I have unexpectedly got the time to post an entry. Right now we are in Dali, Yunnan, waiting till our bus leaves for southern Yunnan. It’s raining, so Myung went to the room to take a nap, and we will meet in an hour. It may stop raining by then. Or she’ll bring umbrellas. Whatever.
Few words this time, again. We went from Kunming up to Lijiang. 15 years ago when Myung first went there, it was something like 13 hours over dirt roads, so it was unspoiled. Now it’s a worse tourist ghetto than Fenghuang. I uploaded one picture. It’s cute enough there. It looks a lot like this in most of the places. There are a couple of main walking drags which are crammed with Chinese tourists of the geekiest sort.
Basically, the best thing to do is walk around there for about a day, then go to Shangri La (I forget the old name for it), and from there to Shangri La Grand Canyon (which we didn’t do), or tour through the high mountains (which we did do). Before you get to Shangri La, there is a beautiful place called Tiger Leaping Gorge. We decided to go on a tour, on a bus with 30 other tourists, all Chinese. Some of those trips are all party, singing and such. This one was fairly sedate, though there was some singing and lots of socializing. Here’s Tiger Leaping Gorge.
Most of us walked down to the river at the bottom of the gorge. Hmm, I thought I uploaded pictures, but I don’t see them. Oh well.
From there we went up to the high mountains. The pass was about 13,000 ft. There were nice spots along the way. If I had known I’d be here blogging, I’d have brought Lonely Planet so I could remember the names of places. This is the “first bend” of the Yellow River.
There are mostly Tibetans in there, as you can see from the stupas. It’s Tibetan New Year, so many people were getting ready to celebrate.
Here’s up at the top of the pass.
This is the view out our guesthouse window in the morning.
From there we went to a glacier. Myung chose to walk the 20 km up the mountain. I decided to spring for a horse.
It was quite nice up there, even though it’s evident the glacier is melting away.
Then it was back down. Oh, going downhill is hard on guys if the stirrups are too short.
On the way back was a village with a large gompa, that is, Buddhist monastery. This one is quite nice. To me it looks like a little Potala in Llasa. I haven’t been to Llasa, but I’ve seen a lot of pictures, especially now with Chinese TV heavily covering New Year and, of course, giving it’s version of Tibet’s liberation from serfdom.
Her are a couple of pictures from around there.
We kind of formed groups. Here’s our group having dinner after we got back.
About 8 km from Lijiang is a Naxi minority village. Quickly, here are some pictures of that place.
Okay, I have to0 go. Here are the last pictures for now. In one, I’m getting my spsring travel cut. The others are just nice photos. Be well, all of you.
