Daju Inn Shangri-La

... remember the friggin bus up to the top of Emei Shan, well there is an airport in Shangrila and on the other side there are good roads.

The good news is that from now on I am on good roads in real buses.

Shangrila has charms.

We are skipping Lijang as we have heard it is more tourist intense than Shangrila. Our next stop will be Dali

... 1497; 01; ומיקו 95; על הסחור 92; שלהם. בעיר לאחר מכן ראיתי שוק לפטרי 93;ת.

שאנ ;גרילה היא עיר רגילה ע ...

We arrived at the Lijang old town bus station around 11 for our ride to Shangri-La. We were joined by a half-dozen Chinese and two western and two Indian backpackers. The backpackers were on their way to hike Tiger Leaping Gorge and were slaughtering the name of the town they wanted to disembark at. Still, it must have been common for backpackers to get off at TLG because the driver seemed to know what they were talking about. These were the first non-Chinese we ...

... is far too mature for nonsense like that). The wine may well have lowered our judgement somewhat, and I'm ashamed to say our indiscriminate attitude towards targets may well have led to some collateral damage... Night ended with some civilised Pu Er tea and observing a drunk Chinese girl slapping her boyfriend about, before hitting the sack wearing all my clothes and two blankets (entirely insufficient, it really is stupidly cold here).

Thurs 8 Jan 09 Decided to trek the Tiber Leaping Gorge mountain trail. Ma Ma arranged for two vans to take us to Jane's GH where we would leave our main packs and hike with day packs. Our van consisted of myself, Claudette and Joe from Manchester, Ed from NZ, Bart from Brussels and Val from France. A two hour ride over well paved but winding mountain road got us to ...

... who organised the Americans educational programme here. The food was really good, we tried some potato balls with yak meat inside, that were similar to Spanish potato croquettes, also particularly good were pork ribs in a spicy marinade, as well as other tasty treats. In fact the food was so enjoyable, we arranged with the chef of the restaurant, Baskera, from Nepal, for us to have a cookery lesson the following day so we could learn some of the ...

... For a stretch of the road there were farmers selling the current crop of Peaches (very large) and apples. We got some and continued on with our journey, arriving at Tiger Leaping gorge in about two hours. There we met our new tour guide who is Tibetan minority. See the story about Tiger Leaping Gorge. It is a beautiful gorge cut between two of the highest peaks in the Snow Mountain range, Snow Dragon on the south and Haba on the North. A very nice stone path ...

It was raining when we left Lijiang and it was raining when we arrived in Zhongdian. It was miserably cold we left the bus station in Zhongdian and looked for a taxi to the old town, we knew its not far away but with our luggage and the weather as it was so we caught hold of a taxi. The driver didn't know where our hostel was so quite ...

... was spent drinking and playing cards with my new friends until it was time to hit the hay. Time to move on... We woke as normal - early thanks to the trumpeter - so we grabbed another mama breakfast. We then booked our bus to Dali leaving at 2.40pm. All of us were to be traveling to dali except martha. Rob and i decided to use the rest of the day to update blogs and the like so that is what we did until it was time to head back to catch our bus. This is how great mama and ...

... Rosie made us some scrambled eggs, which unfortunately were not as good as the sandwiches. She had tried to explain something to us the night before but we hadn't quite picked it up. We thought she had said "tomorrow I will ride a horse for the first time as soon she will be a guide like her father", and she was going to show us in the morning. So she collected her stuff together and took us up the mountainous gravel road which trailed the hillside in the distance. We had opted ...