20250920 Saturday, September 20, 2025 Chengdu Pandas, Tibetan Plateau

20250920 Saturday, September 20, 2025 Chengdu Pandas, Tibetan Plateau

The breakfast at the Ritz Carlton was as nice a breakfast buffet as you could ever ask for. Our luggage was gathered up and we boarded our bus while our checked bags took a truck ride to the Chengdu Airport to be processed and checked in on our behalf as tickets were issued for our flights to Tibet. 

We drove through Chengdu to something called Panda Base, which is a huge complex built to save Pandas from extinction in the late 1980’s when their numbers had dropped to under 1900. This may have been in part due to changes in the environment that affected the bamboo species they are dependent on, along with destruction of habitat. While there is fossil evidence of Pandas once having lived over a wider area of Asia, in modern times, their existence has been limited to Sichuan Province in China. 

It might also be in part due to the species’ peculiar mating habits. Pandas are solitary creatures and apparently have a mating season of 2 days. I’m not sure how that got figured out, but one if Panda Base’s main missions in addition to rescuing Pandas is to breed them and expand the population beyond what would be naturally achievable. This is primarily done through artificial insemination. 

The wild population is still under 1200 but including captive giant pandas, the total current population is 2800.

Our tour of the Panda Base started with an electric cart ride to the top of the hill at the center of the complex where the youngest Pandas are raised. We didn’t see any “baby” Giant Pandas aside from photos on the walls, but there were several adults visible in their outdoor enclosures. We then walked down hill around several Giant Panda villas, which are more enclosures with individuals. 

Most were doing what Pandas do best- sleep, but a couple were wandering around and one was eating. There was one enclosure that appeared to have two younger Pandas in it. 

The Panda base was crowded in places, specifically anywhere an active Panda was visible, but it wasn’t as crowded or hot as it was in Beijing Zoo’s Panda exhibit. And there were many more Panda in Chengdu than in Beijing. 

Our last stop was an area where Red Pandas were kept. These aren’t bears, but very cute. It’s like if you crossed a Giant Panda with a raccoon and dyed it reddish brown. One enclosure had a pair that wrestled playfully for a while before going back to eating. 

We had lunch at a Chengdu restaurant with a family styled meal. As far as meals we have had in China during this trip, I would say it was comparable to the dinner we had in Shanghai before the Acrobatic show- sufficient but disappointing. The food was pretty bland, generally Luke warm, and nothing that would be characteristically Sichuan style.

 
Then it was time to head to the airport where we were reunited with our passports. To our disappointment, many couples were again sprinkled randomly through the cabin, although a few couples did manage to get assigned adjacent seats. We were in the same row but separated by 3 seats. We were fortunately able to have someone swap their middle seat for an aisle seat so that we could sit together on this flight. 
This Sichuan Airlines A330 had seat back entertainment displays but no standard head phone jacks to plug into. There were only the proprietary two prong airline headset jacks. But it was just a 2 hr flight. There was a beverage service and a noodle snack. 

Lhasa airport has some very dramatic surroundings, and after we landed, we were greeted by a rainbow. 

 
There was a strange Tibetan immigrations ritual in which we had to disembark our bus and walk through the immigrations terminal.  Our passports had been presented by our guides so we just walked straight through the building without even stopping.  Meanwhile, we presume our bus was subject to some sort of inspection, but it couldn’t have been that thorough because by the time we had walked through the immigrations building, our bus was pulling up and we just piled back in.

  
The Lhasa airport is like Ulaanbaatar’s in that it is a surprisingly long distance from the actual city.  It took 40 minutes to drive from the airport into the city. Much of the surroundings looked a bit like the high country in Wyoming.  There were a surprising number of cattle visible grazing in fields of barley, which is the main agricultural product.  

We learned that Tibetans are given preferential admissions to Chinese colleges. Tibetans can achieve a test score of 100 points lower than a student from Beijing, and be able to attend China’s most prestigious schools.  Young people who go to college rarely return to Tibet, so it’s hard to imagine how the traditional Tibetan culture will survive.  

As we drove past one hillside, we noticed it was covered with painted short white ladders.  That seemed like an odd sort of graffiti.  It turns out that it can be a common practice to hire someone to paint such a ladder in a auspicious place like a sacred mountain to appease the spirits and ease one’s ascension in the world, whether it be in social or economic ranking. 

 
The city of Lhasa seemed quite a bit smaller than Ulaanbaatar, but the Palace is a landmark that is hard to miss.  It is right in the center of the valley. 

 
We arrived at the St Regis Hotel Lhasa around 6:30pm and got settled into our rooms.  The rooms are huge with an excessively large bathroom suite.  The furniture and fixtures are a bit worn, but functional.  It is certainly a nice enough business class hotel, but not quite up to the Shangri-La in Ulaanbaatar, Andaz in Xiamen, or Ritz Carlton Chengdu. But we will spend 3 nights here, so we might even unpack a few things from our suitcases.  One feature the St Regis has that the other hotels don’t is an onsite physician to help guests manage high altitude illnesses and an in room oxygen concentrator.  However, the oxygen generator is equipped with a ridiculously short nasal cannula, and only one cannula can be hooked up to the generator at a time.  A splitter would have been cheap and easy to provide so that both guests in the room could sleep with oxygen.

The only thing on tonight’s agenda was the hotel’s dinner buffet.  This had a wide selection of western, Asian and Tibetan foods with several curries and Thai styled salads.  

Ben did use his Apple Watch to check his O2 saturation and was shocked that it was only 83%.  His Apple Watch also said we were at an altitude of 11,900 ft, which is the highest we have ever spent the night. Tomorrow we visit a temple and work on continuing our acclimatization before we attempt to tackle the Palace.