Hiking up Zhonge Shan (mountain)

Well if our China Lonely Planet was any better than the out of date (3 shops in a row we tried to go to in Dali no longer existed) too-light-on-information piece of crap that unfortunately it was (unlike the SE Asia one which was great) we would have known to have spent much more time on this journey. We would have known that this mountain was part of the 4000 m high Cang Shan (Jade Green Mountain) range that offered an enormous array of hiking for any who were interested. As it was, we had thought we were being hardy Kiwis by hiking up the mountain to the Zhonge Temple at 2600m. This is us at the start of the hike. Note the gravestones to the right of the picture – this is a local cemetery. Note also the girl with the (sun) umbrella – she’s one of the two Aussie girls we met on the way up. They were also starting to find the base of the track. Lucky we met them as there were just about no tourists walking the track as there were much easier ways....