Exploring the Edge: Hiking in Southwestern China (Adventure Travel Book 1)

Whether you want an adventure in China or just a good read, this is the book for you! Follow the author as she hikes up mountains, through bamboo forests, along gorges, around lakes, and even to a glacier. Relive her independent travel experience – from bus rides to Buddhist monasteries.

You have merely to fly to Chengdu, Sichuan, to explore these hikes for yourself. They are all accessible from Chengdu by car, bus, train, or airplane. It is when you depart this garden city that you begin to understand how vast China is. Its mountains are higher, its canyons are deeper, its people are more diverse, its rivers are scary.

Much of this you can only see from behind the window of a vehicle. But finally you reach the trailhead and begin to walk. Now you see the small things – the flowers, the crops, the animals – juxtaposed with the abyss or the pinnacle. And in between the big and the small is you – the hiker, learning where you fit into the grand spectacle.

In China, others have come before you. Here and there, they have enhanced the beauty of the natural world by constructing a temple or a pavilion. Elsewhere they have built hotels and cable cars to allow others to see the natural wonders.

Through 54 photographs, the author shows you what she saw when hiking in Southwestern China. The same sights are still there, but a different experience awaits each person who ventures forth to see them.