Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The feeling as the lock doors opened!











Early rise, early brekkie. Today we travelled through the first gorge which was very window. Due to the rise in water level, the calligraphy on the walls was moved above the water line. Previously, the junks (boats) were pulled up stream by trackers (local people). All of the trackers trails are now going to be under water but we were lucky to have seen the last before it’s submerged because of the dam. Strangely the trackers always pulled the junks naked but no one knows why.

We went on a ferry to the sampans, looking at monkeys and hanging coffins. We had to wear a life jacket on the sampan which always fills you with confidence. The horrid wooden plans to transfer boats as not my favourite.

Ali and I say on the front of the boat as we went through the next gorge, sporting my pashmina on her head to protect her ear. She didn’t love me taking pictures of her.

In the evening, after another not so cheap acupuncture session, we had cabaret and were all shocked that our group was the first act! We got up to sing happy birthday in Chinese and ‘on the Yangtze’ in front of everyone.

I slept for 20 minutes when there was a continuous banging on the door. Unfortunately, we were supposed to go through the 3 gorges dam at 9am but it was postponed to midnight so we set out alarms, but we had started going through early. I managed to put my clothes on inside out, and couldn’t find a jumper so just went. This has been my dream since Uni, to see the 3 gorges dam.

5 locks in total, but we only went through 4 because it’ currently going through the last tranche of water rise. The screaming was sooooo loud but when the first lock opened, everyone went aaaaaaa, as though it was the first people to see the sun reappear. But of course, we saw one and then we wanted to see another, and another and another. For 3 hours in the cold. There was clapping, but only a handful of us stayed up until 3am to go through all of the locks. One of my dreams had come true though.

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