Tiger Leaping Gorge and more time in Lijiang
October 29th, 2009 by admin
We woke up early this morning to visit Tiger Leaping Gorge. It’s a 3900m gorge cutting through the marble mountains creating magnificent scenery. We walked along the middle of the gorge looking over in to the rushing water and enjoying the views.
On our way back from the Gorge (of which we have millions of photos) we stopped off at the first bend of the Yangste River.
The next day we had all to ourselves, we woke up early and headed up to the top of the Old Town and found a tea house over looking the roofs and the hills in the distance. We found ourselves hanging around there for a couple of hours before deciding to explore the place a bit further.
Explore we certainly did in a ‘not entirely sure where we are’ sort of way. We wandered around for another couple of hours before finally stumbling upon our hotel from a completely different angle to the one we were expecting.
After that we took a rest and had some lunch (meat on a stick) before venturing off again into the town, this time sticking strickly to the main routes. It’s a beautiful town, and because of that got very busy towards the centre with all the shop sellers and tourists trying to get a good deal.
We’ve really enjoyed our time in Lijiang and despite it’s obvious touristy-ness it’s certainly somewhere we’d like to go back to and spend a bit more time.
Tags: crowds, scenery
Haunglong Pools and on to Chengdu
October 21st, 2009 by admin
Early morning drive to Huanglong to see another scenic park there. The trip involved a long drive and half way there we were warned of altitude sickness as the drive would include a mountain road as high as 4000 metres! As I write this we are sat at the side of the road after turning back due to the back of our van sliding out while driving along and hitting some ice. We all (including Gerry) made the decision that it was too dangerous as we would have to take this road again to get to the airport later today. A lot of the cars ahead of us were sliding and I think we made the right decision.
So now we are on our way to a local town to do some sightseeing and some shopping Tibetan style.
As it turns out, it was great. There were lots of small shops selling little bits, plenty of photos to take. It felt very untouristy, which was nice and we were the only westerners in town. We wandered up to the temple and took some pictures over the town and listerned to the singing/chanting.
Afterwards we made our way to another small town for our Tibetan lunch, which involved yet more Yak meat and this time some Pork. Pretty nice. Once we’d wandered around a place which sells Jade and other stones beautifully carved to kill an hour we were off to the airport. The flight was delayed for an hour, which made the day drag on, but eventually we boarded the plane set for Chengdu.
On arrival in Chengdu, once we found our guide (Robert), we made our way to a resturant for something to eat before heading off to the hotel. Our room is huge; it has two toilets and two TVs (the TVs are in the bedroom and lounge, not the toilets). Tomorrow is another big day with the Pandas and the Giant Buddha.
Tags: flight, scenery, snow
