A visit to a starkly beautiful place

Occasionally very nice things come your way.....i got to go on a trip for work to China to look at dimesion stone projects. This is the rock that gets used for buildings: marble for benchtops, granites for wall panels and that sort of thing. Chinese people have feelings for dimension stone and they use it beautifully. We could learn heaps from them.

We went to 2 truly outstanding provinces. The first was nearish to the 3 Gorges area (but not too close!) so the mountains were luscious and the river valleys very scenic indeed. Growing wild on the farms are the plants people now garden with: wild hydrangeas for example, campanulas, windflowers etc etc etc. ( If the quarry doesn't come off, the locals should run garden enthusiast tours!)

The 2nd place is up in the north: DunHuang. On the silk road. On the edge of the desert country. Like an oasis. In some ways it reminded me of Mildura of all places - lots of sand surrounding and blowing into the small city, but grapes growing all through the housing areas and crops of melons and greens. the local red grapes are ENORMOUS and very tasty......

Here is a view of one of the places we drove to, about 2hrs out of the city into an arid landscape that is a geology-mapping paradise: looks like 100% exposure, eh? and dykes run all over the place. The ground surface is actually frost shattered rock so it's not quite 100% exposure, but close....i'm loading the pictures on my flickr page bit by bit,

but here is a taster of this  fascinating landscape (sadly i could only take my little point'n'shoot camera and a lot of shots are from a moving car on really bumpy track....)

i wanna go back......with my camera and stay for a week. it's enthralling. the colours.........find the flickr link and browse :
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alicole-sydney/albums