Spent the whole day on the bus to Luga Lake. Despite the fact that it is only about 150 km between Lijiang and Luga, the journey is up and down mountains and took 8 hours!! It was worth it though as the lake is stunning. Booked into a simple hostel on the water front and went for a walk along the lake to find a restaurant for dinner.

Got up early to watch the sunrise and have breakfast before setting off on the second half of our hike. The walking today was much easier and we quickly reached the end of the high walk and had lunch at Tina's guest house. After lunch we decided to tackle the lower rapids. We had heard varying reports of how long this would take us - from 40 minutes to 3 hours and it turned out to be 3 hours down and another 3 back up!! The start of the path was a little worr...

Got the bus this morning with Maddie and Caroline - 2 Australian girls - to do the Tiger Leaping Gorge trek. We arrived at the starting point at 10:30 and immediately started the walk. About 2 hours later we reached the Naxi Tea House where we stopped to rest and have some lunch before tackling the hardest part of the trek - the 28 bends. This is actually more than 28 bends all on an upward climb. About halfway up we came to a small stall selling refreshments and...

Spent the morning re-planning my trip and sorting out tickets for the next week. At lunchtime I went with 4 girls from the hostel - Rose, Fennie, Caroline and Maddie - to a small local restaurant to have dumplings. Rose speaks fluent Chinese and so it was nice to not have to struggle to get what I wanted to eat! After lunch Rose, Fennie and I got a taxi to go to one of the local villages, Dongba. It took about half an hour to get there, but when we did arrive...