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INDIA THE TAJ AND THE TIGERS EXPERIENCE  February 2016 – Dave and Ann Brierley  An early departure awaited us on a typical damp cold winter West Yorkshire morning, arriving at Manchester Airport in good time and ready for our trip to India.   All went smoothly with Emirates...

I have been helping this Indian school for the past 6 years and it is very close to my heart. When I first visited the school it was in an even worse condition than it is now and only 30 children attended on a regular basis. We have installed computers, bought books, schoolbags,...

Known as the 8th Wonder of the World these life size warriors were discovered by some farmers digging a well. Since then so many have been unearthed and the excavations are still going on now. The warriors are in 3 different pits. Pit one is the best. We got there really early...

The three gorges dam and the five locks leading up to it are amazing. Really incredible. Our boat did get a little held up and went through the first lock at 1 am. Some of us stayed up, some of us went to bed and got up again and some of us just went to bed and missed the locks....

Had our firsthand hopefully only rainy day in Chongqing. If we are to have a rainy day then best have it here as we do some inside stuff and pandas love the rain. Also Chongqing is a pretty miserable grey place anyway. The big advantage for me is that I got to use my poncho for...

A rainy start to today and our cruise ship was running late. We have done 10 days touring and now we can board our cruise ship for 6 days. We can be like pandas eating and sleeping. We will have a shore excursion each day. The group settled in quickly and we have had a couple of...

Took the group to the zoo in Chongqing. It rained but the good news is that pandas love the rain so we were able to watch 2 pandas. The one with Travy is called You You. Pandas just eat and sleep and sleep and eat. What a life. And they have a thumb. There are about 1600 pandas...

We were up at 530 for our early flight to Chongqing, which with a population of 33 million is the world’s largest city. A sea of grey high rise buildings. There are a few small parts of the old town left here so we headsd for old Chongqing. This is a street full of small...

After seeing the Terracotta Warriors we headed back into Xian and spent some time at the city wall. The wall has been restored over the last few years and a great place to spend some time. Most of us rented bikes and cycled the 10 miles around the wall. Fabulous being able to...

Back to school and we are learning to write Chinese. This place is an art gallery with paintings from the time of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In these days intellectuals were sent to the countryside for re education. The artists still painted. Everyone concentrated hard on...