Today I visited Kanbula National Park, which is a place unlike any I have ever visited before. Although the park itself is very big, the Chinese are busy creating a tourist spot out of the main feature of the park - the geology and the lake. The Chinese have adopted their usual brute force approach to tourism but on this occasion it actually works. The park is about 48 square kilometres and is basically a chunk of mountains surrounding the very large and deep lake. The mountains go straight down to the lake. The basic idea of the tourist spot is to carve a road round the lake, and drive buses round three quarters of the lake, coming down to a boat to cross the lake. The last bit of the road and the boat trip are not yet in place, but are likely to be within weeks. As the mountains plunge straight into the lake, which has been formed by a hydroelectric scheme and dam, that for about 25 years was the largest in China, this means carving the road up and over the mountains. At present the bus journey starts in the car park at an altitude of about 2200 metres. It then goes up and up. The road has 20 kph speed limit signs very frequently. These are redundant given that there is an alpine style 180o turn every 300 metres or so; at the higher levels, the buses engine is labouring due to lack of oxygen; there are multiple minor rockfalls left over from the coming of spring; and the driver has to swing very wide to properly attack the blind bends, and there is some two way traffic.
On the initial part of the journey I had been trying to estimate how high we were, and how high we were getting. My figures were generally higher than those quoted, as I have been able to calibrate my estimates against those in guidebooks. My estimates were based on the apparent distance we had climbed from Xining; the fact that we were higher than most of the surrounding terrain; and we appeared to be reaching the snow line, compared to mountains some distance away. Also at the first stop it appeared that some people were getting breathless on prolonged exertion, though not on minor exertion. Anyway at the first stop, a substantial viewing point, I realised that in getting out of the car I had managed to leave my camera in the car. It had fallen out of my travel bag as I sorted myself out. So all I had was my mobile phone. I had never used this as a camera before. The conditions were so bright that I could see neither the controls for the camera, nor the preview of the picture. So I had to press a few buttons at more or less random and see if I got any pictures, and if any of them were worthwhile. Not an ideal learning opportunity. This is from the mobile phone, but only after considerable manipulation of the colour balance to get it looking approximately like reality. I do think any camera would have had problems with colour balance - the colours were so unusual, and the sun so bright.
The problem with my phone was neither the start nor the end of the problems I encountered on this visit. When I arrived at the ticket office there was some kerfuffle involving my driver and his certification as a guide (either non-existant, or long out of date). As a consequence I was sent from one ticket window to another and back to the first. I still don't know what the exact issue was. Anyway, when they finally came to sell me a ticket, they asked for personal identification - so I produced my passport. On examination of this I got a pensioner's discount of 25% - a reduction from 137Rmb to 102Rmb - a saving of about £3.50, so worth having. However, I am obviously officially old in both England - my bus pass - and China.
Equally, when we got to the viewing spot, there were a whole series of walkways laid out, forming a circle and a natural walk to see the landscape. I walked this circle and returned to the bus. As I got near the bus one of the passengers was urging me to hurry to rejoin the bus. I thought nothing of this and we started off up hill again. However, when we got to the next stopping point, and I was as usual the last to leave the bus, every passenger (and only one of them, the Chinese guide for the Chinese group I was sharing the bus with, had any English) solemnly told me "20 minutes". They had obviously been briefed by the guide, and I had equally obviously overspent my time allotment at the previous stop. I had not been hurrying, nor dawdling, but just completing the circuit at what I thought a reasonable pace, and trying to get my mobile phone work as a camera.
Anyway, back to the colour balance problem. The lake was turquoise and curiously opaque - it was impossible to get any real impression of depth - though I later learnt it is about 32m deep. (Talking of real impression; my current lesson in Mandarin is about real and not real. As one example they use rocking horses, and real horses. So the lesson is very nearly, but not quite, about the metaphysical value of rocking horse shit.) One of the geological features - called in China red-cloud landforms - are very red. The whole landscape is vibrant with colour, and there is considerable wildlife - most of which I could hear, but not see. In order to get the pictures balanced, I had to add in a lot of green, and some red.
The bus ride continued to higher and higher vantage points, each turn of the road revealing new vistas of geological features, terrain and amazing beauty. We topped out at just over 4000m, where again there was a vantage point.
The hydroelectic scheme, and dam is big - the scheme capacity is 1.25GW. But oddly enough in forming the lake, near the headwaters of the Yellow River, it enhances the landscape, and makes it a very entrancing place indeed. If only all Chinese developments had this effect.