We made it to Yichang in the early evening after a pretty cramped and uncomfortable five hours bus ride; a further one hour bus ride was ahead of us – but only after a three hours wait for no reason at the bus terminal …

Finally getting to the boat did not really lift the spirits; it turned out we were booked on a cruise boat for Chinese domestic tourists – rooms were basic, bath rooms questionable, other facilities basically not existing – all accompanied by clouds of cigarette smoke infesting the boat …

We made the best out of the situation and put on our 白酒 goggles 😉

Saturday was an early day … wakeup at 05:30 (with Chinese traditional music piped throughout the ship), breakfast at 06:00 (see comment below) and leaving for excursion at 07:00.

We changed to small boats to get into the smaller side arms of the river. It is amazing to see how the dam has actually changed the surroundings – and how the changes are continuing.

We once more moved into smaller boats – we had reached the tourist attraction. We were moved further upstream – to the point when our boat drivers actually had to get out and pull the boats …

The afternoon saw us cruising through the big gorges; in the late afternoon we stopped to visit a temple on an island (I would love to add the name here, the ticket however is in Chinese only …).

Food was included during the cruise, though after breakfast on Saturday the expectations were pretty low (breakfast basically consisted out of a variety of tasteless things – most of us barely touched it) – however both lunch and dinner (below photo from dinner) turned out quiet edible, basic though …

After dinner we went for an improvised group party on the outside deck close to our cabins.

We made it back to the port near Yichang in the early Sunday afternoon, we finally got back to Wuhan around 20:00.