Sky Hostel Shangri-La

... br>

Spent the afternoon wandering around Old Town & its lovely cobblestoned streets. Nath bought himself a tibetan knife & a tiger skin. I got myself some hiking shoes & pants that wear less than 1/4 what I would pay back in Australia. We wandered up the top of the hill where a temple was & spinning gold thing which must be a ...

... br>
The
prefectural government also has implemented a number of policies to
protect the area's eco-environment including banning white pollution,
climbing Mt. Meili and poaching wild animals.

By now, the ratio of the wooded area has shot up to 73.9 percent of the prefecture's landmass from 64 percent in 2001 ...

... 1495;לטת 97; להצטר 07; אליו. טוב עשיתי כי כשהגע 14;י מעלה בחזרה גילית 97; שפספס 14;י חלק מהאתר. בקצה ה ...

... and who (rightly) thought we'd be up for a night on the town; and Dr. Ganseng, the Canton Tibetan Doctor who adopted us in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture Museum in Shangri-La and lamented over the change to the town over the past few years and who missed his Canton food - the northern Yunnan cusine being too spicy and salty for him.

Our friend, Tom, asked whether we had seen any poverty here. Apart from a few child beggars in Kunming (Jinmabiji Square) and ...

... a high-end hotel featuring bungalows that reflect the architecture of a nearby monastery. Gift-shop merchants hawk Tibetan silver necklaces, Burmese jade bracelets, yak bells and horn combs in a bustling souvenir village. Farmers' daughters dressed in Tibetan-style vests, jeans and sneakers serve barley liquor, yak butter tea and bubbling caldrons of spicy stews in stone hot pots in tourist pubs. Yak herders' wives change the linens in a handful of low-slung ...

... been some sort of super tiger because it isn't quite that narrow, but still the impression of power you get as the water violently channels through is quite something. You can hear the roar of the river even from the high path we had been following but down here in the gorge itself it was so loud you struggle to hear other people speak. After a couple of hours by the river we went back up to catch a bus to Lijiang.

... to get up and hike down to the Mekong River and/or up to a viewpoint to see Mei Lei Snow Mountain. Unfortunately it was cold and raining quite hard and neither Kristin nor I had enough clothes or rain gear. So we had breakfast (a huge plate of yummy noodles) and spent a few hours sitting by the stove in the kitchen talking with the other people staying there and drinking tea. Finally in the early afternoon the rain had slowed to a drizzle so Kristin and I decided to ...

... read a leaflet describing his NGO. He established it to help local women and children, after cycling around the world and becoming depressed at the thought of returning to the corporate world. You get the idea.... The place (Zhongdian, not the cafe), is small with streets of traditional Tibetan buildings, their frontages intricately designed fretwork (I think that's the term for that ornate wood design but I ...

... over and started to rain, so we retired indoors for the most of the afternoon. Thankfully, Matt had thought to bring along some cards. We all went our separate ways the next morning, as a few of us went back to Lijiang while others headed even further north to the edge of Tibet. The two day hike took us through some of the most amazing scenery I have yet come across in China, and I'm glad I had just enough time on my visa to come up here. & nbsp;

... absolutely amazing voices - kind of like yodelling, but not so annoying; an instrument one of the girls played, which was fan shaped and which she placed over her mouth, using circular breathing to make the sound; and the conductor, who was a real character, telling jokes in Mandarin and English and having the crowd in stitches at times. Lijiang is a lovely place to stay, and a nice relaxing prelude to the next part of the trip - the trek through the Tiger Leaping Gorge!!