Riverside Hostel Lijiang

Lijiang

No-one is quite sure where Hilton's Shangri-La is but it is generally accepted to be in the Tibetan region. Zhongdian, in north-west Yunnan province, part of Greater Tibet was offically renamed Shangri-La after a competition in 2003. We decide not to visit Zhondian because of potential snow but head to Lijiang instead where we buy a copy of Lost Horizon by James Hilton.

Lijiang is a delightful old town. There are the charming water wheels at ...

who makes up these lists?
Well, some folks at Time made up the list of the 25 most authentic Asian experiences, which means that those 25 things are either over-run with authentic seekers or will ...

... usually used by bus tourists (the majority of Chinese take the bus, 90% of the hikers I saw on the high trail were foreigners).
http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Tiger_Leaping_Gorge

The ticket price is 50RMB. After about 300m, I came upon Jane's Guesthouse, run by Tibetan Jane. She told me where to get on the trail and off I went. Many people do this hike in either one day (pushing it) but more will do it in two days, staying over at ...

Had a great day being lost in the countryside outside Lijiang as we were trying to head to the villages of Shu He & Baisha. Rented bikes from our hostel for 15 yuan each & headed off with the mud map they gave us. The maps aren't very accurate at all ( definitely not us!) but we made wrong turns straight away! Got on track & went to The Dragon ...

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... via the CIA) - known as 'using the barbarian to rule the barbarian' idea, while trying to assimilate the borderline peoples into the greater empire. Xu got to know the local tusi, Mu Zeng, and the Naxi people (who were seen as a buffer between the Han Chinese and the Tibetans). The Mu family were given authority by the Mongols, and by the Ming dynasty the historical records note that the rulers knew poetry and writing, 'respect the rites and preserve ...

... 91-year-old monk who has cared for the tree pretty much his entire life. Next we went to Baisha for some lunch. Baisha is a Naxi village and it used to be the capital of the Naxi Kingdom back in the days before Kublai Khan made it part of his Yuan empire. After our tasty and very fresh lunch we wandered through the shops a little before checking out some of the famous Buddhist frescoes in the local temples. We then returned to our hotel for some rest.

... travel local... We know, however, that we are inevitably contributing to the transformation of some of these places, whether we like it or not. We are tourists, "white" faces, which in many of the countries we have seen represent "rich" tourists, those consumers who bring dollar signs to many locals' eyes. Way up high Further from city life still was Tiger Leaping Gorge. Here, the Jinsha river cuts through the mountains, creating the longest (16 km ...

... to cry as a sign of appreciation for her family that she will miss. That makes her eyes red though so she wears the sunglasses. Family members and friends will also pinch her as a way to give her blessings. We stopped for lunch after the old house. I had rice, broccoli, meat, and a corn that was pretty good. I hadn't used the bathroom since I had gotten up at that point. So I walked over to the ...

... could be used to describe the state. They had cowboy hats that proudly read "Marlboro Country". You could ride Tibetan ponies, wear Naxi clothing. Nearly everything was a shop. All those boarded up places we had walked past that morning were now singing, dancing and flashing souvenir shops. We prefered them closed. We walked slowly through town, past other, shell-shocked backpackers with the same expression on their face ...