Yangtze River Cruise - Three gorges dam

After a bullet train ride from Chengdu, we arrive for our 4 night cruise on the Yangtze River aboard the Victoria Isabella. This is a chance for us to slow down a bit and only do a morning or afternoon tour each day. We only chose one optional tour on the first day (day 2), which was to the tribes of the three Gorges. This was an attractive stroll up the Xiling Gorge with the opportunity to capture idyllic photographs of the scenery, rhesus monkeys, and tribes people fishing etc. (This however was just a setup for the tourists). There was also a rather humorous show called the crying wedding performance. We have discovered that putting our photos through chatGPT can remove the crowds and improve the picture. This was especially important for our afternoon tour of the Three Gorges Dam as I used it to remove the ever present haze.

Three Gorges Dam is the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. Commenced in 1994 and completed in 2009, it is 2335m long and 185m high. The dam raised the river level to 175m above sea level, making a 600km long reservoir and its purpose is for flood control, electricity, navigation and irrigation. To navigate through the lochs in 5 steps, the process takes about 4 hours, with each Loch holding up to 4 large ships. For smaller boats, there is a boat lift which only takes 40 minutes. They are in the process of constructing another loch system to speed up the flow of river traffic. All the photos have been enhanced to remove the haze, except the last one which gives you an idea of what we saw.Read more