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Phew... Where to begin?!?

8/18/2014

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Well hello there! We're back from our long trip around China. We arrived at the uni (our new home) just over a week ago, however, getting the internet (amongst a few other things in the apartment) has been slow going and we only just connected today. But now, I'm ba-ack!! And I've had a BLAST. There have been many 'ups' on our trip of course, but also a fair few stressful times, and 'downs', mainly due to one of our drivers, but more on that later perhaps... Basically: we made it! And saw some amazing sights, ate some sooo fricken tasty food, and met some wonderful people.

I ran less than usual, as I knew I would, but I still managed to get a couple of runs in in each province (and even managed FOUR in the last week, all in beautiful Inner Mongolia, our new province for the next year).

I thought, for the purpose of this primarily being a running blog and whatnot, that I'd try to focus on mainly the running aspect of my trip (for the rest, you'll have to buy our forthcoming travel book haha - we are going to write a book about our adventure! Lol, watch this space). So, I will write about a different province's running environment and my experience on each day's blog post, starting with today's tale of, dum-de-de-dum, drum roll please.....: Anhui province.

Anhui was our first province after leaving our home-province of two years, Zhejiang. There is truly only one word for Anhui province (or the parts we saw anyway) - fecund. Everywhere was so beautiful, lush, green, and there were abundant veggie patches everywhere. I had two runs through Anhui province: the first through a quaint and beautiful mountainside village near the very famous Huangshan, which was slightly undulating owing to the mountain nearby. The second was a flat run but at the foot of another famous mountain, Jiuhuashan, with the most beautiful backdrop of jagged peaks of said mountain and similarly lush, fecund fields of veggies and rice paddies too. This second location reminded me a lot of running through the Balinese countryside. Gorgeous.

I have no photos of the actual running routes but here  are a few shots from Anhui province anyway. Your imagination can fill in the rest. Picture running past gorgeous green, verdant, lush fields and mountains, fresh water streams, with a fair few traditional village houses and the odd ye olde bridge or two chucked in for good measure.


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Short and sweet for my return then! Still have much to sort out here in the new apartment and things on campus. So, tune back in tomorrow for Henan Province's instalment.

I hope you've all had a wonderful month and I'll now be able to catch up with everything I've missed since being offline (pretty much, got on our personal emails and fb a few times when we had wifi in places, but it was sketchy to say the least - kind of nice not having the computer though, I must say!).

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Upcoming Caravan Tour

5/4/2014

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This morning’s run was an easy paced 11-12 km run. My usual route through town to the river, then alongside the river and back through a couple of parks to home, stopping off to buy breads and tea eggs en route. The last kilometre or so were spent with Puppy – came back to grab her for her ‘walk’. Attempted a run or jog with her, but she is too easily distracted and jolts me unexpectedly to a stop by pretty much every tree. (There are a lot of trees in this town.)

 

Lately we’ve been thinking, talking about and planning our ‘amazing caravan around China adventure’, so I’d thought I’d share a little more re: the places we are aiming to visit.

We are hiring a caravan (plus a car and driver to tow it and us) for 28 days and during this time we are aiming to visit 6 new provinces, and many many beautiful places. The first stop being Mount Lushan, in Jiangxi province, some 535kms from here, closely followed by the amazing Poyang Lake (a HUGE freshwater lake, the biggest in China I think).

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We want to visit some ancient villages, known as Hui Villages, and thus head to Anhui province to see and hike up and down yet more beautiful mountainous areas. So far: Huangshan and Jiuhuashan are on our list here:

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From there, we will head over to Henan province and check out the very famous Shaolin Temple, Longmen Caves, and White Horse temple:

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Then it’s on to Xian in Shaanxi province, to check out the thousands of terracotta warriors:

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We then hope to drive up and into Shanxi province to visit the ancient walled town of Pingyao, and then check out some cave locations at Lijiashan and the Yungang Caves:

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From here it’s up into our new province – Inner Mongolia – where we’ll be spending the next year teaching in a university, but before we arrive at our destination we want to visit the town of Hohhot and Xilinhot and then the majestic, vast grasslands and beautiful scenery and people at Hulunbeier:

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To say we’re a little bit excited would be a huge understatement. Can. Not. Wait. Not sure how much access to internet we’ll have while we’re travelling and on the road, so if you don’t hear from me much in July and August, you’ll know why.

 

If anyone is reading this has been to China and can recommend other places that are worth a visit or that you loved, please get in touch! Would love to hear your experiences and what you thought of some great places to see.
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    A 30-something's running and travelling experience around the world.

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