Shangri-La photos

Tiger Leaping Gorge photos

Typical nonsensical Chinese sign guiding us on the trail.

the "safe path"

head dunk in a cold waterfall

feeling good 10 minutes in...

traffic jam: sharing the trail with goats

waterfall over the trail

Kelly on the trail

our Irish friends

perspective

halfway

best view from a $9 hotel room

Halfway guesthouse

Kelly on a ladder

the "dangerous ladder"

Photos from Lijiang

Canals of Old Lijiang

Yu Long Xue Shan (Jade Dragon Snow Mountain)

Busch Gardens, I mean, Old Lijiang

Our bike ride towards the Himalayan "foothills"

there were lots of big spiders!

Foothills of the Himalayas Part III: Shangri-La

First prize goes to me and Ben No. 2 (a Kiwi we had met hiking) for finding the most ridiculously crazy van driver in the world. As the two "Chinese speakers" we were sent off to negotiate cheap transportation for our group of seven from the Gorge to Shangri-La. The older, saner drivers were not willing to meet our price, but Johnny, or #1 Driver, as he called himself was happy to oblige. Mullet flying, he karate-chopped his way to the van and off we went. We were not 10 minutes down the road, when we came across a fresh landslide that had just buried the road. Well, guess we have to go back right? Not with Johnny #1 Driver. We hopped out of the van and ran for our lives across fresh, unstable landslide, from which small rocks were sliding and Johnny #1 Driver followed with a burst of speed across the rubble.

We reached Shangri-La with no further mishaps, aside from some slightly unprofessional conversation topics from Johnny #1 Driver. The landscape and culture changed considerably in the 3 hours between the Gorge and Shangri-La. We had left Naxi territory and now were in a Tibetan lands. The huge mountains were still there, but now we were out of the foothills and officially on the plateau. The weather was much colder and Tibetan stupas dotted the alpine meadows of the plateau. We were starving, and after checking into a 300 year old guesthouse, we made our way to a Tibetan restaurant. I had always heard that Tibetan food is bland and boring, but the Chinese/Tibetan meal that we consumed was beyond amazing. The raw yak meat holds the place of honor as most weird yet delicious of the 30 odd dishes we sampled. Yak cheese fried in butter, not so good (in my opinion, but if you get some rice, add a bite of yak meat and top in with cheese...). We literally ate until we passed out.

Highlights from Shangri-La include spinning the world's largest Buddhist prayer wheel, drinking the world's best hot chocolate, and inciting a riot. Many of the hikers we had met on the Gorge trail ended up in Shangri-la with us and one night we were headed out to dinner en masse. A group of foreigners always catches attention in China, even in a touristy place like Shangri-la. A bunch of Chinese stopped us and asked to take our picture, and we pulled them into the picture with us. More people kept stopping to take pictures, and we kept insisting they join the shot. Pretty soon, anyone innocent person walking down the street was grabbed and added to the group until we had blocked the entire street with a group of about 80 people, foreign and Chinese.
Our last day in Shangri-La we again joined our big group of foreign friends and hired a van to go to some hot springs right outside of town. Warm and relaxed from the springs, we said goodbye to our new friends and got on another 15-hour sleeper bus back to Kunming. Again, I slept the whole way (even though my blanket smelled like feet) and woke just before dawn as we pulled into Kunming. It felt good to be home.

Foothills of the Himalayas Part II: Tiger Leaping Gorge

Day One
After bumming around Lijiang for a couple days, we were ready to leave the theme park and go back to China. We took a bus to the tiny town of Qiatou, the start of the Tiger Leaping Gorge trail. The Gorge is where the Jinsha Jiang (headwaters of the Yangtze River) cuts between two massive mountain ranges. On either side of the river are 15,000+ peaks and the trail winds about 3.000 feet above the river. We got a bit of a late start that day, following the often nonsensical signs in Chinese that pointed out the way. We didn't get too far down the trail before we met a friendly Irish couple. We got to chatting and stopped at a small guesthouse for a couple beers, which turned into multiple beers, dinner, great conversation, an impromptu guitar concert, and gazing at the brilliant stars atop a pile of corn before falling asleep.

