Kip Kip Hooray!

Friday 1st November was our 60th day since leaving the UK and a landmark, as we left China for Laos. The weather was hot and sunny as we drove through the tropical plantations of southern China, for the last 3 hour stretch to the border and I think the majority of the truck shared our excitement and relief as we approached our new destination.

First impressions of Laos? Let's just say that never before have we seen such a change in just a few short miles. We kind of got the impression that Laos would be more laid back, when the border crossing into the country was closed for a couple of hours for lunch! But not to worry, we were allowed to stroll part way across the border, to a small restaurant, where one or two of the border guards were also having their lunch. Some chickens clucked around us and we debated whether they were Chinese or Lao chickens. We didn't have any local currency. Not to worry, we could pay in dollars and they were even happy to take a $50 bill and give us the change in Kip (the Lao currency) at a better exchange rate than offered by the bank. We counted our change and realised that we were millionaires - Kip Kip hooray!

We met our new guide Mr Green at the border. Within 30 minutes, he had volunteered more information about himself and his country, than our Chinese guide had in a month. He was a loveable rogue with a nice line in self deprecation: he had married quite late for a Lao man he told us because he was too ugly to get a wife! Later, when he heard that Sue wasn't strong enough to do the 2 day hiking excursion, he disappeared for 10 minutes and came back with 2 friendship bracelets, which he gave to us with elaborate best wishes.

Shortly after the border we stopped for a pit stop at a small village. It was clearly much poorer than anywhere we had been in China, with more basic housing and the people less well dressed. On a back street we found a market, where amongst the fruit and vegetables, we found all sorts of animals laid out, which were presumably today's haul from the surrounding bush: civet cat, squirrel, dog, rat, bats, frogs and assorted insects. All very nutritious we were sure, but tough for our western sensibilities to handle.

At the same village, we bumped into 2 young French guys. They told us that they had met for the first time that morning at the border. What they shared was that they were both cycling solo from France to Australia. Apparently there are lots of people following similar routes along the Silk Road, but we were nevertheless full of awe and suitably humbled.

As we approached our first stop at Luang Namtha (which translates as town on the river Tha), we crossed a river and ahead of us, as far as we could see, was a vast expanse of brilliant green paddy fields. The land here is fertile enough here to get 2 crops a year and the second of these was about to be harvested.

After this early introduction to Laos, Luang Namtha was something of a surprise. As we pulled into the main street, we were suddenly in 'Backpacker Central'. All the signs were in English, advertising western and Lao food, happy hour cocktails and hiking and rafting expeditions into the local national park. After a quick check in to our room, we guiltily lapped it up, with pizza and cocktails at a bar run by an Aussie / Dutch couple. Over this and the next couple of nights, we met some really interesting people and swapped travel stories with them over a beer or two. There are always coincidences in places like this and here we got chatting to Mike, an American from Seattle who now lived in Kunming with his Chinese wife and was good friends with the owner of the Bad Monkey bar who we had met in Dali.

Most of our group had chosen to go on a 2 day expedition into the park, with a full day kayaking and a full day hiking, with the middle night staying in a remote village at the homes of local families. It sounded like it would be an interesting experience, but we decided not to risk Sue's fitness in such a remote area and this was probably just as well, because the second day in particular turned out to be pretty arduous by all accounts.

Instead Sue and I hired bicycles the next day and headed to a waterfall, which passed us through small villages where the locals were out in the fields starting to harvest the rice and the children ran after us waving as we passed. It was fiercely hot and we needed the refuge of the waterfall when we got there and a shaded restaurant for a late lunch on the way back. Towards dusk we crossed over the most fragile of wicker bridges, that apparently gets washed away by the rains most years and was re-built quite recentl. It connects the town to the rice fields on the other side and had a constant stream of users. On the banks of the river, children were splashing around in the water and adults had come down to wash. It was one of those idyllic scenes that will stay in the mind for a long time.

On the second day in Luang Namtha, I went off for a day's kayaking whilst Sue stayed and explored the village further. The backpacker area really only covered a couple of blocks and once away from here, she found some fruit and veg markets where the locals shopped and managed to negotiate an hour's massage for about £4, from a tiny young Lau women.

