The last World Heritage Site I saw during my one week trip in Chengdu was the famed Sichuan Panda Sanctuaries, home of pandas but also one of the most stunning landscapes in China. While most of tourists came to Chengdu to see Pandas in bleeding center, I had no interest to see this cute animal at all as I already saw them many of times in China, in Netherlands and in US. At first I planned to visit the listed area in Qingchengshan as Els did, but at the end I decided to take 2 days tour to Siguniang Mountains instead after saw its stunning travel brochure. Early morning from my hotel, a local guide with his car came and picked me up and then we drive directly to Siguniang Mountains. Then I noticed that the route did pass Dujiangyan which I visited yesterday and the famed city of Wolong where Panda Center located. In the afternoon, the view of mountain range was more and more beautiful while the road became more and more hairpin, I had to told driver to stop many times to take stunning photos.

At last I was arrived the villages of Changping and Rilong which were the gate of Siguniang in the evening, the view of mountain was incredible and impressive like Canadian Rocky Mountains plus the Dolomite and Grand Teton Range! The color of grassland in the valley were changing by the sunset with small Tibetan pagoda on the top of the hill, I felt I was in Shangri-la. The villages were also amazing with Tibetan architecture, but these buildings were actually new and built to replace old villages after earthquake. In the next morning, I entered the Siguniang; the entry fee including transportation was 90 RMB, very cheap compared to other World Heritage Site. I had to use park minivan as private vehicle was not allowed. Inside the park was full of pine forest and lovely lakes. While I was at one Tibetan Temple inside the park, my guide told me the legend of a giant wanted to marry four daughters of a village chief, so the giant killed their father and attacked the village. Four daughters ran away into the forest to hide from giant, with god help, they were covered with ice and snow and transformed to mountain ranges called Siguniangshan which means mountain of four ladies. There also was a wishing lake that could grant wishes if put hand into the very cold water and pray!

After lunch time, I started my journey back to Chengdu. The whole trip did remind me the US road trip I had earlier in the same year without modern tourist facilities; for example, western style toilet and proper gas station! But it was a great trip and worthwhile to see stunning landscape. The closest comparison maybe the Three Parallel Rivers in Yunnan, these two sites had many similarities with stunning snowcapped mountain range and Tibetan culture, but from my experience, Siguniang seemed to be more untouched than the one in Yunnan, but this possibly was a result of devastated earthquake which destroyed many villages and turned the area to be unpopulated. By the way, without panda, Sichuan Panda Sanctuaries especially Siguniang Mountains is already a great sight to see and another impressive natural world heritage site of China.