Chengdu and the Leshan Buddha

Chengdu. We first noticed Chengdu in an "in flight magazine" which described it as a tranquil town with bags of Chinese character" it was also just 90 km from Leshan and the huge 90mt stone Buddha we wanted to see, so we decided that Chengdu sounded like just the place to base ourselves seeing we could also plan our visit to Tibet from there.

When you arrive in Chengdu the first thing you notice is it's size its not small and has all the glitz of a major city, which is exactly what it is, a population of 4 million people and massive skyscrapers made us question the description in the Chinese in flight mag somewhat. Anyway it was still a great base to get stuff done and sorted. Going to Tibet turned out to be very expensive and would eat away 5 weeks worth of our travel budget so we decided that it was not worth wasting that amount of time just for a little while to sight see around Lhasa. So we concentrated on seeing the sights and interesting places around Chengdu and then head toward Tibet via Lijiang and Shangri-la ( more of those on the next blog ).

In Chengdu there is a really well run and very animal and eco friendly Panda breeding sanctuary, normally we avoid Zoos as we don't like to see caged animals. Firstly most of these are rescued Pandas and the breeding aspect is being done to generate their numbers to allow re-introduction into the wild. There are several huge enclosures which look and feel like genuine Panda habitat, the Panda's certainly did not show any obvious signs of stress and the success of the Panda sanctuary has been amazing. We spent several hours wandering around this enormous sight, it's so big you don't really see that many visitors, just lots of happy, healthy Panda's .

After the Panda sanctuary we travelled North to Leshan where there is an enormous stone Buddha carved into a cliff face, it is also situated in a large riverside park area which houses many smaller temples and deities. So there was a lot to take in. The Buddha was indeed very impressive and it took several hours to take in the rest of the park area before heading back to Chengdu.

A day was also spent wandering around the older part of Chengdu and the Wenshu monastery.

The next day we flew to Lijiang...

Wenshu monastery.

Incense sticks at the Wenshu Monastery.

Terrapin at the water garden in the Wenshu Monastery.

Frogs and terrapins.

Water garden.

Monastery Library.

Wenshu Monastery Chengdu.

Chengdu old town.

Red Panda at the Chengdu Panda sanctuary.

And another one.

And a bunch of the black and white brigade, aaahhh !!

Booo !

Now let's get back to eating some more bamboo shoots.

mmm this one is really nice... chomp chomp.

Get yer own bamboo will ya?

Tree Hugger !

Hey you, whatcha staring at me for??

Fat Buddha, Leshan.

Big stone Buddha at Leshan.

He's a big lad.

Temple in the Leshan Park.

More incense sticks.

Sometimes we really had to laugh at some of the signs... and a great way to finish this particular blog we think !

Next Blog Lijiang.