At round about the time Sue was being pummeled, I was capsizing my kayak half way down a rapid! I was sharing my canoe, with John, the owner of a security business from Brighton. We were doing pretty well until half way down our third rapid, we started paddling in opposite directions and tipped over. We looked back and saw 3 of the 4 other boats in our convoy repeating our mistake! At the bottom of the rapid, I was able to repatriate myself with the canoe and we all continued unscathed. The whole day was hugely enjoyable and a great way to see the national park. The river cut a ravine through dense, uncultivated, tropical forest. Huge trees towered over us and the sounds of the jungle (including monkeys that we could never quite spot) competed with the rush of the water. Butterflies and dragonflies danced around us and we caught the occasional bright blue of kingfishers darting across. At one point, we spotted a python hanging from a branch, but decided on giving this one a wide steer!

Halfway through the day we stopped in a village, where we were cooked a lunch of vegetables and rice and were a huge source of amusement to the local children. The villagers seemed to lead a pretty simple life in wicker houses, built on timber pillars to raise them above the flood waters of the wet season. On the higher ground, the land under the houses were used to keep their animals. I guess that these villagers get kayakers come through pretty often: they were happy to take our money, but the adults seemed more interested in watching a football match on a very crackly old television than in talking with us.

On 4th November, we continued deeper south into Laos heading for the ancient capital of Luang Prabang. It was a long, slow journey, because the roads are pretty basic at times. However, Archie had kept a secret up his sleeve, which he hadn't been able to reveal in China: pull back a couple of hatches and there were 8 seats on the roof! We hadn't used them until now, as they weren't really suitable for Chinese motorways, but perfectly suitable for the smaller, slower Laos roads. I spent most of the day up on the roof, feeling the wind and sun on my face, smelling the air, waving at children as we passed through villages and the whole journey was exhilarating and much more interactive.

Laos remains overwhelmingly agricultural, with very few towns of any size. Our lunchtime stop on this day was a small town with very few dining options. We found a small parade of cafés serving local produce: including hornet grubs, wine containing whole hornets and fermenting nicely in large mineral water bottles, crickets and various other insects that were being deep fried and other animal parts that we didn't even want to try and identify - we settled for steamed rice and fried vegetables.

In the next post, we will tell you about our re-acquaintance with the Mekong at Luang Prabang and further travels deeper into Laos.

Rice paddy fields near Luang Namtha

The rice harvest underway near Luang Namtha

A dragonfly near the waterfall

Heaven is...cold, spring water on hot, tired feet!

A wicker bridge crosses the Nam Tha...

...And Sue manages not to fall in

A hillside view of Luang Namtha

Kayaking in the National Park

Village children at our lunchtime stop

A butcher displays her wares near the China / Laos border

Hornet hooch, 2013 vintage - best left in the bottle?!

Anyone for cricket?

Only a German (Ralph) was brave enough, provided there was lots of beer to wash them down!

Atop Archie...

And finally...there's strength in numbers

 

Last days in China

We headed out of Dali on Monday 28th October, with our itinerary for the next few days to strike south for the Laos border - still some 1,000 kilometres away at this point. Our first stop on this journey was the 7 hour drive down to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. We stayed at a high altitude all day, driving through mist and rain that cloaked the villages we passed with a mysterious aura, but not allowing much visibility.

Kunming is meant to be a relaxed city (if that's possible of a Chineses city of some 5,000,000), but we probably didn't see it in it's best light, with only a night's stopover in the rain. It was a landmark for the tour, however, because we were losing 2 people here and gaining 4 for the next leg down into Laos. We lost our Belgian accountant Kevin to be replaced by Vera, a Belgian logistics consultant and we lost Emma, our English educational psychologist, to be replaced by Amanda an English psychiatrist! In addition, we gained Fred a surveyor from Sweden and Ralph, a giant carpenter from Frankfurt.

