Journey to Chengdu……. the icon land of Pandas

Giant Pandas are a cultural icon of china. Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, Sichuan attracts thousands of visitors every day of the year. For me and to my wife it was a long term dream waiting to see the snuggling of cute Pandas in their habitat.  Only I read lot and seen pictures of Panda’s style of living and their habits.   

I have been since my younger days attracted to the following sayings that “Better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times” .

I could translate these golden words into reality when I decided to join the ten days guided group tour program along with my wife to China organized by Kesari Group Tours from Bengaluru, India.

Our Tour Team

Our thirty tour member crew has rare composition of members coming from different professional backgrounds. Chronologically we had rare combination of a 15 months old baby girl to 77 years old young man. All had one travel dream that to discover life styles of China.

 Our journey to Chengdu was by speed train from Xian. On 24^th April, 2019 all set our best foot into Chengdu Panda base.

We all preferred to walk through simply not minding a long distance to cover to get the royal views of Pandas in action. Lush green bamboo Forest Park is well paved and one does not find any difficulty to wander around the lush green area.

 The weather was sunny and comfortable. Otherwise one can take a shuttle to go around that vast area. Our team members found it easy to walk around by ourselves following the sign map posted in English.

It was indeed fun to watch the snuggling of pandas and also a thrill to notice their eating style of bamboo sticks. Visitors will find large, outdoor enclosures. It was indeed a thrill to watch adorable pandas of different age playing, snoozing or laying on their bamboo platforms.

One will not miss to watch snoozing action of red pandas in the center.

The center promotes the importance of educational tourism on Pandas. One should not miss to visit on-site museum over there and surely you will learn hundreds of interesting panda facts.

Some references:

Chengdu – Wiki travel…….

Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, Sichuan

Our team returned with full satisfaction and conversing with each other that how“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”   With an air of satisfaction members of our team boarded the coach to next tour destination point.

What one would never forget is the quote of victor Hugo on the exit area.

On my way back to our coach I was loudly recollecting the words of Bourdain “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts; it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” – Anthony Bourdain