Early morning start, with a 7am breakfast on board Huaxia Goddess and then off at 8am on a tour of the Tribe of Three Gorges.

The tour offered an immersive experience of the Three Gorges culture and breathtaking scenery of the original Xiling Gorge.

It proved to be one of the most charming scenic spots in the Tribe of the Three Gorges.

The original village has been restored with stilted houses by the river, built by local people, many of whom are from the ethnic minority group, Tujia.

The local villagers recreated scenes from their past. Fishing boats were rowed into view and manoeuvred to show how they fished.

Young girls performed a traditional dance with their umbrellas, which made for a truly beautiful scene against the backdrop.

As we walked up a tributary, we came across more scenes of original village life with old fishing nets and boats moored up.

The scenery was captivating and we were pleased to have made the decision to join this additional tour which we’d had to pay extra for.

Along the Longjin Brook, there is the Brook-side Village, where we found young girls washing clothes in a traditional way, and a girl in red holding a red umbrella standing in the front of wooden sailboat.

The Chinese have made this place very popular and as we worked our way around, other tourist groups joined us as we made our way to a waterfall and area frequented by forest Macaque monkeys.

The scenery, with the green mountains covered by mist against the clear water, creates a beautiful magical landscape.

We stopped to take a paddle in the mountain water which whilst cool was crystal clear and awash with small schools of fish.

Further up the path we walked past old bridges across the small river along with traditional homes and shops.

The path along the banks of the river enabled us to snake along the base of the gorge.

As we got to the end of the path we came across a ‘dragon’ shaped waterfall and stopped to watch a family of monkeys who had gathered to watch our arrival.

The scenery in and around the tributary was spectacular and we felt privileged to be able to see a part of China few get to visit.

On our way back we were entertained with a show by the village actors. They told a story about the marriage of one of the local girls to a young man (for comedy effect they picked Jamie in our group to take on the role). The performance was entertaining and thankfully short, as we were sat out in the midday sun with temperatures hitting 39c.

Once back at the main Yangtze River we took a couple of final photos of the gorge and surrounding mountain range, before we returned to our boat for a brief respite and a spot of lunch.

After a filling lunch back on the boat, we headed out again on a tour of the Three Gorges Dam.

This is the world’s largest power station in terms of installed capacity.  The level of outcome varies depending on the time of year and whether it’s the wet or dry season. Currently the water levels are low and some 20m below its optimal height.

The views across the canals that were formed to allow the boats to detour around the dam and move up the river.

The development & scale of the Three Gorges Dam is immense and took over 16 years to complete. Not only did they dam the full width of the powerful river (almost 300m in width) they cut through rock to form wide canals enough to allow 6 boats to move through at one time.

Despite this the usage of the river is such, that they have already breached capacity and have decided to build another canal system through a nearby mountain which is due to be completed in 10yrs time!

We got the chance to walk around the dam ‘park’ and view it from above and also up close from one side. To see the scale of this project is incredible and something that the government achieved in a relatively short period of time. Its effects have not all been positive with over 1.5m people displaced. Several cities and towns were relocated to enable the river levels to be increased to their current depth of 110m, an increase in parts of over 60m.

In addition the fish population was depleted and there is currently a total ban on fishing for the next 10yrs to enable the numbers to grow again.

After a full day of sightseeing we returned early evening to the boat.

Post dinner we were invited to a welcome party from the staff and crew which led to some interesting dancing and music that took us back to kids’ parties in the early 1980’s.

Tomorrow we up early again, at 6.30am to watch as we pass by the Second Gorge and later on a tour to the Lesser Three Gorges.