Winter in Labahe and Gouli
The travel bug (or field mouse?) bites differently, sometimes with gentle persuasion and other times with hard obsession.
After my trip last year in February with AbsolutePanda covering Sichuan and Qinghai in China, I knew I had to revisit portions of the trip to uncover more of the hidden secrets in these magical places. Thankfully it is reasonably easy for me to get to China from Singapore, and this time I took two groups for a week in January, one for a more relaxed 3-day quest to find red pandas at Labahe Nature Reserve, and the other for a more demanding 3-day expedition to find the Tibetan red dhole in the Kunlun Mountain Range. The latter has become my personal obsession after having seen a picture taken by another photographer on the trip last year, of a canid with a mane so thick it barely resembled the effable Asiatic wild dogs of South and South-east Asia.
China Winter 2026
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3 Comments
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Yirui Heng
Hey Chad! I didn’t have a thermal imager on me but they had a few sets – or so it seems enough for all the simulataneous serious mammal watching trips to use one! I used their kit for most of the trip, and they were happy for me to do the scanning (albeit in the cold)!
Regarding AbsolutePanda, this was an unexpected find on the many trips that I was sent to China for zoo work. They were always attentive on WeChat, clear with the pricing, and the experienced guides are truly spectacular (a real life Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them kinda set up). I was very impressed with the trip I did with them last year on my first trip on how they were more determined for sightings than I was, and that is kind of the way the lead-guide Phillip runs the company. Case in point – I flew back to Chengdu myself whilst the guides did a reconnaissance trip to locate the wild yaks for the next group that they would be guiding through the Tibetan plateau!
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Chad Johnson
That looks llike an amazing trip. I definitely need to get to China. If you don’t mind a couple of questions…How was your experience with Absolute Panda? I might be judging them on their web design, but I’m a little skeptical about them for some reason. Also, how is your experience moving with a thermal imager in and out of Singapore? I’ll be there in March and, for now, I’m leaning against taking my thermal because of the hassle it might cause me.