He who never tries never knows, and when we stroll past a young Chinese hitchiker who wants to improve his English what better chance is there to explore the world of free transportation. Despite the fact that we are attempting a mere 25km, a blip on our friends epic 2200km to Lhasa, the forbidden city in Tibet, the 3 of us walk and talk for an hour or so sticking out our thumbs and best smiles with each passing vehicle. We are excited and surprised when someone ...

Heading back to Shangri la we congratulate ourselves on managing to achieve an expenditure of only 900 yuan between us in 5 days, that means a mere 15 dollars each per day. Now, call us scummy backpackers but with that money we have visited two of Yunnans highlights, eaten like kings (well a fried egg sandwich is as good as it gets for breakfast) with pumpkin soups, garlic strewn eggplant plates and the lovable spicy lotus-root dish, which we still manage to atta...

Think around 80 buses, each with a whopping 40 people inside, each one having to pay the enterance fee of 65 yuan (11 dollar) and you can just about do the math of extortion for one of natures beautiful places... well before you include all of the hikers taking the mountainous trail of course. This morning I have woken with chest pains, there are shy whispers of a form of asthma induced by climate changes, exercise and smoke (think hefty fires in the cabins on...

Still on a down time mission since it seems we are both still suffering from the exhaustion of many days exercising our lungs inside out we flexed our rubber-like plans once more to avoid intense acvtivity. Simple Shaxi sounds ideal in words and is an ideal place to hermit it up for a couple of days, a not so popular destination (for now) Shaxi grabbed the attention of the World Monuments Heritage Foundation in 2002 whos protection act registers Shaxi as being i...

Shangri la in Tibetan stands for 'Land to sacredness and peace', now thats a pretty tough reputation to live up to but I will admit driving through a complete blank canvass within the clouds is definitely one of those outer worldly experiences... with the exception of a crashed truck as a reality check. When you arrive in the pouring rain and there are touts demanding that what you really need is a taxi to a different town another 200 km away you think here we g...