The Old Town of Lijiang

The cobbled streets of Lijiang
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We arrived in Lijiang after dark but armed with a piece of paper with the hotel name written in Chinese we were able to find our way fairly easily, through the cobbled streets of the old city. Lijiang is a very old town which has been preserved in more or less its original state - except that every building is now a souvenir shop or restaurant! Apparently it gets up to a million domestic tourists a year,plus a smattering like us from overseas. It is very pretty but a little kitschy. To the north of the town is the towering Jade Dragon Snow Mountain - we are in the foothills of the Himalaya at this point. We spent Thursday wandering around the streets and visiting a nearby park, a very pretty spot indeed. That night we enjoyed a performance of ancient music, complete with ancient musicians. The music was fabulous, but the leader gave very long-winded explanations of each piece which were rather lost on the non-Chinese speaker. We booked a couple of local tours for the next couple of days.

Leaping Tiger Gorge
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The first of these was to Tiger Leaping Gorge, reputedly the world's deepest gorge (not sure where that leaves the Grand canyon) - it was quite impressive. The tour also took in the "first bend of the Yangtze River", where there is a revolutionary staue commemorating Mao's Great March. The day finished up at a lake where most of the others on the tour indulged in trotting up and down on the ponies for hire.

Leaping Tigers.... and Jade Dragon Mountain

Jade Dragon (Snow Mountain)
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The second tour was to the Jade Dragon mountain. This involved travelling up the World's Longest Cable Car, but was preceded by the World's Longest Wait as busload after busload took their turn to board. The cable car starts at 3500 m and goes up to 4500 m above sea level. At this altitude we could definitely feel the effects of altitude sickness - quite dizzy after a few steps! Many of the Chinese tourists had purchased small bottles of oxygen before going up and were sucking on these as if their life depended on it! Hardy souls that we were we managed without the extra oxygen but were relieved to head back down the mountain.

After a delicious tea of take-away egg pancake thing we retired to our abode in preparation for the trek to Dali next day.