tony palmer

Hi Kev,
I’m home alone at the mo my wife is working in Andra pradesh Hyderabad for two weeks, that got me thinking about your post on North east India, but to be honest I don’t know to much about that area you are interested in, but I have wanted to visit Yunnan particularly the Kunming institute of botany, they have a excellent botanical garden and that can save you a lot of leg work when looking for hardy bananas, the areas I’m looking at in Yunnan are Gaoligongshan that borders Myanmar and Xishuangbanna that borders northern Laos, there both about 12 hours drive from Kunming, you can get a cheap return flight from London to Kunming for around £500 so that’s not to bad but then there’s the 3-4 week stay there and car hire, I’m looking into it and if the total cost isn’t to high I’m going to go next September, that’s when the fruit of hardy bananas ripen there, if it’s a go I’ll give you a bell to see if your interested! here is a bit about Gaoligongshan, The Reserve lies in the central subtropical zone. Due to its location in southwest monsoon zone of the Indian Ocean, wind often blows from the west. The high peaks and deep valleys of the Mountains have created in this mountain area three different climate zones, namely, subtropical, temperate and cold temperate. From the foot of the mountain to its top there are concretely 6 different types namely south subtropical, mid subtropical, north subtropical, warm temperate, mid temperate, and cold temperate zones. The precipitation increases gradually from 736.7 millimeters on the east slope with an elevation of 755 meters, 1,763 millimeters on the west slope with an elevation of 1,440 meters to 3,904.4 millimeters at the top with an elevation of 3,210 meters. This constitutes a unique multi-level climate and an entire subtropical ecosystem resulting in its strikingly splendid landscape of biological and climate vertical belts, which leaves people an impression, that different section of the mountains is in different season even on the same day.


Tony