After a full day of travelling from Kuala Lumpur, contesting with delayed flights, inefficient airports and IT problems, with finally landed in Lijiang, a city located in the North-West region of the Yunnan Province in China. We arrived later than expected, and so, headed straight to our hotel which was perfectly located right by the Old Town of Lijiang.
We were dead tired by the time we arrived at the hotel, so we were extremely pleased to open the door to our room to find a luxuriously modern, yet classic room.
A lovely sight upon entry into our hotel room. It had been a long, full day of travelling.
After a short night’s rest, we were up at 8am for breakfast, before heading out at 9.20am to one of the main reasons for my wanting to visit this region, the Tiger Leaping Gorge.
We stopped at a viewpoint on the way to the gorge, which happened to be some sort of Tibetan prayer site, the Yulong and Haba Snow Mountain.
Wishes blowing in the wind
Depending on how you define it, this gorge is one of (if not the) world’s deepest canyon and is so named because legend has it that a tiger once leapt across the river to escape from a hunter. Due to a shortage of time, we didn’t hike our way along the gorge (it would have taken a minimum of 2 days), but instead, did the short walk which brought us right next to the Tiger Leaping Stone (where the tiger is said to have leapt from), the narrowest point of the river. The rapids here were ferocious and pretty awe-inspiring.
Upon our return back to Lijiang, in the early evening, we did the short walk over to the Old Town. The Old Town is an ancient city whose culture follows that of its traditional residents, the Naxi people. It is famous for its orderly system of waterways and bridges, arranged and designed in accordance to feng shui principles.
You can find all sorts in the town, from cheap food to high end dining, bars, clothes, trinkets, tea, drums, you name it. We had dinner here and a good look round the main streets of the town where we saw some quaint and interesting sights. As we were walking around at night, there were LOTS of people about, squeezed into the narrow meandering streets. Putting aside the unpleasantness of the “busy-ness” of the place, it really was a charming little town, going about its business in its traditional ways.
Deep fried worms and maggots
Jiaozi – Chinese dumpling with ground meat
A variety of tea on sale
During our second day in Lijiang, we visited some of the closer sights to escape the traffic jams that have been clogging up the roads (due to current school holidays). Our first stop was the Fugao Monastery, where we perused some dubious animal by-products and took some photos with a group of singing 80+ year old local ladies.
We then made a stop at Baisha Ancient Town for a walk round. It is relatively small compared to Lijiang, but it more than made up for it in sights and a generally more chilled out and relaxed atmosphere. We caught sight of many locals just going about the daily lives – selling vegetables, playing mahjong and eating their mid-morning snacks.
It was then back into the car for a drive to yet another old town (the last one of our trip), this time Shuhe Old Town. To be precise however, the Lijiang Old Town UNESCO site actually comprises 3 old towns: Dayan, Shuhe and Baisha, Dayan being the one I visited during the previous evening and the largest of them all. Shuhe was more akin to Dayan, in terms of crowds, tourists and shops, although it was smaller in size and contained more horses which tourists could pay to ride on.
Before leaving Lijiang, we stopped for an iconic photo stop.
All in all, a good trip in terms of new sights though one does need to visit China with a sense of adventure and patience. The food, crowds and public toilets are really something to experience with an open mind. 😉 Next stop, Kunming.
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