We had an enjoyable dinner in a local restaurant, where we were greeted as we entered, by cowering chickens and pheasants in wicker cages, awaiting their fate. The food and atmosphere were great, though we were saddened to note only one chicken and one less pheasant as we departed - at least we knew our food was fresh!

The next morning was an early start. After a pre-dawn breakfast, we found Amanda missing, with a note saying that she felt she couldn't cope with the demands of the trip. In the driving early morning rain, it didn't feel like a surprising decision. We headed 3 hours out of the city to the Shilin Stone Forest, an area of limestone rock that has weathered over millions of years into huge stalagmite-like pinnacles. It was cold and wet when we arrived, though this didn't seem to have deterred the Chinese tourists and there were hordes of them at the entrance, tightly knitted around their guides: instantly identifiable by their dual authority symbols - flag in one hand, megaphone in the other.

Sue and I, still fresh from our Yangtse experience, ran (metaphorically) for the hills. The area around the park proper gave us a flavour and we looked out through the rain from a great local restaurant where they served us a delicious meal of spinach soup, rice, sautéed vegetables and spicy shredded pork, washed down with endless cups of jasmine tea.

Annoyingly, the truck headed pretty much all the way back to Kunming before starting south again and there were a few dissenting voices as to why we had spent most of a day on this detour, but at least the sun had started to emerge again - just as we were starting to despair of ever seeing it again. That night we camped by the shore of Dian Chi, a 300 square kilometre lake to the south-west of Kunming. Finding free spots of land is a challenge in China (every available space seems to be used for housing or cultivation), so here the best we could find was a small area of woodland at the end of a narrow road that ran down to the lake. It was pretty liberally scattered with litter and the whole truck spent the best part of an hour filling rubbish sacks before it was fit to camp on. By the end of this period, the entire local village seemed to have come out to watch in utter amazement: twenty westerners descending en masse in a bright orange truck, cleaning up their land and pitching tents. There was much laughter and clicking of photo shutters as we set about our work.

As the sun set, the same villagers came back with their ghetto blasters and some of us joined them in their line dancing, again much to their amusement. Between us, we managed to cook up a pretty tasty vegetable curry and rice washed down by some Chinese red wine (which was just about drinkable, though I'm not sure it's ready for the ready for the export market just yet!). As night fell, we got a roaring fire going and it was an enjoyable evening, though our patch of land was too gravelly to allow much sleep.

Reading up about Lake Dian Chi later, we found it is one of the most polluted lakes in China, largely due to the majority of Kunming's sewage having been pumped into it for a number of years and the water is now considered to be unusable even for industrial purposes and more than half of the fish have perished, though we did see a couple of locals patiently leant over fishing rods.

We had two more stops in China before getting to the border. The first was just an overnight stop on Pu'er, a fairly anonymous town that has grown as the centre for tea in the region, the second in the much more pleasant city of Jinghong. As we headed south from Kunming, into the province of Xishuangbanna, the road started to descend steadily and the climate and topography changed dramatically to the sub-tropical. Now, we drove through much lusher scenery with tea and then coffee, rubber and sugar-cane plantations, with trees full of banana, coconut, dragon fruit, persimmon, lychee and other exotic fruits.

Our final stop in China, Jinghong, felt like a tropical holiday city with blue skies, coconut palms and colourful buildings and was easily the hottest place we had been on our journey to date. We had a free day here, which we spent mostly at a peaceful botanical gardens and finished with a cold beer watching the sun set over the Mekong river. We mused that the Mekong starts its journey in the mountains of Tibet and from here meanders on through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia before draining into the South China Sea in Vietnam. It had been almost 18 years since we had seen the Mekong, but we would follow it for a few weeks now on our journey south.

The next day our China Oddyssey would be over. It was hard going at times and as a result we were not sad to be leaving, but at the same time, we knew that we had an amazing and privileged experience and that time would change our perspective. Over 4 weeks, we travelled more than 4,000 kilometres through several provinces in the most populous country in the world, which most predict will be the world's next super power. Yet how little most of us in the west know of it!

Maybe we know a little more now than we did before, but as with knowledge generally: the more we know, the more we realise we don't know. China is a country that is changing rapidly and it beguiled and confused us in equal measure. In Leishan, we saw the largest Buddha in the world that stood proudly and enigmatically at the confluence of 3 rivers. This strikes me as a metaphor for where China is right now: the rivers represent their ancient traditions; the paternalistic spectre of communist rule which dominated and suppressed it's people for several generations and the emerging sugar-coated river of capitalism and the outside world. The Chinese people (and in particular the emerging middle classes in the big cities) are clearly entranced by the material riches of the developed world, whilst the government (like a parent wary of unleashing their child into the big-bad world) use all the powers of the state to maintain their control. The poor river of ancient traditions, sometimes seems to be in danger of drying up, but travelling here one senses that it will never disappear completely and that as people see through the initial attraction of western culture, that many Chinese will look back to their old traditions that were suppressed in the Communist era.

The way in which the Chinese river flows will clearly be of huge importance to us all. We saw such energy and confidence in the Chinese people to suggest that the current will be strong, whichever way it flows. Despite all of the noise and pollution and voracious consumption on display at times and the corruption that is widely reported, we also saw enough in some of their ancient traditions, to show that they have the potential to add much needed wisdom to the future direction of the world. The principle of harmony between nature and humanity that underpins Taoism is an inspirational example of this.

In our next post, we will tell you about our time in Laos, but in the meantime, we sign off with a few photos from our last few days in China.

Preparing vegetable curry on our bush camp

Sunset over Polluted waters at Lake Dian Chi

The Botanical Gardens at Jinghong

Bridge over the Mekong at Jinghong

An amusement park at Jinghong

And finally....who says pants don't grow on trees?

Daliesque

We headed out of Lijiang, for the 6 hour drive south to Dali, with Sue starting to feel a little better, though still going nil by mouth and therefore a little weak. Dali was to be our base for 3 nights and we were looking forward to getting the chance to rest in 1 place awhile.

The scenery, which had been gradually changing as we had headed out of Scichuan into Yunnan was now markedly different. Most noticeably, it was overwhelmingly rural, with the land divided for cultivation into small strips, some no bigger than a cricket pitch in size (for Americans reading this, a cricket pitch is 22 yards long by about 10 feet wide; for Aussies, we will teach you how to use one shortly!). Maybe this is some sort of crop rotation strategy, but it felt more like a series of small-holdings. Either way, the land seemed really fertile on the valley floors, with a huge range of crops being grown. Rice is clearly the staple and most of the crop had fairly recently been harvested, with the stems being cut and arranged into neat sheaves. We played a game of naming the vegetables we could see growing: wheat, corn, cabbage, bok choi, onions, tomatoes, pumpkins, spinach, soya, chillies and garlic to name a few, with many more we didn't recognise. There were also lots of people out in the fields working, wearing their traditional conical hats, just as one would imagine. In places we saw fields being burned, a practice I can't remember seeing in the UK since I was a boy returning from summer holidays in the West Country.

The villages had also changed significantly. Gone were the ugly utilitarian grey high-rises, replaced by low-rise stone or concrete homes that were mostly immaculately white-washed and finished with intricate scenery paintings in hues of black and blue, reminding us of pen and ink drawings. It felt much more like the Chinese rural idyll that many of us on the truck had in our minds eyes.

We drove across these agricultural plains and then steadily ascended towards Dali, a city of 500,000 people, which sits at an elevation of some 1,600 metres, but surrounded by even higher mountains with the 20 kilometre long EnHai lake just to the east adding to its dramatic setting.

We arrived on a sunny afternoon and our spirits were immediately raised by the relaxed feel of our guest house: a 3 storey whitewashed building, with red pillars and black, grey and blue scenes and Chinese characters painted onto the walls in the local style. The guest house was built in a horshoe shape around a garden courtyard, with a bar, pool table and comfortable seating. The staff were smiling and attentive as we arrived and we all felt immediately at home here. Interestingly, we could see straight away that there were a lot more western faces here, such a contrast to our travels to date through Russia and China.

