The Not-Quite-Roof of the World
The area around Lijiang, in Northwest Yunnan near the southeast corner of Tibet, is a flat valley ringed by mountains. It looks like a normal Sierra scale of valley and mountains until you realize that the valley is at 7000 feet. This is pretty muc the "foothills" of the Himalayas.
Lijiang itself is an old town of the local Naxi tribe (who make lovely bread). In the early 90's, two thirds of it was leveled by an earthquake, and it was rebuilt as a sort of traditional-town-theme-park. Our first impression of it was undeniably poor. After an evening of flight delays and tangles, our cab driver dumped us in the main square and tried to fob us off an a porter who would take us to another hotel. It took us over an hour to orient ourselves with respect to the tangled warren of streets and find our hotel. It was 10pm when we then went into town for dinner; we found mobs of drunk Chinese tourists chanting at each other out of the windows of restaurants.
But in the morning, it was all much different. While most of the town feels phony it is still lovely. The endless tourist stores selling the same junk are weird, but it's all part of the game I suppose. And there was some surprisingly excellent coffee to be had.
But we weren't actually there for the town, despite its charms. The scenary is the real draw of Yunnan province. We decided that the best use of time after a day in town was to take a two day guided tour of Tiger Leaping Gorge.
The gorge is claimed to be the deepest in the world, this seems a little unfair to me: what I would call the gorge part (where the river has carved the walls) is no Grand Canyon, it just happens that the sides of the gorge merge right into some large mountains. But it is spectacular. It is also notable that the river there is the Yangtze--thousands of miles from the sea.
Unfortunately, the first day was a really gruelling hike up high along the mountain side above the gorge. There are many guesthouses and tea spots along the way (quite civilized), but we kept passing them in the evening and finally trudged into a hotel down by a round with aching knees just as the sun was setting. The next day was easier: we went down to the river for a short hike in the morning then came back to the hotel for tea. After that we were shuttled to the next part, and hiked down the canyon to an old ferry that took us across the river in an area where there are no bridges. We then had a liesurely late lunch and went back to town.
Tara I blew town and the crack of dawn (+2 hour flight delay) the next morning and are now in Sichuan.
Lijiang itself is an old town of the local Naxi tribe (who make lovely bread). In the early 90's, two thirds of it was leveled by an earthquake, and it was rebuilt as a sort of traditional-town-theme-park. Our first impression of it was undeniably poor. After an evening of flight delays and tangles, our cab driver dumped us in the main square and tried to fob us off an a porter who would take us to another hotel. It took us over an hour to orient ourselves with respect to the tangled warren of streets and find our hotel. It was 10pm when we then went into town for dinner; we found mobs of drunk Chinese tourists chanting at each other out of the windows of restaurants.
But in the morning, it was all much different. While most of the town feels phony it is still lovely. The endless tourist stores selling the same junk are weird, but it's all part of the game I suppose. And there was some surprisingly excellent coffee to be had.
But we weren't actually there for the town, despite its charms. The scenary is the real draw of Yunnan province. We decided that the best use of time after a day in town was to take a two day guided tour of Tiger Leaping Gorge.
The gorge is claimed to be the deepest in the world, this seems a little unfair to me: what I would call the gorge part (where the river has carved the walls) is no Grand Canyon, it just happens that the sides of the gorge merge right into some large mountains. But it is spectacular. It is also notable that the river there is the Yangtze--thousands of miles from the sea.
Unfortunately, the first day was a really gruelling hike up high along the mountain side above the gorge. There are many guesthouses and tea spots along the way (quite civilized), but we kept passing them in the evening and finally trudged into a hotel down by a round with aching knees just as the sun was setting. The next day was easier: we went down to the river for a short hike in the morning then came back to the hotel for tea. After that we were shuttled to the next part, and hiked down the canyon to an old ferry that took us across the river in an area where there are no bridges. We then had a liesurely late lunch and went back to town.
Tara I blew town and the crack of dawn (+2 hour flight delay) the next morning and are now in Sichuan.
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