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The most common tourist trip on the Yangtse River is four days going down river, from Chong Qing to Wuhan. In mid July, 2000 we reversed that and got a slower boat that took five days to go up river (fine with us) and was less than half booked (fine with us). Everyday there would be a shore excursion of about 4 hours (either before lunch or after) and the rest of the day was spent on deck just looking or looking and talking or looking and reading.

Seeing the Gorges occupies just a few hours of the 100+ that we spent on the boat. Two of them are not overly impressive as narrow canyons, but the third (going upstream; the best came last) really is narrow and impressive. The boat had a hard time making its way up.

We really enjoyed our tour of the under-construction Three Gorges dam, which came early in the trip. It's very clear that the water won't flood the canyons — they are much too deep for that — but will instead convert that stretch of the Yangtze from a very rapidly flowing river into a long lake. Its beautiful the way it is and will undoubtedly be beautiful as a lake. Neither is better; they are just different.