“The Buddha in grotto 13 is suffering from various levels of decay, as is the colourful plaster on the backing of his cave, most of which is gone – a little to the original is visible in the top right of this image. During carving, the large right arm of the Buddha needed support hence the need to carve a smaller Buddha.”
“The 50m-high structure is propped up on long oak stilts anchored to the ledges below & supported by crossbeams with the main supportive structure hidden inside the bedrock.”
“Rather surprisingly, I had received a lot of negative Terracotta Army feedback from fellow travellers prior to arriving in the city. The words ‘disappointment’ & ‘overrated’ were bandied about quite a bit, as were the words ‘boring’ & ‘avoid’. I’m glad I didn’t avoid them as I found the Terracotta Army anything but boring. In fact, I found them fascinating.”
“It wasn’t easy, but I eventually secured a basic berth in an even more basic 6-berth dorm on a public ferry that I shared with 5 Chinese travellers, none of which had so much as a word of English. It was an interesting time.”
“…odd creatures; bear like, with carnivore’s teeth and a digestive tract poorly adapted to their largely vegetarian diet, very like the Australian Koala which, of course, isn’t a bear at all.”
“I spent a bit of time at the summit attempting to appreciate the views, if not adequately photograph them, and cursing all those high heel-wearing day trippers I saw getting off the cable car. Oh China.”
“… every cloud has a silver lining, or two silver linings in this case, as I was reacquainted with my essentials & I got to spend one more night of solitude among the the extreme stepped rice terraces of the Longji mountains.”