Hi All We are back from our travels in China and want to share some of our experiences and photographs with you.

It was quite something to reach those elusive little red berries. It took 6 flights and 3 days of travel just to get there and the same to get back. All that trekking for 1 day in the hot Gobi desert sun – but it was all worth it and the trip was incredible!

We were met by our hosts in Geermu on the Tibetan Plateau in Northwest China, where we hopped aboard what we dubbed ‘The Goji Bus’ – because it was bright red(of course) and dedicated to our little tour group of Westerners including ourselves, 2 Hungarians and a French-Korean woman and her 6-year old son. 6 Hours further by bus on that day and another 3 hours the next and we had arrived!

Our first stop was the Wild Organic Goji Area – this is the first wild area to achieve Organic status, and we were amongst the first Westerners to ever visit this area. But in order to find these wild berries we had to hop on board another mode of transportation – motorbikes. A friendly group of Chinese bikers were waiting for us under the shade of some scattered trees and drove us further into the desert. 30 minutes more and at last we laid eyes on our first fresh gojis.

They are delicious! We got to pick them straight off the bushes and taste them. The wild ones are much smaller than the cultivated ones, but understandably more potent. We had expected the fresh berries to be much bigger than the dried ones, but in fact they are much the same size as soaked berries. They are sweet  and tangy, with a slightly tart aftertaste – and very more-ish.

The Tibetan Plateau is not in Tibet per se but it is at the foothills of the Himalayas, which we could see in the distance and even in the middle of the hot and humid summer, there is still some snow on those incredible peaks. Above is a small video clip of Peter picking and sampling his first wild goji berry.

From here we moved on to the Organic Goji Plantation. Here we got to see fields of Goji bushes bursting with fruit ripe and ready to be picked.  Harvesting was due to get under way in full force about 2 weeks from the time of our visit, but there were more than enough bearing bushes for us to fill our straw hats and munch away.

Above is a picture of us with some of the farmers, producers and harvesters. Our producer confirmed that, as more organisations are trying to hop on board the bandwagon and the demand for organic produce is increasing, there are a number of growing challenges with the farmers in China. Most of the non-organic Gojis are coming out of the Ningxia region where it is very hard to convert their old farming habits, which is why so many revert to fungicides and pesticides when crops weren’t yielding as they had before. This producer in the Tibetan area has been working hand in hand with the Ceres certification body over the last 5 years to get these genuine organic Gojis to the marketplace.

So after many arduous days of travel we are happy to be home and happy to report that our 2010 harvest of Gojis is truly the best quality available and is being grown is some of the most pristine soils in the world, with no pesticides or fungicides or any other nasties getting anywhere close to them. We are most fortunate to have been able to secure a small portion of this harvest as all of it is pre-sold a year in advance and most of it goes to the USA and Europe.

To your radiant health Beryn & Peter