Yunnan 8-16 November
We're six days into our China travels and things are easier than we expected. Nearly everyone we had spoken to said China wasn't a great place, was really difficult to travel, the people were rude and it wasn't clean. Needless to say we were slightly apprehensive but ready for the challenge.
Our experience so far couldn't be further from that. Yes, very little English is spoken, no signage is in English other than at airports, menus are generally pictures and so we take a guess at what we are ordering, but all of this adds to the experience and so far, we've not found it too much of a hinderance. Between google translate and Plecko, the English/Chinese dictionary app, pointing and smiling we have generally managed to communicate. Usually one staff member in a hostel speaks English so they have helped with writing directions and booking bus tickets.
Airports and bus stations are super efficient and by far the best we have encountered on our travels yet. The toilets are a new experience which I haven't quite figured out yet-basically a trough in the ground that you squat over, no running water and only a little 3/4 wall to separate you from the next cubicle. Frequently there are no doors to give you privacy. The hostel rooms though all have western toilets.

The food is as we imagined, good. We (Tony actually, he's the Chinese king) cook a lot of quite authentic Chinese at home so we knew what to expect. Soups with dumplings, fried noodles, fried rice, noodle soups, lots of veggies. They seem wary though of adding chilli for westerners and so we frequently have to ask for it, by miming chopping something, putting it in my mouth and that my mouth is on fire! My charades has worked the last couple of times I've done this! And of course, there is all the tea in China. Lots of green tea.
We're currently at the end of two days trekking in Tiger Leaping Gorge and the scenery has been every bit as beautiful as we imagined. We decided to take our time on the trek as my knee is still playing up from our Everest Base Camp Trek. Yesterday we arrived at the gorge at 9.30am after a 2.5hr bus journey and had breakfast with Jay, an American guy who was also on our bus. We ended up walking with him for two days and it was good to hear of his travels through Mongolia and the 'Stans. I think we both now have a strong desire to see the burning gas craters in Turkmenistan and our desire to head to Mongolia has intensified. Unfortunately it's about -40 so it won't be part of this trip.
The first three hours of the trek was tough going uphill in sweltering sun. We then walked along the ridge for a few hours until we reached a guest house for the night. The owner was so friendly and invited us to join his friends for a BBQ which was amazing! Squid, prawn, beef, tofu, aubergine, chicken, sweet potato...all with a healthy dose of chilli! This was held on the most amazing viewing deck, looking out at the mountains rising up right in front of us. Our bedroom window also looked out to these. Only the three of us were staying.
Our guest house this evening, 'Woody's', is super busy! One room taken. Ours!
We are amazed at how quiet the trek has been, we've hardly seen anyone other than the few people who were on our bus. They set off straight away rather than heading for breakfast so for the first few hours we saw no one. The owners of our current guest house aren't actually very present. To order food we've had to go to their room where they are having dinner. They will come to us when they have finished!
When we headed down to the gorge today there were a number of Chinese tourists. It seems they skip the trek, do a three hour bus journey, walk to the gorge for an hour, back up and then jump on the return bus for three hours. Crazy. The scenery on route is spectacular.
It was the same in Lijiang. The old town was heaving on an evening with Chinese tour groups but thankfully during the day, once away from the dressing up costumes and photographer touts, it was quiet.
After spending a day exploring the old town, we hired bikes and cycled to the foot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain stopping at Shuhe and Baisha to meet the legendary world famous Dr Ho. Because it's off the well trodden tourist trail there was hardly anyone there. It's a shame we couldn't have spent a night as there was a bar serving home brewed beer and wine. In Lijiang the bars mainly cater to Chinese tourists with really bad musicians and karaoke!
I'd really wanted to meet Dr Ho for months since watching Sue Perkins 'Journey down the Mekong' which he featured on. He's also been on Michael Palins Himalaya amongst many others. He's 94 now and still going strong. He told us the key to good life is to be happy and optimistic and not to smoke! I was one happy lady leaving his little Chinese medicine surgery, which is adorned with photos of him with lots of famous people, newspaper and magazine articles and TV programme adverts which he's featured in, of which there are many the world over.

15 nov- As we didn't really have any trekking to do this morning we decided to have a lazy morning, get up late and have breakfast on the terrace looking out to the gorge. It wasn't meant to be. The b&b owner knocked on our door at 8.30am to say they were heading to Lijiang and we couldn't get breakfast. Thankfully they let us leave when we wanted and just leave the key in the room.
We headed up the road to the Tibetan guest house for food and found where others must have spent the night. Five other westerners! Busy.
The lady here was very welcoming and her home made vegetable baos were the best I've ever tasted. After a lazy 'brunch', we headed back to Tina's where we saw the greatest number of western tourists yet. We got talking to three, sharing our stories and hostel recommendations as we are going in opposite directions. Everyone tells us that travelling in western China is much nicer so not sure what the next few weeks has in store....other than rising pollution levels and smog!
We're now on the bus to Shangri-la. Another scary drive on roads with hair pin bends and the gorge several hundred metres below, with a driver who likes to put his foot down. My ears are popping due to the altitude. It's also getting noticeably cooler.
The area at the start of the gorge is being dessimated. Huge swathes quarried out to build new roads, more hotels and whatever else. The construction traffic heading along the road which runs parallel to the gorge is significant, causing chaos as some are so long that traffic can't get past. Thankfully we walked the higher path so none of this is visible when trekking and you're so far up all you can hear is the roar of the water below. We did however notice that one of the waterfalls cascading down had cement pouring down it and as such the water was grey with rocks covered in white foam. Not pretty. Areas like this back home would be protected within an inch of its life. Not here though.
The journey from Kunming to Lijiang should have taken ten hours on the bus, it took five and a half as in the two years since our Lonely Planet was printed, a three lane expressway at least 300km long has been built, destroying villages which lay in its path and quarrying out and permanently scarring the beautiful hills to obtain construction materials.
The nice views which are abound in China charge hefty admission fees. National parks are £20 or so, mountains the same, more if you want to take a cable car (not that we would), towns with traditional architecture ¥80, temples ¥10. The gorge was ¥65 but then when we wanted to walk down to the middle gorge a family that had a house there charged us another ¥15 to pass. We wanted to go up a different way to come out on the road towards Walnut Grove. Another family would only let us pass if we paid another ¥15. By this point we were pretty annoyed and so as a matter of principle said we wouldn't pay it and walked back the way we came. We've heard a story from some other travellers today that that were charged ¥10 to go to the viewing platform early on the walk. We just walked down to it, walking past the woman with a stall there. Its a shame really as we're going to have to be choosy about which beautiful places we visit so that we don't spend all our budget on admission fees.
Shangri-la is pretty much on the border with Tibet and we're starting to see signs of Tibetan life. Prayer flags fluttering, chortans, herds of yaks, mountains! Makes us miss Nepal.