Autumn is a great time to visit China. And with the airfares dropping, this autumn could be the best value in a long time. I did a quick, random search on Kayak.com from San Francisco and found fares as low as $773. With some search engine diligence and a little flexibility you can probably do even better than that.

Hotel rates have been coming down as well as capacity projections are not materializing. The one-two punch of the economic crisis and the swine flu have been hammering tourism and business travel in every part of the world.

The temperatures are pleasant and it is a perfect time to see the wonders of China and maybe even experience an unforgettable cruise on the Yangtze.

If China is on your must-see before you die list (and it should be!), then you should seriously consider going this Fall. This could well be the best opportunity in years!

Cheers!

Jia

Next year, from April 5 to 26, 2009, Martin Gray will be leading a group tour to numerous sacred places and cultural landmarks around China. Some of the sites we will visit are the White Cloud Temple and Forbidden City in Beijing, the Great Wall, the Yungang Grottoes, the 3rd century BC Terracotta warriors and the sacred mountains of Wu Tai and Putuo. The size of the group will be limited to 40 people. Throughout the tour Martin will give numerous talks about the history and pilgrimage traditions of Taoism and Buddhism.

Martin Gray is a National Geographic photographer and anthropologist specializing in the photographic documentation of holy places around the world. During two decades of travel he photographed nearly one thousand sacred sites in a hundred countries. His photographs and writings are shown on the Places of Peace and Power web site at SacredSites.com. This web site explores subjects such as sacred geography, earth mysteries, archaeoastronomy, ecopsychology and the evolution of eco-spiritual consciousness in increasing numbers of humans around the globe. Martin’s latest book, Sacred Earth, is a collection of beautiful color photographs of sacred sites all across the planet.

This will be a fantastic trip for people who are spiritually thirsty and looking for something off the beaten paths. This tour not only covers the must-sees in China for the first timers, like Beijing, Xi’an and Guilin, but also highlights the famous religious places: like Mt. Wu Tai and Mt. Pu Tuo. With personal interactive escort by Martin, it will be a trip of a lifetime!

You can see the details of the trip on my website: http://jiasdreamtours.com/spiritual_tour.html