Carrying bike up mountain gives you long life

On saturday the 27th we got up early to go for a hike up a valley in a mountainous area near Xi'an. The advice given to people not enjoying the short drive up the start of the valley was to close your eyes but we have done this many times before.

The first thing you noticed was the air... it was clean mountain filtered air. The air quality in Xi'an is terrible, adding a ghostly quality to distant buildings, but here the mist was genuine 100% water vapour mist.

The second thing you noticed was how beautiful the area was.


















The third thing was that the toilet consisted of two walls about 5 and a half feet high; presumably they hadn't seen a James when they designed them.

The walk was lovely, with pictures to proove it. Chinese people seem to hike in very large groups and about a quarter of them seem to be carrying bikes with them. Whether this is extra excercise or just because they don't trust anywhere to tie them up at the base of the walk was unclear.