of a precipice upon which
a large rock was scenically positioned. As a photo opportunity it was pretty
impressive, though if I was on my own I would definitely not have done it – the
drop was pretty far. Preferring to hide my pant-wetting fear I followed the
others out there, staying well clear of the edges the whole time.
Back on the road we soon came upon the coach drop-off point
as well as the cable car terminal and were once again surrounded by hordes of
tourists. Looking for a little more peace and quiet we walked further down the
road, and decided that it might be a good time to descend to the valley floor.
Preferring not to use the cable car (or continue on the road) we cut into the
forest and started down a fairly steep ravine. The path we were following was
little more than a track, and one not used, I suspected, in quite some time. Making
our way down in single file I was somewhat worried to see Bobby leap in panic
in front of me: finding out that it was a large yellow and black snake did
little to soothe my nerves. Times like that make me realise how much I
appreciate the lack of dangerous animals in the UK.
Somewhat more hurriedly than before, we finished our descent
and got back on the road. Deciding that this time we would actually camp in the
woods, rather than in front of someone’s restaurant, we thought it might make
more sense to look for a campsite earlier than 8pm. Cutting through a field and
over a small river we found a fairly secluded spot and set about clearing a
place for the tent. At that point we realised that clearing a campsite is a
massive pain in the arse, and took a break to go exploring. Exploring may be
too grand a word for it; most of the time was spent laughing at Sean taking a
dump behind a large rock and taking pictures with a dead frog – the Discovery
Channel it was not.
The benefit of buying such a cheap and low-quality tent was
that we were not at all worried about leaving it for a while to stock up on
food and drink. Not wanting to saddle ourselves up with copious amounts of
beer, we opted to go for a more readily-transportable drink. We ended up
purchasing a spirit that I’m pretty sure you could run a car engine on, of
which the only thing that could be said in its favour is that it was cheap.
With not much else to do, we returned to the campsite and relaxed for the
remainder of the evening.
This was the last night of our short trip, with us making
the journey back to Wuhan the next day. While it had been somewhat slapdash in
its inception, the trip had been pretty much everything I’d wanted. The last
thing to be done was have a decent night’s sleep before we were travelling
again the next day. Something that sadly was denied to me, Bobby and Sean by
the bellowing snores of Rich – to be honest I was more impressed than annoyed.*
*not a feeling shared by Sean. He spent the night kicking
and cursing Rich who remained deeply asleep the whole time.
No comments:
Post a Comment