Day Two
The four of us managed to get an early start the next morning, despite the carnage of beer bottles and empty packs of horrible Chinese cigarettes that we left in our wake. The trail was brutally uphill for a couple hours, but then we turned a corner, and the view of the gorge, mountains, and valley below were worth every bit of the effort. We again intended to put in a full day of hiking, but mid-afternoon we stopped at a guesthouse for a drink and snack, and found the views so incredible that we were reluctant to leave. There was a rooftop patio from which you could practically touch Jade Dragon Snow mountain. Even the toilets had beautiful views! We booked a room where we had a gorgeous mountain view from our bed and celebrated with a glass of wine on the roof patio. Many other hikers arrived that night and we had a great time getting to know a few new friends.

Day Three
The next morning we slept in a bit and left the guesthouse after most of our new friends. The last part of the trail was very steep. At one point, a huge waterfall cascaded right onto the trail and we carefully had to pick our way through the pool, trying not to look at the 1000 or so feet that we would fall if we followed the water. The trail ended too soon, and before we knew it we were reunited with our friends at the end of the trail. We decided to continue the adventure and hike down the very steep and treacherous trail to the elevation of the river. The trip down was harrowing, especially the parts where we had to lower ourselves down the cliff face on rickety ladders. At one point the path bifurcated and a sign let us know we could take our choice of "Safe Path" or "Dangerous Ladder". The roar of the river, squished between two mountain ranges, was deafening and certainly certain death to anyone who ventured in for a dip. After hauling ourselves back up 3,000 vertical feet out of the gorge, our sweaty, grubby group got our egos bruised slightly when we saw spotless Chinese women coming up the same trail we had just climbed, decked out in Gucci clothes and very non-sensible shoes.

Foothills of the Himalayas Part I: Lijiang

We had to get out of the city. Ben and I had been in Kunming for more than 2 months and really hadn't ventured out to explore. We decided to test out Chinese traveling skills with a trip to Northwest Yunnan, an area internationally famous for its beautiful scenery of mountains and wild rivers, incredible biodiversity, and unique cultures. We started our trip with a "sleeper" bus from Kunming to Lijang. For those of you yet to experience Chinese transportation, a sleeper bus has no seats, instead there are rows of double-decker bunks, one on each side of the bus and one in the middle, separated by narrow aisles. Not a bad way to travel, if you don't start to wonder about the hygiene of the last 20 or so people who slept in the bunk before you did... I passed out as we left Kunming and woke up just in time to catch the sunrise over some incredibly huge mountains. The air in Lijiang was crisp and the sky was a perfect, deep blue. We wandered into the old part of the city, and all of a sudden, we were no longer in China. Rather, we were in some Busch Gardens-style theme park depicting ancient China. Old Lijiang was way too clean and organized to actually be real China. Although it was inherently cheesy, we were perfectly content to sped a couple days wandering the quaint cobble-stoned alleys of a place where our every need had been anticipated.

We checked into a charming little guesthouse where the rooms of the 150-year old building opened into a central courtyard and then "touristed" around Old Lijiang for the rest of the day. On the immaculate streets, old stone bridges crossed the canals of clear water that crisscrossed the city. An literal army of workers with brooms and nets made certain that no trash or leaves polluted the city's canals or streets. Lijiang is the historical home of the Naxi ethnic minority and each building was traditional Naxi architecture; wood framed with tile roofs and curving eaves.

One of the highlights of Lijiang actually came when we left Old Lijiang and wandered the New Town in search of the ultimate street food breakfast. We started with a piece of Naxi baba, thick bread that is fried and then baked next to coals in an improvised oven made out of 55 gallon drum. Then we had some tea eggs, hard boiled eggs steeped in a salty broth of tea and herbs. Then some fresh tangerines from a fruit stand. Finally, the coup d'grace, another big piece of Naxi bread, this one soft and doughy rather than fried, stuffed with all the fixins: hot sauce, pickled chillis, strips of raw potato, and pickled vegetables. Yum! After all that fuel, we rented some bikes and biked out of town towards the hills. The 'hills' we saw were the Jade Dragon Snow mountains, the eastern-most foothills of the Himalayas. I say foothills because that is what people call them, despite the fact that they are 20,000 ft tall, snow-covered peaks!