After my late night last night I get up about 10 today. I'm going to make my own way to the terracotta warriors today, bus is 7, then 150 for entry. I have heard mixed reports on how good it is, but it is one of those things you have to see. By the time I get myself together I'm walking out of the hostel at about 11.30, the half hour walk to the station, queue up and refund my ticket that i bought yesterday. I get 95% back, so i lost £1 for being an idiot. After this I head to the right and I find the bus and I'm on. Easy. Once the bus starts moving a conductor comes up and collects the money. Journey only takes about an hour.
-----
I get left in a car park and just guess as to what way to go due to no signs, the usual in China. I follow the shops, probably the best plan. There are then a few signs for the ticket office though they end up leading me round in circles, but not to the ticket office. I find a map which highlights the ticket office is at the start, so back down I go and get my ticket. I decide not to opt for the audio tour because I know it will be in Chinglish! Which is impossible to understand. As I walk back up to the main gate, I pass through a fully developed village, full of shops an people running up to me offering me every type of terracotta merchandise for $1, I'm not interested. Pass through the usual security, bag checks and ticket validation before it opens up to a walkway towards the main excavation sights. There are 3 pits with pit 1 the largest, and pit 3 the smallest. Each pit has been covered with a hanger and has been fully tourist pimped! I decide to go to pit 3 first and finish on the largest.
-----
Inside you walk in way above the pit, then you can walk to the railings and look down. There are pictures all round and various rooms where they will take your photo in front of a mock up terracotta army. No thanks. So the history is that the first emperor of china built the army and gave them real weapons, so that when he died he would have an army to protect him in the next life. That's why they were all buried. Apparently 700,000 odd people worked on the building of them, when they were done they were all killed presumably so that they could not reveal the location of the army. This pit is quite small and includes the excavation of soldiers and horses. On to pit 2. Significantly larger than pit 3, and very poorly lit. There is not much to see in the pit, most o the excavated warriors are damaged and smashed. Off to one side they have a museum like area where there are fully restored warriors and horses. Obviously this section is packed, Chinese taking photos everywhere! Finally on to pit 3. Now this is huge! Aircraft hanger proportions. When you first enter there is the photo opportunity to see the warriors face on, but as usual there are 100s of Chinese in the way, I'll catch that on the way back. As I walk around the perimeter you get a real sense of just how many of these warriors there are. I am not feeling the wow factor I though I would, instead it is the human insanity that is intriguing me the most. The emperor really believed he would have an army in the after life. Madness. There are some really good examples of well excavated warriors here. What always annoys me about these places is that you are never able to get the photo that you see in brochures. They are always taken from a vantage point that is off limits to tourists. As I'm walking round I bump in to the Swedes, so we walk round the rest of the pit together. They opted for the audio guide, as I suspected, a waste of time. As I get back to the front I spot a space for a photo, but it's too late, Chinese people right in there. I wait patiently behind and watch as this woman takes 14 of the same shot. Then continues to stand there while she looks at them all. I wonder how the Chinese coped before the digital camera? Did the always carry 20 rolls of film, just so they could get 100 shots of the same thing?
-----
After the pits we head to the exhibition hall, I have no idea what's inside but might as well have a look now I'm here. Turns out to be iron sculptors and smaller artefacts that had been excavated. Then there was a whole section telling how they had built the hangers over the pits and the various buildings. Oddly what was missing was how they went about the excavation, and the techniques they used. Tours are clearly the way to go here, I think we are only one of a few that are not in a tour. Not that I'm too worried. We head back down through the many shops and back to the bus. I sleep all the way home.
-----
The Swedes invite me out for dinner, but they are heading to an Indian, and I'm not really feeling that. So we part ways and plan to meet in Chengdu for another mountain. I get back to the hostel about 7 and get a shower and relax. I do some blog and photo work. I arrange to meet Catherine tomorrow morning to see about my train ticket and then I head to bed.