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!