A gratefully early start from the guesthouse left us sitting penniless in Deqen an hour and a half later. Scouring for banks to change dollar into Yuan it was soon apparent that in this town that was going to be an impossible feat, despite the sprawling development that seems to tag onto the end of most of Chinas once pretty towns.

Thinking we were screwed we resorted to our bank cards, after using mine it seemed we were even more screwed but somehow Prue uses her savings card and after furiously pressing the buttons relating to random chinese symbols ends up with 2000 yuan, she then has to work back around the labyrinth of symbols to get her card back.

With the victory we buy great coffee and an eggs on toast based breakfast, delicious!

Accepting that we are not in the mood to hike for another few days at least and that being the sole reason to stay in Deqen we opt for a bus to the famous Zhongdian (aka Shangri la).

So it is not everyday that you just hop onto bus, start the 7 hour journey and upon reading a piece of information in a guidebook find that you are about to surpass 5000m at least 3 times before returning back to earth for an afternoon coffee at a mere 3400m. It has been suggested that altitude sickness might not be so prevalent here due to dense forestry providing ample oxygen. Youd think that would slow the rate of deforestation hey, however the three of us sufferred very little, mildly light headed and headachy at the worst.