Our accommodation in Lijiang was one of the youth hostels. Being a Unesco site the town has a large number of tourists and prices inflate accordingly, so with the prospect of a further four months on the road we took the cheaper option. Our driver telephoned ahead for directions and arranged for someone from the hostel to meet us in the town. Normally this wouldn't have been such an issue, but with about 20kg of luggage each, an altitude of 2400m /7900feet and a youth hostel on the side of a mountain it was a severe test of stamina. Our greeter obviously feeling sorry for the two decrepit hostellers who had just arrived on her doorstep explained that she thought we would be more comfortable in the ensuite room than the shared facilities. When we realised reaching the shared facilities necessitated negotiating the outdoor spiral staircase and crossing the uncovered courtyard we immediately agreed and accepted the free upgrade.

We had booked in at the Youth hostel for three nights as we were planning to move on for a couple of days at the higher altitude town of Shangri-la, to explore Tiger Leaping Gorge. However, I'd discovered on the way here that most of the town had succumbed to fire in 2014, and was currently being reconstructed. In addition, it was proving difficult to find out how to get to the hotel we had planned to use halfway along Tiger Leaping Gorge. After long discussions, we decided to save the Gorge for another time when we could devote ourselves to trekking its length and adjusting to the thinner air of the increased altitude. Hence we decided to remain in Lijiang for a further three nights.

As the toilet facilities (hole in the ground Asian toilet) at the hostel were proving a challenge for John's bowel habits, we agreed to select somewhere a little more comfortable. A quick search of the internet revealed a hotel with large rooms, western bathroom, TV and kettle, just a few pounds more than the hostel, we snapped it up. The next day our first job was to locate the hotel so we would be able to go straight there the following day with all our bags. We set off armed with online maps and scanned all the hotel plaques alongside the roadway where our hotel was apparently located. Typically the hotel turned out to be further out than marked on the map and certainly not where it indicated. We should be used to that by now.....hotels are never where the internet map thinks they are!

Having hiked at least a couple of kilometres and happy that we now knew where it was I' was ready to turn round and head back to town, but John suggested we should go in to check they had our booking. What followed should have been an indicator of what was to come over the next few days. The young lad on the desk spoke no English, so using a combination of translator apps we tried to explain that our booking was for the following day. He insisted we see the room, which seemed a reasonable suggestion- yep everything there.... comfy beds, nice shower room, TV, kettle, view of the pond......excellent. More confusion followed as he obviously hadn't understood the word tomorrow, and was concerned when we went to leave, although we were impressed with his attempts to communicate with us and reassured him we would be back.

We rolled up the following day, a little earlier than the scheduled check-in time. The young lad explained the room wasn't ready yet, so we asked if we could leave our bags and return later. That was no problem, and leading us to a bedroom he urged us to put our bags on the floor. We did as instructed and headed back to reception. He gave us a keycard scribed with the number 2017 for our own room saying it would be ready later and returned to his phone. John decided to fetch his raincoat from the room before we headed out and went to ask the lad to let him into room 2021 where we had left our bags. To cut a long story short it turned out that 2021 was our room, not 2017 as indicated on the key card, and we could indeed use it straight away.

By the time our three days were up we had dubbed our new hotel the Basil Fawlty, due to the number of similarities with the infamous 70s sitcom hotel. We had a fantastic shower for the first two nights, and then on the third night/ fourth morning, we had no water. Much to John's disappointment despite a miscellany of channels we had no football channel for the Euros, and to cap it all the breakfast we ordered when we booked never arrived without regular prompting. The first morning having been told breakfast would be at 7 am we reluctantly dragged ourselves out of bed and into reception. It appeared we were the only ones having breakfast. At 7.30 our young lad pushed his moped out of reception returning ten minutes later with two portions of savoury rice. The following day we were told eight. When we went down there was no one around. Eventually, someone turned up and we asked about the missing meal. Apparently, the young lad had overslept but they would get us breakfast......this time noodles arrived, at 9.15.

After a long day in the Old Town, we returned to find the young lad had commissioned a fellow guest as a translator, and through her, he established that as we weren't planning to leave until 12 the following day he would have our breakfast by 9. Brilliant we thought, we can have a lie-in and have breakfast before we bundle things back into the backpacks for our next move. You've guessed it.....not only did we wake to no water....but no breakfast either and no sign of our young man. Good job we are leaving today, but not so good for whoever has to share our sleeper cabin tonight.....two stale sweaty bodies won't make for great stablemates.

Anyway, I guess you want to know about Lijiang. Well, it's very nice. The ancient town is a very pleasant area to walk around. Largely because there are no cars or motorbikes careering around the narrow streets. The area is very scenic, surrounded by mountains. The Unesco Old Town is filled with picturesque alleys and shops selling an array of goods including scarves, silverware, embroidered goods, and the famous flower cake amongst other things.

We managed to walk about outside the old town on a number of occasions, after all, there is a limit to the number of times you can look at the same products. Our first excursion was a short walk from the old town to the Black dragon park. A very pleasant par

The second trip out was to the Jade Dragon Snow mountain. A bit more of an adventure as we had to locate transport to get there. We'd read that bus number seven heads to the snow mountain and leaves from opposite Mao's statue. We'd been past the statue the day before so we knew where that was. When we arrived we were approached by a minibus driver wanting to take us to the park for 30 yuan each (about £3). We walked away to establish that this was indeed the bus we were looking for, which immediately produced a reduction of ten yuan each to 20. We bundled ourselves onto the minibus, and as we were the 5th and 6th of the passenger complement the bus was able to set off straight away, and we headed off towards the mountains.

A growing trend across the world seems to be charging to enter scenic areas, so it should have come as no surprise when the bus pulled to a stop at the ticket booth and we all had to cough up 130 yuan each (about £13) to enter the park area. The driver then took us onto the tourism centre further in the park where you could purchase tickets for the chair lifts, buses to the chairlifts, and oxygen. You could also rent jackets and trousers in anticipation of the colder weather at the top. Having already shelled out 130 each to get into the park we were reluctant to shell out a further 80 (£8) to reach and use the chairlift. It also transpired that the Yak meadow was blocked so we could only go to Spruce meadow anyway. We decided to just take the bus to the bottom of the chairlift, which turned out to be a great decision. We had a great view of the peak from there without the challenge of even thinner air, and we could walk down the blue valley to the lakes.

The lakes were exceptionally pretty with azure blue/ green water, against the backdrop of the mountains. They were also popular for wedding photos as a succession of young brides appeared with their grooms at the water's edge and were photographed in a number of poses for the wedding album. One bride even chose to have her photographs taken riding a yak across the river! This area is very clean, there are litter bins and clean toilets everywhere so it's been a pleasure to walk around. The people have also been very friendly, especially younger people, and there are lots of people dressed in traditional costumes. Whilst the younger people often do this for the tourists there were also many old people in Chairman Mao flat caps, and aprons. We didn't see too many western tourists during our time here but they seem welcoming to those who do make the trek, and we managed to communicate with a combination of mine, single words and translator apps - although the accuracy of the latter was often something like predictive text, and proved an interesting decipher game.