We were looking for a trip where we could experience China as it was, without the artificial air of a packaged tour, but were honest on our limitations. Neither Sir S or myself felt that we could learn to read or speak Mandarin with enough confidence to allow us to trek unguided across the country but wanted to see the most we could without sticking to the traditional tourist route. Intrepid Tours proved to be our saviour. They boasted travel leaders rather than guides, taking small groups of people through exotic locations that circumvented the traditional tourist routes to give the true cultural experience of China. The idea was simple, the Tour leader would book our accommodation, coordinate our transport and leave the rest to us. There would be options for activities but these were not mandatory.
We booked ourselves into the Grand China Traverse, heralded as an invigorating and culturally immersive trek west from Beijing across the backbone of China, up to the Tibetan plateau in Sichuan, down to Chengdu and into the lush provinces of Guangxi to end in Hong Kong. With a physical grading of three elephants, we were sold.
We booked our trip in early 2002 and waited eagerly for October to come around. I headed off to the UK for 6 months, returning to Australia two weeks before our trip armed with a back pack, and a basic misunderstanding of Mandarin. I hunkered down with Sir S in his Potts Point abode to await the day we flew out and discussed the myriad of sites we would be seeing. This, we were infomred by the Intrepid office, was the last tour they ran in the year until Spring in the following March as the Winters in China brought freezing temperatures and heavy snow to the mountains in the Sezchuan province.
This was going to be exciting.
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