Advertisement
Published: October 21st 2007
Edit Blog Post
Lijiang
Another wet day, what to do, . . oh yea shopping! Monday (08/Oct/07) opened up as a pretty cloudy day but we figured we'd stick to our plans & head to Jade Dragon Snow mountain area on the local bus to check out the Cloud Fir Meadow chairlift to an elevation of 4500m. We had found that weather conditions can change rapidly & what starts out a lousy day can soon become a fine one. We thought the local bus trip of ~50km for 10Y each was good value & if the day did not change we simply head back - out of pocket only a few yuan. Well, we came unstuck somewhat, when we struck a people 'toll booth' as we entered the Mountain area. The toll of 160Y ($25) meant this was a no repeat excursion - we had to do what was to be done, today!
Again, we found our Lonely Planet out of date, with different facilities than we were expecting & with different procedures now in place. Our local bus dropped us off at a resort style complex from which you could bus to any, or all, of the three chair lifts in the area. This place (abutted what is reputed to be the highest golf course
Yak Meadow Chair Lift
Who'd believe it? What scenery will be up the top? in the world) was obviously very new & designed to cater for large tour groups, with the flashest looking tour buses to get you to & from the lifts. It being a rather dull day, there was not a lot of movement around at the time we arrived & in fact we ended up being the full bus load (at 20Y=$3 each return) heading up to the Yak Meadow chair lift. We travelled roads which had been revamped, through various cloud banks clinging to the many mountainsides. We passed other flash resort accommodation which faced onto a passing river that was, somehow, sky blue in colour as it flowed down the four created levels, with very attractive water fall arrangements, but lacked this colour before & after the resort area!?! How the heck is that? Finally got to the lift & up we went (60Y=$9 return) on this escalator that disappeared into the clouds. Seemed to be the service entrance to heaven or something; very eerie indeed. Hard to believe any one would bother such a trip in such conditions, but, we had come this far, and, I must say, it was pretty darn special. We were suspended in this
Lijiang
Two of the locals? No, that's me & Marg under those Naxi women's caps. nothingness seeing almost nothing of where we were heading or from where we'd come, could hear the odd piped yak noises, & see the odd fir trees decorated, just like Christmas trees, with this other mossy plant that draped from the branches. We got to the top to find it too was enshrouded in cloud. Marg & I walked this boardwalk that loops around the meadow - check out the piccies we shot whilst there.
Back in Lijiang old city we had the chance to relax a little & shop a bit in the very pleasant surrounds this places affords. An interesting aspect, I was unaware of until my visit here, is the use of a Dongba script by the Naxi people & still in use (maybe only for tourism purposes). The Dongba script is a pictoscript, a sort of hieroglyphic that I found quite fascinating. Some here have produced some artwork using some of the Dongba script as well.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.105s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 13; qc: 61; dbt: 0.0527s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb