The Yunnan adventure starts to take shape: Lijiang

Lijiang was the next destination after Kunming, a mere 8 hours bus ride away. It is an old town preserved (or I should rather say: rebuilt or recreated) for tourism. The Yunnan is a very touristic region where, like everywhere in China, the large majority of tourists are Chinese. The old town is cute and crowded. The hostels and guesthouses always have a cute courtyard, the one I stayed, Mama Naxi, actually has two. The guesthouse's owner, Mama, is a lively and funny old lady always with a smile and a loud voice. She is of the Naxi (pronounced 'Nashi') ethnic minority, like many people in this part of the region. The streets are full of shops, not different from the ones one can find in any touristy town in China: the tea shop, the dry mushroom and vegetable shop, the decorative weapons shop, the silk shop, etc.

Street in Lijiang

Public laundry

Weird dog

Lijiang is a high place (around 2400m) and I immediately felt that when I walked out of the bus and walked with my backpack to the centre: short breath and feeling tired. The weather is similar to Kunming, dry, clear skies and warm, although it was supposed to be the beginning of the raining season. People's faces start to look different here, more like the Tibetan... Good looking people... In the horizon one can see a majestic mountain, that I was not aware that I would explore a couple of days later, with snow on top. This is definitely not the first time I see snow on the top of a mountain when it is hot where I am, but it always impresses me.

The mountains seen from the streets

The group of travellers grew again in Lijiang. A traveller that we met on the bus was going to do Couchsurfing in a courtyard house somewhere in the centre. We all met in my guesthouse's courtyard to plan what to do in the next days. The Chinese couchsurfing host and another Chinese couchsurfer joined too. Both spoke an excellent English and were quite travelled, specially the couchsurfer, who would join the group and become probably my closest Chinese friend in this trip so far. We all had a fantastic Yunnanese hot pot meal together and decided to spend the next two nights in the Tiger Leaping Gorge and then go to Shangri La.

Pork ribs hot pot

An epic adventure was starting to take shape. At night we were invited by the couchsurfing host to a small private club, a cute room with sofas and lots of photos and paintings in the centre, where more of his friends gathered to play guitar, sing, chat and drink. Few English was spoken, but smiles and hand gestures were enough to bond and a nice and friendly atmosphere was created. Some of the musicians were really good and beer flowed the whole night...

The Yunnan group, as it was when departing from Lijiang 

The next day we chilled until the evening, when we headed to the Tiger Leaping Gorge.