Tiger Leaping Surprise

In an effort to "live life dangerously" we decided to do something that wasn't planned....oooooo.

After leaving Guilin, we headed for a city called Kunming where we had planned to stay a couple of days in order to wait for our Vietnamese visas. A Dutch couple that we met on our train ride to Kunming told us that they were going to a small town just north of our destination called Lijiang. Taking a look for ourselves in the trusty guidebook, we thought it sounded nice and decided to live a little. Am I ever thankful we did - our time there was my favourite experience in China.

We stored our bags in Kunming and took another overnight bus (arg!) to Lijiang. There, we were shocked to see a "real" snow-capped mountain peeking up in the distance. After contacting a recommended guesthouse (MamaNaxi guesthouse - Naxi being the ethnic minority of the area), we were picked up at the station and driven into the old part of the town.
Cobblestone-covered alleyways lined with small streams ran between beautiful old Chinese buildings. Down one such alleyway, our guesthouse was separated from the street by an unmarked door. We entered to find a bustle of activity and a woman who referred to herself in the third person as "Mama". She told us that, "Mama take care of everything"...and Mama did. She fed us more food than we could handle and set up our trip to Tiger Leaping Gorge the next day.

We spent our first day in Lijiang wandering around the old town - beautiful little shops, back alleyways and many women dressed in Naxi clothing (gorgeous head dresses and colourful aprons).
Early the next day we stumbled into a car and made a two hour journey to Tiger Leaping Gorge. The drive alone was worth it - beautiful scenery that reminded me of Ontario in the fall and great sneak-peeks of farmers doing their thing and their simple farms. Many women were seen hunched over carrying what looked like wheat stocks nearly twice their size.

Once we arrived, we began our ascent with two men on horses following closely behind (for a bargain price we could go up on horseback...). We began hiking along the side of what seemed to be a foothill - across the gorge was a spectacular view. Shear cliffs stretched down to the Yangtze river and appeared very similar to those we saw on our cruise. What differed, however, is what towered above them - snow-capped mountains.

We stopped for lunch at a Naxi family guesthouse and made our way over the following four and a half hours to our rest point - the poorly named Halfway House. The stretch between involved huffing up steep switchbacks and teetering along shear cliff faces along narrow paths shared only by mountain goats and their herders. I felt like a hobbit set out on an important journey. Every so often we came across small farm areas that were squished into the mountain side. All we could hear were animal noises, cow bells and every so often rapids from below.

Our stay at the Halfway House was a bit cold but otherwise magical - for only $7 we had a room that overlooked the gorge and mountains....unbelievable.

Not having much more time and hearing that the second half wasn't as nice, we headed back to the base via mini bus (driving around tight bends down the steep mountainside was nerve wracking to say the least). We got to make the same trip the next day as Alex forgot her camera at the guesthouse (insert defeated sigh here).

Our final few hours in Lijiang were spent at a cafe in the old town where we got a special seat on the roof. We had a spectacular view of the other old rooftops that covered the city...an excellent end to an amazing few days.
If I were to return to China much of my time would be spent further exploring the provence of Yunnan. People here are laid-back, friendly and the scenery is spectacular. A real treat.