Maria's blog

In order to make your China travel more convenient and enjoyable, and to limit confusion that may arise due to the time differences between China and other countries, the following outlines WindhorseTour's hours of availability.

Recently, I have fielded many questions regarding documentation required for overland travel between Lhasa and Kathmandu. Here, I will  give an overview of the necessary permits and paperwork.

Spring is coming to Chengdu, and many of the regions' beautiful flowers are in full blossom. If you have plans to come to Sichuan, China, in March or April, plan a little extra time to have your photos taken with the beautiful blooms and take in the fresh spring Sichuan air!

Are you familiar with the image to the right? These days, the golden Sun Bird crest seems to be finding almost limitless artistic life in the fields of sculpting, painting, and other arts and crafts, as well as popping up in many other noteworthy places - during the 2005 Shenzhou VI spacecraft mission, a piece of Shu embroidery with this symbol was carried into space; on August 16, 2008, it officially…

In order to celebrate China's 2012 Spring Festival, the Jinsha Site Museum put on the Chengdu Jinsha Sun Festival, which showcased local Chinese lanterns and a vivid lighting atmosphere.My brother and I came to the Jinsha Site Museum in the evening, like many of the locals do, because the display is most interesting when the many different colors of lights and lanterns shine brightly in the dark. There…

After a memorable 10 hour bus ride (part 1 of this post) up into the mountains of northern Sichuan, my friends and I finally made it to our destination: beautiful Jiuzhaigou Park in the heart of winter. The next morning, we awoke in our hotel to find that everywhere we looked was white and snow flakes were still falling! We could not wait to visit Jiuzhaigou Park!

In anticipation of this year's New Year holiday, my friends and I decided that it would be a fantastic opportunity for a three-day road trip to see the beautiful Jiuzhaigou and Huanglong parks. As a bonus, we opted to take the bus for the scenery as we rose into the mountains on the 10 hour trip.

When we stepped out of our car near Yamdrok Lake in Tibet, what surprised me the most was not the imposing snow-capped Himalayan mountains or the vibrant blue alpine lake, but a group of strange, huge, black dogs! I was bitten by a dog when I was young, so obviously I hesitated to touch them when they came up to sniff my clothes, and in fact, (I am a little embarrassed to admit) I screamed and asked their…

The National Day of the People's Republic of China (Chinese:国庆, pinyin: guóqìng jié) is celebrated every year on October 1. The reason we celebrate it on October 1 is because our country was founded on October 1, 1949 with a ceremony at Tiananmen Square.

A legend about Jiuzhaigou Vally goes like this. Long, long ago one deity of mountain named Dago had a crush on the goddess Semo. One day he gave a mirror that was made from wind and cloud to Semo. Unfortunately, the devil appeared and cast his covetous eyes on the mirror. During the flight, the mirror slide from Semo’s hands which was broken into 114 pieces, then they fell down to earth and turned in to…