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Published: September 11th 2006
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from kunming i directly went on to lijiang by bus. it's a 9 hours ride up to the north. lijiang is situated about 200 km from the border of tibet. i found myself a nice hostel a little outside of the old part of the town and had my dinner there. there were only a few backpackers there (i just met two couples) which was a relieve after this backpacker crowd in chengdu. i started asking around to get some information for the tiger leaping gorge but nobody who stayed at the hostel had been there so far. i was not sure if i should just try it the next day or first spend a fay in lijiang. at first i decided to stay one more day and do my laundry here but then i found out that i still had three completely clean t-shirts and decided i could give it a try right away. the weather had not been too good on this day, it had rained all day and just stopped a few hours before i arrived. i considered this to be a sign that it would stay like this for me. in the evening i met an austrian
couple and had a nice conversation with them. they told me that they had not liked lijiang because it was so touristy and had looked very artificial to them. another reason to start for a hike.
the next day i got up at 6.30 because i wanted to catch the bus at 7.30. i had talked with the girl at the reception the day before to ask if she would be there around seven. she came at 7.30. i went for the bus station and caught a bus at 8.30. on the bus there were 3 irish guys and a polish-american couple. the bus drove to qiatao (or something like this) from where you could start into the gorge. it was a beautiful hike. mst of the time i did not meet anyone and the people i met were westerners (only two chinese, and i suspect them to be not real chinese, snce they really walked and even had hiking boots). to my surprise i did more or less the whole gorge at once, had only two short rests to drink something. all in all it took me 7 hours, so that wa really just the right distance for a
hike.
i arrived at jane's guesthouse at about 6 pm, had a hower and afterwards went for dinner. there i met a czech guy, a belgian guy and two italians. somehow the belgian guy proposed that the italians should go on some 5500 m mountain by cable car. the italians were already living since 10 years in china and were there just for a weekend trip. so they had their own guide an driver. they asked around if somebody would join them to go to this mountain. the belgian guy agreed immediately. i wasn't really sure if i would like to go up a mountain by cable car, actually i considered this as a pretty stupid idea but once trying to stand on such a mountain and maybe having a good view tempted me. thus finally i agreed.
we had a few more beers this evening but still we all went to bed at 10 because we all were tired from walking. the czech, the belgian guy and me slept in the same dormtory. later on 3 chinese guys joined us. one of them was really snorring loudly so i just listened to some music and slept very well. also
my neck didn't hurt so badly anymore. when i wanted to wake up the belgian at 6.30 he was not there anymore. also his matress was gone. i found him and the czech guy sleeping outside on the terrace. the snorring had annoyed them too much.
i had breakfast with the italians and the belgian and afterwards we started on a minibus along the gorge towards a ferry to cross the rive. it was a lovely ride to the end of the gorge. then we had to walk down about 20 minutes to the ferry, where we waited for an hour for the guy who should take us over the river. woth him some locals came and two horses also joned us on the ferry. on the other side the driver of the italians picked us up and we had another beautiful ride through an awesome landscape of mountains and viallages,
the mountain we did was, as expected not very interesting. well, it could have been, hiking up there and maybe having better weather. we went up to about 4500 metres by the cable car. up there we were inside a huge cloud and you couldn;t see anything except a
crowd of chinese tourists running around with little bottles of oxygen. it was snowinfg and you could walk up a little higher along stairs.
on the way back to lijiang i fell asleep and walk up in lijiang, where we went into a hotpot restaurant and had dinner altogether. the italian guy invited us. we had a hotpot with chicken and really all parts of the chicken were swimming inside there including the head and the feet. i actually wanted to see the guide eating the feet and probably would also have tried one since i already saw it quite often that they were selling them but was not really sure which parts you ate and which you don't but i somehow missed it or he didn't eat them. another speciallity of the chicken was that it had blue skin. it seems all the chickens around lijiang at least have a darker skin because of some minerals in the ground there as the guide explained.
after dinner the italians went to the airport and the belgian guy and me went to our hostels. i went to bed erly again to take the bus to dali the next day.
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anne k.
non-member comment
same procedure as every day
hei flo. i really enjoy reading your journal. that makes me feel like travelling too! and i started listening to nick cave again. thanks and keep on writing. anne