Our hostel was the project of an Australian and his Chinese wife who had settled here in Dali, as a half-way house between her home in north-eastern China and his home in Bribane. Appropriately enough, it was named the Jade Emu and it has proved so popular that they now have a second hostel just across the street called the Jade Roo and a bookshop and restaurant.

We later found that there is a thriving ex-pat community here in Dali, which centres in the area that we are staying and down the road in the Bad Monkey bar (more on that later). It never ceases to amaze the places that one finds such communities thriving.

That evening we went no further then the Jade Roo restaurant across the street, where they saved great Chinese - Western fusion food. We had some excitement, when the waiter arrived with some sizzling chicken that almost set the whole place alight. Sue reacted fastest (no pun on fasting intended!), leaping from her seat to blow out the flames before they took hold, whilst the rest of us looked on in stunned immobility. Poor Sue settled for some steamed rice and some crumbled dried seaweed (a wonder-food, packed with nutrients that we had recently discovered for all you foodies reading), but she would be back eating properly again the next day.

On our first full day in Dali, we jumped on a tour arranged by our hostel that circum-navigated Lake EnHai, following a road that has only been fairly recently completed. It turned out to be just Sue and I and a Tibetan guy of similar age to us who was on a 2 week holiday, touring Yunnan. The weather had turned grey and misty by this stage, which was a shame because on a clear day, the lake with the snow-capped mountains beyond it is meant to be a great sight. But it was an interesting day nonetheless. The villages by the side of the lake are populated mostly by the Bai people, who ethnically have more in common with Thais than Han Chinese. We were there on Saturday 26th October and in Xizhou, the first village we came to, there was a busy weekly open-air market going on, selling fruit and vegetables, fish and meat. On the edge of the market, they were killing, plucking and chopping chickens to order and pulling fish from improvised tanks for customers to take away still flapping. On the fringes of the village, corn hung out of the houses to dry, alongside chillies and rice husks on long tarpaulin sheets.

Our driver took us on to a batique factory showroom, clearly hoping that he would earn some commission, but we were put off somewhat by the conditions in the factory (see the picture below), though as this was on show, I guess these were probably better conditions than those that many of our clothes come from. As with the chickens and fish above and below, we westerners don't like our noses being rubbed in it I suppose - speak no evil, hear no evil!

Continuing our journey, we found cormorant fishermen waiting in boats by the side of the lake. We gather that this is the only place in the world where this is practiced, though it seems that nowadays it is pretty much only done for tourists. For $10 they will take you out onto the lake and demonstrate the art of cormorant fishing whilst they sing local folk songs at you through a megaphone. We politely declined, but viewed from the bank as they took another group of tourists out. It seems pretty barbaric, but we're told the cormorants are trained from an early age and get used to it: they are attached by rope to the boat and their throats are constricted so that they can't swallow a whole fish; when they dive and catch a fish, they are pulled back into the boat and the fish taken from them to be replaced with a much smaller morsel of fish as a 'reward'. By the side of the road, they were selling the fish that had been caught, most of which had been dried or smoked, or which were being cooked on charcoal grills. For the third time in the day, we weren't tempted!

Further round the lake, we stopped at a couple of remote temples, including one which involved being rowed a couple of hundred yards out to a small island by an ancient fisherman, in an even older boat. We admired his skillful oarsmaship whilst debating whether it would be better to swim to the island or back to the mainland when the boat sank, though remarkably we were brought safely back to shore. We were entranced back on the shore by a variety of birds we hadn't seen before: one of which we were told later was a Eurasian Spotted Hoopoe (see picture below).

The area as a whole remains fairly quiet, but now the road is completed the mass tourism will soon follow. We saw a number of large new hotels under construction as we drove. On the positive side, the road is lit by lamps that each have their own mini wind turbine and solar panel attached and this not only powers them but provides some power for the local villages as well. This was one of a few encouraging signs that we have seen of Chinese authorities taking renewable energy and environmental preservation seriously.

