  We study properties of the thermal transition in QCD, using anisotropic,
fixed-scale lattice simulations with $N_f = 2+1$ flavours of Wilson fermion.
Observables are compared for two values of the pion mass, focusing on chiral
properties. Results are presented for the Polyakov loop, various
susceptibilities, the chiral condensate and its susceptibility, and the onset
of parity doubling in the light and strange baryonic sector.
