Just a quick note so you won’t declare me dead: Today was a lush day in ChengDu. Just in the evening I had a brief visit to WenShu Temple, which is actually just a 10 minute walk from my hotel, but into the other direction, where also Payam’s hostel is.

I won’t be able to do a long update tonight as we are sitting here over one or the other beer and plan out the next days, but let me give you a quick heads-up and outlook on our future plans, as in the future the updates here might be a bit more infrequent:

With a lot of investment on both ChengDu’s and my side the two of us came to agree that there are indeed nice places in ChengDu! Lonely Planet will require an update as will some tourist maps. But lucky as I was (or: as ChengDu was ;)) I passed by some park-like grounds in the taxi, which had brought me from the airport to the hotel. And the map I got in my hotel, an all-Chinese map, not actually really well suitable for touristic purposes, had in about the area where I saw these greens out of the taxi window indeed chartered two parks and some pagodas. These areas were my goal today. And I just took a deep breath after I noticed that I selected no less than 27 picture to be published today, record for a single day report!

Let me just briefly state: I am back in the city I like least so far: ChengDu. I could lie and say I wanted to give it a second chance to convince me of its beauties. But as a matter of fact: I am here merely to meet with Payan, the German I had met before in Lhasa (see Future Plans in Lhasa (IV)). He returned here first and expected me to pass through as I had written him. When learning he is here I interrupted my original plan to move directly on to KunMing.