Back in Dali, after Sue had taken her first proper feed for a few days, I went out with a few of the guys from the truck to the Bad Monkey Bar. As you would expect from a bar in a small southern Chinese city, we found an Irishman and an American from Ohio up on stage strumming away on banjos playing Bluegrass! The Bad Monkey, it turns out, is owned by an Englishman from Essex and he also brews his own beer: including a very drinkable amber ale and a stronger porter. The bar was half filled with Chinese learning how to put their thumbs in their trousers and 'Yeehaa' like a Yankie and half with western ex-pats and travellers. We got chatting with the band (who are based in Kunming and make enough money to live playing in small bars); a retired Yorkshiremen who is John Hurt's doppelgänger and who had just returned from Kunming where he played a small part as Gandalf for a Chinese TV show and the owner of our guest house, who told us some of his story.

We spent our final day in Dali just ambling around the old city, doing some shopping and catching up on our admin back at the hostel. The city was very pleasant, with the biggest feature being that the old city walls have remained almost completely intact, including four elaborate entrance gates on the compass points.

On our next post we will update you on our journey south right down to the border to Laos, which would be our 9th country traversed on our journey to date.

There are lots of pictures to share with you here, as it was such an interesting few days.

Trying to sort out our bank in the garden of the Jade Emu in Dali

Locally sourced herbal remedies in Xizhou

The Saturday market in Xizhou

The wisdom of age

Ever wondered where your 'Made in China' garments come from?

Decorations to a Dali traditional home

Cormorant fishing on Lake EnHai

When the tourists aren't watching...

An Eurasian Hoopoe

The South Gate to the old city of Dali

The Bad Monkey, centre of Dali's western ex-pat community

And finally...our new candidate for the world's worst toilet - fortunately this time not connected to our hotel room!

And finally, finally...poodling along!

 

Lijiang and the Tiger Leaping Gorge

We left you last time with Sue having eaten a dodgy egg. Unfortunately we had some long drives to come as we headed further south in China, leaving Scichuan province for Yunan. On the 22nd and 23rd October, we had 2 full days of driving, with the plan being to bush camp on the first of those. By the end of the first day, Sue was starting to feel really unwell and coming down with a fever. The truck stopped at a pretty ropey place to set up camp (basically a small patch of land by the side of the road that had been earmarked for a new house) and I realised that Sue was not in a fit state for this. Jason, our Chinese guide, came into his own at this point and we manged to get a cab to take us to a nearby hotel for the night. I was pretty worried for a time, as Sue's temperature had risen to 39 degrees, but after applying some cold compresses it gradually started to come down.

The next morning we made the call that Sue was well enough to travel, and she was able to lie down on the back seat of the truck, but a long day was lengthened due to a motorway closure and we eventually limped into Lijiang after nearly 18 hours on the road. The only good thing to say about this, is that Sue was forced into going 'nil by mouth' for this period, which it turns out is exactly the correct treatment for Salmonella poisoning. Also we now had 3 nights in one place, which allowed her some time to recover.

Lijiang turned out to be a great city with some wonderful scenery around it, but sadly Sue missed out on it, pretty much staying in the room for the duration. This all sounds very gloomy, but the good news is that she is now recovered from this illness, as the photograph below proves!

So, let's tell you a little about Lijiang. The city is set in a large valley, surrounded by mountains and our time here was intended to be split between the two. We had a pleasant guest house on the edge of the old city (which was useful, because it allowed me to dip in and out, whilst keeping an eye on Sue). Whilst most people outside of China have probably not heard of Lijiang, Chinese people certainly have and parts of the old town are mobbed with Chinese tourists.

They come to see the maze of narrow cobbled streets and alleys, ramshackle old traditional wooden buildings (with some doorways giving tantalising glimpses of hidden courtyards beyond) and the streams and canals that run through the town, criss-crossed by old arched stone bridges. The narrow streets are lined with shops selling all manner of souvenirs (silk shawls, silver and jade jewellery, wooden carvings, paintings and calligraphy, bone handled combs, tea and all sorts of dried meats and foods). At one point I reached an area where the aroma of roasting meets started to fill the air. I followed my nose and the alley started to open into an area where it was lined on both sides by open counters grilling and frying skewers of meats of all descriptions. I couldn't even identify most of these (which was probably just as well, though we are reliably informed that dog and monkey meats attract premium rates), but I braved 3 skewers of pork and some stir fried vegetables and sat at a trestle table eating whilst trying unsuccessfully to make some sense of the chaos that surrounded me.

