Lijiang

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Back onto the bus, more awesome scenery - tunnels, valleys, hills - and into the smaller town of Lijiang.

Nice just to wander the maze-like streets and alleys - cobblestone streets, beautiful old buildings (or new ones in the same style) with red lanterns, flowering rees, huge rose bushes and small canals running through filled with fish! Very popular with tourists but has the sort of charm that still overpowers the tourist plague.

We found a nice little hotel on a side alley with people who spoke nearly no English - but with phrasebook and gestures we managed. They made us some pu'er tea in the courtyard under the very old but small Hitong tree that the hotel was named for.

We cycled out to Baisha, a small villiage nearby populated by the Naxi minority and home to the most admired man, Dr. Ho, a practitioner of traditional chinese medicine creating teas from local wild herbs. Nice scenery to cycle through - the wide streets of Lijiang and then out into the countryside - a broad flat plain with mountains rising abruptly on each side, farmers fields and scrubland at the roadside. Good dumpling soup in Baisha!

One day, we took the bus up to the highest nearby mountain. They had a chairlift up the hillside to a nice wooded boardwalk path ending in a loop around a meadow. We spotted a medium sized absurdly long tailed bird and a herd of Yak! Higher altitude - we noticed the cold!

On our last night we took in the Naxi orchestra, which was unbelievable. Perhaps too much talking in between, but the music was really exceptional. The singing and instruments were really unique.

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