First week of being a tourist

I finished teaching last tuesday and I went to Kunming for a day.

Piers stayed in Yuxi to 'post some things' (really to spend time with Bek). So I met up with Dan and Mike in Kunming.

After one night at the Hump in Kunming we decided to go to Lijiang. Lijiang is a popular tourist town because it has a huge old town. The best thing about the old town was that while the central parts where very tourisy most of it was just traditional homes. We caught an 8 hour bus from Kunming to Lijiang arriving at 6:30am. At the bus station we met another guy, called Rob, who was going to the same hostel as us. We looked around town that day. The next day Dan & Mike rushed off to do the Tiger Leaping Gorge hike. They were both in a hurry because they have to get back to the UK soonish (whereas I have 4 months). I decided to go the day after with Rob and another guy I'd just met called Andreas, because i wanted more time to look around Lijiang.

On the first day of the hike we got up at about 8 and arrived at the gorge at about 12:30. We hiked for about 7 hours to get to the halfway guesthouse. This was some really hard hiking and we were all exhausted when we arrived.

The next day Andreas and I decided to just relax at the halfway house, while Rob when on ahead because he was in a hurry.

We just hung arond and read books all day. In the evening we got drunk with a South African safari guide and his girlfriend and a Swiss-French couple. The South African (Marko) told us amazing stories about his crazy experiences in Africa. While the Swiss-French guy decided he actually LIKED Chinese Bijiou and drunk two bottles, needless to say he was pretty trashed.

The next day Andreas and I did the last 2 hours or so of the hike and caught a bus back to Lijiang. I went straight on the Zhongdien (the furthest town in north west Yunnan and the closest thing to Tibet without being in it). Last night (when I arrived here) I met up with Rob again and then met some students from an international school in south wales who are here doing some sort of project for their school for a month. So we hung out with them. Today I went to an amazing tibetan monastary, but my camera has just run out of batterys so I'll have to upload the pictures i took of it later. In one of the temples I watched this monk bless a young kid. His whole family were praying, heads down, and the kid came up to the monk who tapped him on the head with a big yellow thing and then blew on his forhead and gave him a wristband and some incense sticks. Before the monk blessed the kid, the family had to all donate money.

Anyway, I'll try to get those pictures on soon.

First week of being a tourist

A look back across the length of the gorge from the end 

A small stream meets the foaming rapids at the bottom of the gorge 

The last section of the gorge 

A rare moment where the tops of the mountains weren't completly hidden in clouds 

The mountains on the other side of the gorge. Apparently an expedition in the 50's climbed them, but no one since then. 

The fog pretty much cleared by midday 

The same guy as before with a mountain in the background 

 

 

 

The fields abruptly end in a sheer cliff down to the fog filled gorge 

A guy at the Halfway Guesthouse watches the fog roll over and off the mountains on the other side of the gorge. 

 

 

the river and mountains 

The thick brown Yangtze River 

Lady who runs the shop at the highest point of the climb 

Guy with a horse 

Rob and Andreas on the path 

The start of the gorge from the level of the river 

More river and gorge 

Me 

The Yangtze River and the start of the gorge 

A lookout over the start of Tiger Leaping Gorge 

Detail of a very strange wood carving we found in the park