昆明的大雨 - Kunming's Big Rain

I finally arrived in the beautiful city of Kunming (昆明) late Friday evening amidst yet more rain. This city is the capital and largest city of the extremely diverse Yunnan Province (both in terms of people and geography, as well as flora). Yunnan Province (云南省） literally means "the Province of the Southern Cloud." Although this adds to the incredible enchantment of the area and encourages the tremendous diversity of flora, it did not bode well for me, in a city taxi, trying to make it to the Kunming Botanical Garden in the northern suburbs . . .

In case you are wondering, no - we did not attempt to ford this gully!

As you can see, the road in the picture above was completely washed out. This was one of 4 attempts (i.e. four washed out roads) to make it to the Botanical Garden on the other side of this valley. The picture below (taken later the same day in downtown Kunming) shows how many of the streets became rivers as the water frantically searched for an escape . . .

Believe it or not, this wasn't even as bad as some of the roads