STILL ON TOUR

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For the second day of our tour we headed up the canyon by bus to some really cool, steep gorges. steel framed timber walkways had been bolted to the smooth rock face on one side as we clinbed 700m up many, many stairs. This path actually goes on for 4km but had been closed further up as a rockfall had taken out a section. Apoparently they will in the future be doing 5 day hikes up these ravines.

The next, and main gorge path was alot easier and was dead flat following the main river for 2.5km. This was really relaxing and nice, and for 120 yuan we caugh inflatable zodiacs back to the resort to see the canyon from the waterline.

Lunch, packed into the bus and we were off. We headed back for the long bus trip home but made regualr photo stops. We also stpped at a knife shop, apparently in Tibetian culture the bigger your kife the bettera catch you are. sounds like they are compensating for something. Anyway they weren't kidding there were huindreds of ornate knives, axes and swords it was crazy. I didn't thing customs in Australia would take to kindly with bringing Conan the Barbarians sword in my carry on so i gave it a miss but it was funny. There was also a Tibetaian dog breeding place that had these large, furry, stocky and quite agressive hunting dogs - they looked cool but they are definitely not a family pet as they would probably eat your children.

I also got to feed some monkeys at another stop. It was a long day by the time we got back to Lijiang and after a bit we went out for more fantastic food - how am I going to deal with the ordinary stuff in Australia and at four times the price - BBQ season soon that will have to do.

SIDENOTE - Asians are so funny with taking photos. Al they want to do get in the piccture in front of every thing in the world. My way of describing it is that if a Chinese person went to see the mona lisa they would stand directly in from of it, blocking most of it from viiew and get the photo taken - funny.

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Photos

STEEP GORGE
not shangri la the town