It occurred to me that we generally hate the word 'touristy' and you would have to apply that adjective to this place, but for a westerner here it felt wonderfully exotic. It also felt symbolic of the growing Chinese self-confidence. The Chinese people are more and more able to afford to take time out, to go out and explore their country and to spend money on indulging themselves. And here they were very content to do it in their own way and in their own style. I felt very much like I'd gate crashed a party which kept on rolling, pretty much oblivious to my presence and of the small sprinkling of other westerners in town.

As I headed back to the hotel, dusk was falling. In the main square, loud music was being played from ghetto blasters and 2 large concentric circles had been formed. People skipped around in time with the music, as if round a May-pole, breaking this pattern occasionally to bob their heads and throw their arms up in the air. Every face was grinning and it all looked like great, impromptu, slightly subversive fun!

The flower-shrouded entrance to Lijiang's old town.

A back street of Lijiang old town, with bars and restaurants lining a canal.

Throngs of Chinese tourists cram one of the alleys

What would you like on your skewer - yak or black goat?

On our second full day in Lijiang, Sue was well enough to stay at the hotel on her own, so I decided to go with most of the rest of the group on a day's hiking in the Tiger Leaping Gorge. After a 5.30 a.m. start, we drove for a couple of hours out of the city into the mountains, where the Jinsha Jiang river has cut a 10 mile, 200 metre deep gorge through the limestone.

It turned out to be a great, but challenging hike. From our base the path rose steadily initially through small villages, populated by the Naxi, a distinct minority ethnic group who live very simple lives, growing rice and vegetables and keeping pigs, chickens and other animals. The early morning mist gradually dispersed, revealing as it did the snow capped peaks of the Habe Shan mountains rising to 4,000 meters on the far side of the gorge. The sun transformed the fields into the brightest of greens, the river below us shimmered and our group was in the happiest of spirits.

Then the going got tough, as the path turned precipitously upwards, switch-backing straight up the mountain in a feature known locally as the 'Twenty Eight Bends', though we stopped counting when we got to 50. Occasionally we passed local Naxi villagers coming up and down with mules carrying their produce down to the road-head to get it to market, but only once did we meet other hikers. We passed an old lady by the side of the path at one point looking to sell some of her goods to us: 'Water?' No thanks; 'Snickers?' No thanks; 'Ganja?' Now she had our attention! It turns out this is one of their main cash crops in this remote mountain region and because they are a minority group the authorities turn a blind eye. We politely declined her offer, but she provided an amusing interlude.

We were heaving for beath and jelly-legged by the time we got to the top, but the views down over the gorge and across to the mountains beyond were truly worth the effort. We walked along the ridge for a couple of miles and then slowly descended down to the river floor through pine forest and small-scale farmland. At the the Tiger Leaping Gorge itself, a huge rock constricted the water, which crashed thunderously through the narrowed channel, filling the air with spray and blocking out any attempt at conversation.

Nearby we found a cluster of small guest houses by a quieter spot on the river floor for a late lunch and a rendezvous-virus with our transport to take us back to Lijiang.

On our next post, we will tell you about our onward journey south through the mountains of Yunnan to the ancient city of Dali.

The start of the walk, through a remote Naxi village

Our guide Gino and Driver Jim

Looking down onto the Tiger Leaping Gorge

A mountain village, home to the Naxi ethnic minority group

Looking back over the Gorge

And finally...asleep on the job?!

 

Holy Mountain Part Two

Everyone was looking forward to arriving in Emei Shan - one of the four holy mountains of China (Wudang Shan from our post 'Holy Mountain, Hidden Dragon' being one of the others). Emei, located in Sichuan province, is much higher than Wudang, with a peak of over 3,000 metres. It is also renowned as being one of the first areas where Buddhism was practiced in China (there are many temples to be found here, as well as some archaeological sites) and for a martial art that is only practiced here.

