ON TOUR

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We booked in with a tour company out of Lijiang to see a whole bunch of canyons, mountains, temples and more. I was a little apprehensive over whether we would get value, see cool things and be on some Contiki thing. BUt it was excellent.

We all pilled into a twenty seater bus and headed off into the hills. Going was slow as we were on secondary road with lots of traffic going both ways on both sides of the road while looking over the edge of incredible high mountains.

We made plenty of photo stops and one was interesting. it was my first sight of the mighty Yangtzee river. the spot we saw is where it comes out of the Himalaian platteau and then makes it's first U-turn. The reason this is significant is that if the river did not make this first turn, it would head off to India and China as we know it would be and have been completely different - amazing.

Another stop was at a Temple. It was pretty cool i guess but i have seen so many they kind of Blur together. I remember there were so many rules about what you could and could not do there - the funniest being no making love ! - DAMN IT just when I was feeling lucky.

By the end of thee day we were pretty tired and we arrived at our hotel and what a suprise. This was amazing, we were following a raging river along the bottm of an ever deepening gorge and then we passed through a tunnel and there was our hotel sitting beside the river literally between massive cliffs of yelow and brown rock. It was staggering, the cliffs were so tall and directly over us and they must have been 500m high. The hotel was great, the staff were great and the dinner was awesome. After dinner the staff were all out in the courtyard doing Tibetian dancing so jack and i decided (thanks to some beer) to make idiots of ourselves - which we accomplished outstandingly. ac tually i thought i was doing pretty well untill I realised the Girl i had been copying was a girl and the guys were doing different dance moves - oh well!

Jack and I went for a walk up the canyon looking at the looming cliffs and brilliannt stars - very nice.

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Photos

SHANGRI LA
This is the worlds biggest prayer wheel and must be 10 metres tall, you are supposed to turn it three times,, it was really heavy but we did OK. Seems like a weird way to talk to God, I would think it makes us sound like a broken record.

AT THE TEMPLE
This is Jacks step mum and our awesome tour guide