[tony d]

Paulm asked about my pictures of china in my wild about the world gallery. My wife and I travelled in Feb 2006 with "The Travel Collection", a subsidiary of Kuoni( the budget end of the company!) The original itinerary was for nine days ending at the panda reserve at Wolong but we also opted for an extension of five days (two in X'ian to see the terracotta army) and three in Beijing.
We started in Hong Kong, having flown from Manchester via Amsterdam. We had two nights in HK then were met by our first rep who escorted us by train to Guangzhou (formerly Canton) From there we flew to Guilin for two nights then by boat to Yangshou down the Li River for two more nights , then flew to Chengdu for a further two nights. From Chengdu we went by minibus to the giant panda reserve at Wolong. It was -5degrees and snowing at the reserve but we had a wonderful time there. We then stayed overnight at the Wolong Hotel which has no heating or hot water - the only way to keep warm was to go to bed with an electric blanket- we even ate our meals with hats, coats and gloves on!
From there we moved on by air to X'ian for two nights and then finally to Beijing for the last three nights of the holiday.
The whole trip was excellently organised and I would recommend The Travel Collection to anyone (We had been to Cuba with them the previous year and that too was excellent.
Sorry, paul but I don't know what was in the cave as we were only passing by boat!