Morning calls come like yesterday and we all breakfast together at 7.30.
The slow progress due to fog has put the schedule back a bit, so we don’t get to the Gezhouba Dam and the shiplock at Yichang, until lunchtime. The fog thins out more and more as the day progresses.
On the river at Yichang are fishermen and women and children. Some are in junks, and some are just sat in inflated tyres, casting their lines into the river, and paddling around.
We have lunch before passing through the "shiplock" - no-one can say Sheeplack like Kathy can.
The Dam has three locks and 6 turbines/sluices. We go through the big middle lock, capable of holding lots of boats.
After lunch we pass through the Xiling Gorge.
It takes us 4 hours to pass through the 47 miles of gorge from Yichang to Xiang Xi, first passing the Three Travellers Cave - famous for poems written on the walls by three early tourists in 819.
Before we get to the gorges proper, we pass by the site of the 3-gorges dam. The preliminary ground work is almost completed and soon work will begin on the coffer dams as the structure is built. The height of the dam is 185m, and we were told this is raising the water level to 175m, an increase of 100m, though I have seen a New Civil Engineer article that says the level will rise a lot higher than that. The length of the subsequent lake has been estimated at something between 500-600km.
Along the river to come there are markers on the hillside indicating the 175m proposed water level, and it is very clear that in some places the beauty and outlook/appearance will change significantly, as homes and farms are flooded. I just hope they’ve told everyone.
The gorge as a whole is made up of numerous named gorges after some feature that can be seen (with a lot of imagination), such as Yellow Cat Gorge (yellow cat-shaped rocks on the riverside), Lantern Shadow Gorge and Bright Moon Gorge.
We then pass the Huangling Temple - a temple featured on many finger painted, and otherwise painted, drawings. All of these paintings seem to have the temple looking isolated beneath the towering cliffs, and tend to miss out all the built up area surrounding it.
Next comes the Kongling Gorge, the romantic sounding Ox Liver and Horse Lungs Gorge, Rice Granary Gorge and finally the Military Books and Precious Sword Gorge (don’t these names just roll off the tongue).
We finish at Xiang Xi (fragrant stream) home of the Han-dynasty heroine Wang Zhaojun.
All along the gorges we encounter rapids in the river with little whirlpools swirling like hundreds of plug holes with water running down them.
With all these features available it was a pity that the tour guide didn’t point them out, even though she didn’t seem to stop talking for the whole 4 hours (half of which was in Chinese)
With the early morning delay due to fog we are unable to pass through the Wu Ling Gorge in daylight, so the boat moors close to Badong ready for an early start tomorrow.
After dinner we spend the rest of daylight hours on the balcony watching the Yangste go by.
Go to Wu Ling Gorge, the Lesser Gorges and Qutang Gorge
Copyright © 1997 Andrew J White