Hike in Panda Habitat

Family Cooking Class at the Beginning

We just completed a wonderful trip with Jaffar and Katrina from USA. This trip started from picking up them from Chengdu East Train Station. Our first program is our family cooking program. We took Jaffar and Katrina to a local family where our family cook would teach them how to cook some popular Chinese food they had picked. The food chosen by Jaffar and Katrina for their cooking class are Mapo Doufu, Spicy Beef, Fish-flavored Eggplant, Sweet-and Sour Pork Rib. We started our cooking program by a visit to a local food market where we see various vegetables, meet, cooking ingredients. After that we went to a local family and learn how to cook the food they have picked. The cooking class lasted for about 3 hours. They took notes of the steps and ingredients for each dish. Our cook explained to them why we would cook in this way instead of another. After every dish was cooked, they took photo and sampled them. They were amazed how those raw vegetable they had seen in the market soon turned into a delicious meal through the master hand of our cook. After enjoying palatable meal in which they fully participated, we drove them back to the hotel and rest. 
 

 
1.Sweet & Sour Pork Rib
2.Fish-Flavored Egg Plant
3.Spicy Pork
4.Mapo Doufu

   
Volunteer in Panda Base
Next morning, we met Jaffar and Katrina in the hotel lobby at 7:00. I took the boxed breakfast from the front desk and we drove toward Dujiangyan Panda Ark of China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda. We are going to spend the morning in the panda ark doing volunteer.  We arrived there about 1.5 hours later. According to their new policy, guide can no longer go with the clients during their volunteering. After volunteering we drove on to the panda habitat in the north of Sichuan Province. We are going to spend the following 3 days hiking the reserve. 
 
Hiking in Panda Habitat
In the following three days, we hiked in different valleys of the panda habitat. In this season it is already very difficult to see pandas because all the trees have their lush leaves. Even the panda scats I saw in my previous trip in early Spring have disappeared because of the rain water. We have to constantly checked the leeches. In the raining days, they became very active. Our ranger guide checked the infra-cameras and, we saw lots of animals recorded by the infra-camera including tons of Takins, Golden Snub-nosed Monkeys, Temminik’s Tragopan, and some panda photos..We had different weather for the following three days. We have seen lots of beautiful birds, mammals, flowers and natural scenery. Following are the pictures we took during the hike.

Visit to Confucius Shrine after hotpot lunch on the way
On the last day, we left our guesthouse in the morning. On the way, we paid a visit to a mushroom farm to see how local people grow mushroom and know the land system in China, the role it played in the past and challenges it faces now. Around lunch time, we arrived Jiangyou city. We chose a local hotpot restaurant to try the famous Sichuan hot pot. We picked dual favor hotpot with half of the soup spicy and half none-spicy so that both Jaffar and Katrina can enjoy it. After hot pot, we drove on to Deyang and visit one of the three largest Confucius Shrine in China. Inside the gigantic architectures, I introduced the shrine, Confucius ideas, its influences to whole China in the past 2500 years and positive impact over the world peace in the future as well as the relations between Buddhism, Taoism and Confucism. After visiting this great site, we drove on to Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport from where they fly to Hangzhou. 

Some flowers we saw during our hike,

1.Pleione bulbocodioides
2.Aquilegia yabeana
3.Syringa komarowii
4.Vicia cracca

Some birds we saw during the trip,

1.Golden Pheasant (Male)
2.Temminck’s Tragopan (Female)
3.Brown Dipper
4.Crimpson-breasted Woodpecker