Lovely Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge

Lijiang:

feasting at mama's

We'd been told about Mama's guesthouse by a couple of other travellers...told about this eden for backpackers, but not where abouts Mama's was. Lijiang is filled with little winding streets and is extremely confusing to navigate around... it ended up taking nearly 4 hours to find mama but it was worth it! A lady stopped us in the street and asked us where we were going... she new mama and called her... 5 mins later we were eating plums; having our bags carried for us and following mama to her house.... There we were watered and fed to the brim and for the next few days we paid 50 yuan (less than ten dollars) for breakfast, our own room and an all you can eat dinner of at least 10 dishes... mama's deep fried eggplant cannot be beaten... a really good place for meeting people and relaxing... did we mention free washing and internet? The already mentioned winding streets are a lot of fun to get lost in, (amongst the hordes of Chinese tourists in the busy sections, with little colour coded hats and flags)... we made it to a rather large market on the edge of the old town where unfortunately we saw butchered dog and goat heads... uarhhhh... went for a bike ride to a village north of town called baisha... there we had the pleasure of meeting the famous doctor ho... he chattted to us for a long time and then prescribed us some of his healthy tea for the altitude to come... doesn't taste very good though... on the 4th of july a group of americans decided to celebrate the national day of independence traditionally, with fireworks... mama led the hoard to a safe area to let of some whopping explosions... we stood well away! Just to let you know a bit more about mama... she has been running the guesthouse for 8 years with papa (who likes smoking and browsing the internet); she gives every guest a special necklace and a bag of goodies when they leave; mama looks after her guests, in fact one was ripped off by a tour company and mama came to the rescue and got their money back... we were escorted to our departing vehicle and waved into the distance by mama...

jamin

Tiger Leaping Gorge

On the way from Lijiang, Patrick, Rohn, Clare and Mark walked through the Tiger Leaping Gorge (or as our Brazilian friend Tiego called it; "The Tiger Leaps!!!"). Fantastic two day walk, the river sits around 2,000m and the peaks of the gorge are over 5,500m...makes for a very steep wall and some amazing scenery. Pretty long day of walking, especially after such and early start, but the scenary was breathtakingly dramatic. Stayed at "half-way house" which in fact was well over half way; Mark ended up getting stuck into a few cold ones after a hard days walking and chewed the ears off anyone who would listen. He also ate for free finshing off wastefull travellers hardly touched meals. Patrick announced in the morning; "Mark, you talked sooo much last night"; which sounds funnier if delivered with a German accent. Mark was a little hung over for the shorter second day, which was no less dramatic. At one stage, a waterfall spills across the very narrow track, with a large drop into the gorge below; walked pretty carefully through this. Arrived at the river and bargined for a truck back to the start of the walk where Margo (an Aussie) runs a cafe which has frozern snickers bars among other delights. Rohn heade back to Lijiang (about 2hours away)and clare, mark and patrick gorged themselves (the cafe is called the Gorged Tiger) before picking up a bus to Zhongdian. Beatiful drive through our first real Tibetan area (used to be part of tibet before 1955); awesome house, fields of barley, yaks, wildflowers and streams. Our driver very skillfully avoided a collision, locked up the brakes at abpout 90 clicks to wipe off some speed and then dodged a spinning 4wd; little bit full-on, but in the end we were basking in the blistering sun of Zhongdian (an hour ahead of schedule)...

mama

quack quack

sleepy...

tiger leaps... rhon and patrick

tiger leaps.... the gorge

tiger leaps...clare strolling