This was a superb trip, the purpose of which was principally to assist Christine Budke (previously a PhD student at the Vet College, Dublin) with her field work. She has been looking at the occurrence of the fox parasite Echinococcus multilocularis in the dog population of Western China. Christine is one member of a larger research group called TransEch looking into this parasite. They have a website at: www.ties.salford.ac.uk/transech/
My trip ended up being divided into 3 parts. The first involved visiting Chinese alligator breeding centres. This was a planning exercise by the French portion of the contingent for a future project. The second portion was the trip to Western China to study the parasites. For the final portion, I took myself off on a quick tour of the highlights of China. I thought I might as well, seeing as how I had travelled so far. For the sake of keeping things manageable, I’ve divided the journey into three pages:
Just to help with the geography, I’ve provided a map and itinerary. (The trip started and ended in Shanghai).
The trip photos are found in the album.