Around Yunnan province

Hi again! Quite a lot has happened since we last wrote. Our first stop in Yunnan province was Kunming. It's not a particularly interesting city and to be honest we weren't really inspired to explore it much since because of the constant torrential rain, but anyway we needed to go to Kunming to apply for our visas for Vietnam, and because Kunming is the main transport hub for the rest of the province. From there we moved on to a small town called Dali but since the weather showed no sign of improving there we pushed on to the northwest since we knew we'd have to come back the same way later. So, we went to Shangri-La. It's a really beautiful Tibetan village surrounded by the snowcapped mountains of the Himalayas and close to the Tibetan border.



If you're not going to Tibet (and we're not) then this is apparently the next best thing. It's a beautiful place and the people were really friendly. The only small problem was that night times were freezing; we were wearing gloves and sleeping with electric blankets which was a bit of a shock to the system after the 30 degrees heat of Yangshuo just the previous week! After two days in Shangri-La we moved on to Tiger Leaping Gorge which was one of the things on our "must do" list for China. We weren't dissappointed!



Tiger Leaping Gorge is a 2-day trek in the mountains. We walked with 2 others; Nancy from Canada, who we've been travelling with since Kunming, and Neil from Australia, who we met in a bar in Shangri-La. It's hard to describe how beautiful this place is. Neither words nor photos do it justice. It's simply stunning; every way you turn there is a view, be it a waterfall, a snowcapped mountain or a valley of pine trees.



And to top it off, after a week of cold and rain we were blessed with glorious sunshine once again. The trek was the best part of the trip so far and possibly the most amazing scenery I've ever seen. At the end of the trek nobody was in any hurry to leave the gorge so we stayed a night at a hostel at the end of the route, rested our aching legs and treated ourselves to a few beers!

The next day we moved on to the town of Lijiang. It's a nice town but it's somehow spoilt by the hordes of tourists passing through (yes, I realise we are tourists ourselves, but still...). Also, after the beauty of Tiger Leaping Gorge, I think any place was going to be a disappointment. We went to see an orchestra playing local Naxi music. Unfortunately that was disappointing too; the musicians' beards were more impressive than their music!



After that, we went back to Dali which is where we are now. There's not a great deal to do here but it has a pretty old town and the hostel we are staying at is a wonderful place to just sit back and chill for a while; I think we were really ready for that! And besides, there was heavy flooding in Vietnam last week so it's probably best to wait for them to clear up a bit before we move on.

November 6th was Mikko's birthday, before we left to go hiking for the day I asked Dave and Song from the hostel if they could arrange a birthday cake in the evening. They came back with the most beautiful cake I've ever seen with all kinds of exotic fruits on top.



Mikko was surprised and happy, and after a while very full of cake. We also had the best company that night; the hostel staff, Neil, Nancy and also Max, a guy we met earlier on our tour in Mongolia who suddenly showed up at the hostel, so it was nice catching up with him again and exchanging travelling tales.
Mikko had plenty of Tsingtao's bought for him throughout the evening and a great night was had by all. Needless to say, we didn't do much the following day!