Up Up and Away!

So where to next? Well, this time I took a little different route and went to East Asia. I went to the Big Country, also known as China. But when people think of China, they think of Beijing and the big city with all the pollution, which actually has been said to be a really big problem now, but I wanted to be different.
While I was there, I only visited two cities; one of which was considered more of a town than a city. The first city was Chengdu. Me and a few of my friends stayed there for only two days to be able to get settled and learn what we were going to be doing in the next city.
Chengdu is home to the biggest national Panda reserve in the world. Other than that, it is a fairy big city. Meaning, there are a lot of people in the city and a lot of cars. The first day we were there, it wasn't very evident that there was a lot of pollution because the sky wasn't that misty. But while we were driving up to our next destination, Songpan, the pollution really showed.
It wasn't as bad as picture you see online of Beijing and how bad the air pollution is, but it was definitely visible. Where I live, the pollution is still there, but it isn't that bad so it becomes visible.
When we arrived in Songpan, it was a totally different atmosphere. It was a small, really old, town in the mountains of the Eastern Himalayas. We were approximately about 9,500 feet in the mountains and we would go up even more later in the week.
Seeing the differences of these two places was quite drastic. It comes to show you that humans cause more damage than is visible. Like in Chengdu, there were a lot of cars and a lot of people, which created a lot of pollution. Then you get up to Songpan, and it's clear and fresh and there doesn't seem to be any pollution at all.
Going to China was amazing and I really hope I get to go back to the beautiful Himalayan Mountains someday.

Flooding Disaster in India

So recently I got back from India, yet another country that was on my bucket list. For some reason I've always wanted to explore India for its vast plains and humongous mountains, and I finally got to. Before I went there, I never realized how many environmental problems they have to face. Having two very large rivers located in India, many floods happen.
Whenever I go to a new country, I like to experience it two ways: the urban way and the rural way. So that's exactly what I did. When I first got there I spent about a week exploring the major cities in India and even getting to see the Taj Mahal. Once I was done with that I got to go to the rural side of things, which personally is my favorite thing to do because I view it as seeing a little bit of the past. The local people have been living like this for centuries and even though some things have definitely changed, there are some things that haven't.
I got to choose where I was going to base and I chose Lahore. I wanted to see what it was like living right on the river and how the people there went about their daily life. I had never known about the real struggles until I went. Because of monsoons and dams built on rivers, flooding happens way too often. This leaves crops flooded and no water for the people to drink. I hope to find a way that the Indian people will not have to deal with this problem for much longer.