Four Sisters to a Thousand Towers: Siguniang to Danba (4K POV)

Leaving Rilong town with the Four Sisters at its back - Mount Siguliang, four peaks above six thousand metres, the tallest of them a granite pyramid that mountaineers took seventy years finally to stand on - the road gives up its altitude gladly. What follows is a hundred minutes of downhill valley: the G350 following the Xiaojinchuan river through country that starts as high pasture and ends as deep, warm gorge. Xiaojin county town sits where the valley widens, and the history here is heavier than the scenery. Just east of town, at Dawei, the front armies of the Long March met in June 1935, on a wooden bridge over the river this road spends the whole day following. The valley walls carry watchtowers older than any of that - the first hints of what Danba does with stone. Danba itself is the payoff. The Dajinchuan and Xiaojinchuan rivers meet here, and the Dadu River officially begins; the slopes opposite the town hold clusters of ancient towers, several hundred years old, dense enough that the county is called a land of a thousand of them, and the hillside village of Jiaju was named the most beautiful village in China by Chinese National Geography. The morning had run overcast in the high valley; by the last half hour the sky was giving the gorge a soft occasional rain, which the green hillsides wore without complaint. Filmed from the driver's seat on a DJI Pocket 4 in 4K in real time, with the original sound as recorded. Route questions or corrections: tkchang1949@gmail.com 📖 Routes, altitudes, weather windows and gear notes for every drive — written up on my site: https://travelwithtk.com #Danba #MountSiguniang #Sichuan #TibetanPlateau #POVDrive #4KDrive #ChinaRoadTrip