I have had an action packed few days since my last entry and am now having a much needed rest day.

Having planned to go to Lijiang by sleeper bus I was just on the point of setting off when an American guy Eligh appeared. When I told him I was going to do the Tiger Leaping Gorge trek (described by another American guy I'd met earlier as "epic-ness on a grand scale") Eligh got very excited and asked to tag along, so having found a friend we set off together.

"Sleeper" is not a very appropriate name for the bus we took. They fit over 100 "beds" on a regular sized bus, and you get an area approximately 5ft long and 1.5ft wide. I'm no giant, even by Chinese standards, but I did not have a lot of room to say the least. Also, someone had deemed it appropriate to show Shoot 'Em Up, an American film (so in English, no Chinese subtitles or dubbing) with multiple gun/fist/knife fights, car chases, sex scenes etc, bearing in mind there were several children on board and this was at bedtime! Lulled into a state of semi-unconsciousness by the sound of gunfire and swearing, we arrived in Lijiana (Eligh almost ended up going back to Kunming as it turned out he could sleep through anything) in the early hours of the morning a little dazed and confused.

Arriving at our guesthouse, we asked about trips to the gorge, and found there was one leaving in half an hour so we got on another bus for the trip out. We buddied up with a couple from New York, Rom and Roseanne, at the start of the trek and after me announcing I could not possibly start until I'd had a meal and us then walking about a mile down the wrong road we eventually set off about 1pm. (You may be noticing most of the people I meet now are American, which was the case in Xian as well. After my experience with the Peace Corp in Ulan Bator I'm happy to say I now think our cousins across the pond are great - which I of course already knew (Heather) ;) )

Oh, so Tiger Leaping Gorge is quite famous and one of China's most renowned natural beauty features. It's part of the Yantze and surrounded by a few snow-capped mountains, and it's about 20 miles long and 4000 metres high. It's all very amazing and every step you take you're surrounded by the most beautiful and awe inspiring natural scenery that makes you feel incredibly small and very aware of how big the world is. :S Anyway, see the pictures for a better idea.

I started off ok on the walk but as it went on I realised the sore throat I'd been nursing for a couple of days was developing into something else as I got a really bad headache and it suddenly seemed a lot of effort to move my legs (not a good thing when you're hiking). Eligh had originally gone leaping ahead up the mountain (he's from Montana and apparently there are lots of hills and such there) but I'd managed to catch him up (the old hare and tortoise thing) and after stopping for tea at a guesthouse we set off feeling much revived. (I'm not sure if there was anything in the tea other than tea leaves but we both felt remarkably better after this tea and there were women openly selling weed along with bananas and Snickers bars up the mountain.) Anyway, with a new spring in my step we set off and I was fine for about an hour but then kept having to stop and rest. A bloke with a horse had followed us from the guesthouse and we thought "Aw isn't that nice, he's showing us the away". Sitting on a rock I realised I wasn't up to the 3 hour walk ahead of me and then it dawned on me why the bloke with the horse was still following us and had a knowing gleam in his eye. "How much to ride horse?" After 10 minutes of haggling by writing numbers in the dirt I was successfully astride the horse and we took off up the mountain at quite a pace. The bloke was leading the horse still and he didn't break sweat of stride once, despite being quite old and wearing a pair or slippers, and this was a very steep and rocky mountain. Even my poor horse was wheezing and looking much worse for wear when we got to the top, I felt quite sorry for it. I got to the top before the others and had time to sit and admire the view (and take lots of pictures). I'm quite offended they only took one horse though as they obviously knew Eligh was up to it! The rest of that day was downhill so I made it to the guesthouse where I was too ill to eat and went to bed at 8pm with a fever.

Luckily I slept most of it off (bearing in mind I'd spent the night before on a bus and the one before that on a train) so the next day went a lot better. We actually went all the way down to the water and saw Tiger Leaping Rock (the gorge is so named because a tiger once supposedly jumped over the Yantze) and it was all very amazing. On the way up we had a choice - "safe path" or "dangerous ladder" (actually they were of about equal dangerness) so of course we chose the dangerous ladder. It took about 1.5 hours to scamble up the cliffside to get to the road, where we flagged down a people carrier containing a very bemused Chinese family to take us back to the town where I had a much needed shower.

The next day I spent in Lijiana which is an old little town. The old little town is surrounded by a very modern town and with a mixture of misinformation from Lonely Planet (which is rubbish for China) and someone in the bus station I went in the wrong direction and it took me quite a while to find. The locals didn't help much, the best I got was a group of teenage girls who looked at me in perplextion when I kept saying "ancient city". One of them eventually looked as though the penny had dropped, "Oh! Sexy?" "No no, I'm looking for city not sexy, thank you though". I eventually found it by walking over a hill (which I'd been avoiding as my legs did not like going uphill after two days of hiking). You could tell it was very done-up and aimed at tourists but it was still very quaint and pretty. They had loads of random signs which were either very badly translated into English or were random in Chinese as well. My favourite was "Keep the flowers in the trees and prove yourself a gentleman". I don't know if there are any other requirements of gentlemanliness in Lijiana but it seems they hold a different set of principles to us.