On arrival, we are delighted to find that we are staying for 2 nights in a very nice 4 star hotel, though this was counter-balanced by the weather, which had become colder, greyer and wetter as we approached the mountains. We were also disappointed that the entrance fees to the national park had been hiked, so that it word cost us over £100 if we wanted to go up to the summit. We begrudgingly accepted that it was not worth this investment, just to see a summit that was shrouded at that time in cloud and probably get a soaking in the bargain - though the 'inner optimist' kept asking what if the clouds were to clear or if, as very occasionally happens, the peak pokes above the clouds?

The ultimate way to see this place, is to hike up all the way from the bottom. This would probably take most of a week, but there are numerous monasteries on the way up who will, for a small contribution, provide a bed for a night and cook simple vegetarian meals.

We didn't have the time for this, but instead decided to just explore a little and turned right out of our hotel up the tree lined avenue that starts the road up towards the mountain. We were rewarded by a very pleasant series of surprises. The village of Emei Shan ended at a large square, bordered by the road on the right, a mountain stream on the left and ahead by a 40 foot high sheer rock face carved with jade and gold chinese characters and over which a curtain of water plunged to a pool below. The square was dominated by a golden pagoda whose centre-piece was a large bronze Ming Dynasty bell.

Having taken all of this in, we picked a small path that followed the stream uphill. It took us in short time up to a series of temples that documented the arrival (probably in the 1st Century AD) of a Buddhist prophet from India, who was seduced by the spiritual charms of the mountain and found an open-minded audience for his ideas here. Some of these temples had a very calm aura about them and we sat awhile letting this wash over us and looking at some of the beautiful carvings (see some in the pictures below). At the end of this series of temples, there was an archaeological site, where lots of ancient religious artefacts (and what looked like a mammoth tusk) were being uncovered.

The path continued uphill and we found ourselves in rainforest, thick with bamboo and all manner of other trees, vegetation, butterflies and birds. It was cool and peaceful, with the sole accompaniment of birdsong and the stream to our side. We walked uphill for a couple of hours, only occasionally passing local families out for a Sunday walk or to visit one of the many temples that we passed. We were on the look-out for macaque monkeys who are common at higher altitudes here, but didn't spot any (probably just as well, as they are renowned for attacking humans if they think they are carrying food!). It was altogether just what we needed and we came back down in good spirits.

A pagoda at Emei Shan, housing a Ming Dynasty bell

Sue in contemplation at the waterfall in Emei Shan village

A temple paying homage to the foundation of Buddhism in Emei Shan in the 1st Century AD

An atmospheric depiction of the early Buddhist disciples

 

A bronze demonstration of the local martial art form

One of many stone bridges that crossed the mountain streams at Emei Shan

Can anyone name this butterfly spotted on the lower slopes of the mountain?

Unfortunately Sue was about to go into a nightmare week. On the way down we stopped for some food at one of the local restaurants. We had a mix up with the food order and Sue got served egg, fried with rice noodles and we believe it was from this that she contracted Salmonella poisoning, which left her quite poorly for the next week, in turn made worse by the fact that we had some long drives in that time. Thankfully she is pretty much over that as I write this.

We will tell you more about the next instalments of our journey through China in the next posts, but I will just finish with my Night at the Chinese opera. Sue opted for an early night, as she (correctly) suspected that it might be very loud. Most of the rest of the group joined me and it was very enjoyable, if not quite what we expected. We assumed that we were heading to a low-key demonstration of Chinese opera for tourists, but found ourselves in a large modern theatre auditorium, filled exclusively with Chinese people, with a high-tech audio visual show incorporating piped music, acrobatics, puppetry and a story line which we struggled to follow, though an excitable lady from Singapore sat next to me gave me a running commentary throughout. As we arrived I said Ni Hao to her (one of the four or five words that I have now mastered and meaning 'Hello'). She looked at me with incredulity and said in perfect English 'You speak Mandarin?!'.

 

The finale of the Chinese opera / dance show

And finally...The Chinese Three Degrees