Yuanyang to Niujiaozhai

---

Hi all,

Arrived in Yuanyang without a hitch it only took 30 hours give or take. After sleeping like a log I got hold of a map and strode off towards Niujiaozhai. It looked pretty easy on the map and so it was in the beginning. There is a cobbled road to Longshuba but after that you are out onto the mountainside amongst the rice terraces. There is no real pathway so you have to rely very much on the people you meet along the way to point you in the right direction. The people looked very surprised to see me emerge from the bamboo groves I can tell you. So it's thanks to the lady who left her work in the fields to take me along the pathway to show me the way to go. It's also thanks to the old man, he must have been 80 if he was a day, who was cutting up some bamboo and walking around barefoot, who also took me to the right pathway and finally to the man who lived in a wooden hut in the middle of nowhere who not only showed me the right way to go put also had to pull me up out of the river when I slipped over on the wet rocks.

The biggest thank you must go to the family who allowed me to sleep on the roof of their house and who feed and watered me.

I had been walking for around seven hours and I was so tired that I could hardly put one foot in front of another. I sat down in the middle of this small village and was asking people as they passed if there was somewhere I could sleep when a man, in his late 20s I guess, told me to come back to his house for something to eat and offered me a place to sleep on his roof. The house was an old mud brick house with two rooms downstairs and a hay loft upstairs with a covered area outside. Four people and two small children lived in this house along with some ducks and the occasional passing dog. The front part of the house doubled as a kitchen and store area while the room doubled as a living room/bedroom. The hayloft had been partioned off and there was another bedroom in there. It always seems that the most humble people are always willing to give more.

After a much needed rest I rose in the morning at cock crow, litteraly, I nearly jumped out of my skin, to a view of mist that was shrouding the mountains. Word must of got out about me staying as some small children soon came looking for me all curious and laughing. I sat talking to the kids for an hour or so while I had a cup of tea and then the kids showed me the way to go to NiuJiaoZhai.

It wasn't too far but I took my time as my feet and legs were still aching from my previous days exersions. Luckily it was another cobbled road but the final part up to the town was a heck of an incline and it took some puffing and sweating to get there. Although the old man carrying some wood on his back fair skipped up it.

Once up in the town I felt quite like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn with all these children following me. I eventually came across what looked like it was once a communal kitchen where some old men were sat smoking tobacco in a huge bamboo water pipe. So I sat with these people and chatted and ate some noodles. I had got quite a crowd after I'd been there a while. Although everyone was very camera shy. Everytime I tried to take a photo they all ran away.

I really couldn't face walking all the way back so I caught a minibus back to Yuanyang and booked back into the hotel.


Enjoy the photos

Jah Bless

---

Photos

Out with the piglets
It was market day in Yuanyang... No he wasn't taking them out for a walk