The day started with a breakfast of steam buns and pickles chez Eva. We then had, sadly, only a few hours left to wander the magical and now crowded cobbled streets of Lijiang. We saw a baby of maybe 8 months, with split bottom pants, being hoisted over the edge of the pavement and weeing on the command of a whistle!!! (seemed slightly more like training a puppy than a baby and also a challenge to conventional wisdom in the West that a baby of that age would no...

Some of us again sampled the local herbal bread for breakfast at 'Woody's'; this led to a rather hazy day. We were picked up, as arranged, at 10am to return to Lijiang. This involved two different minibuses and a succession of additional passengers who jumped in and out of our 'taxi' during the journey. The first part, back through Tiger Leaping Gorge, was not for the faint hearted; our driver zigzagged merrily across potholed roads liberally covered in boulders ...

We started the day with a table full of breakfast offerings!! A bowl of congee; rice, cabbage and chicken soup, very tasty and almost calorie free. A chipped bowl of porridge - which turned out to be watery rice - that we left. A plate of dumplings, a folded pancake with syrup and Sam had a fried egg! Susie and I had coffee, it is so expensive here!!! I guess we are in the land of tea. We then wondered around old Lijiang, nestling below the foothills of the Hima...