Once more we found ourselves in transport for a close to a full day – on our way to Lijiang, which would be the last stop for the tour. A nice town with a huge old city.
Lijiang has been partially destroyed during an earthquake in 1996; however most of the old buildings – built in the Naxi way – survived. Today Lijiang is a famous tourist attraction for Chinese tourists. We spent the day mostly wandering around – in the touristy and less touristy parts of town.
Category Archives: 2005:China
Tiger Leaping Gorge
Day 1: After a transfer from Dali to Qiao Tou and a late lunch in the Gorged Tiger Cafe we started our trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge with the short hike up to the Naxi Family guest house.
Day 2: The next we left the Naxi Family guesthouse at around 08:30 – with the 28 bends directly ahead of us (elevation gain of roughly 400m). After a shorter stop in the Tea Horse house and a longer at the Halfway House we arrived at Tina’s guesthouse in the late afternoon — after a day of incredible views, superb and ever changing vegetation – or one of the best hikes I ever did — unfortunately followed by the worst accommodation of the whole trip…
Day 3: We left Tina’s in the early morning for yet another hike – this time down into the gorge close to the river; after a short stop at Sean’s we had a transfer to the ferry bus stop (and another walk down to the river to catch the ferry – and another climb up on the other shore as well).
Dali
We made it into Dali in the early afternoon after a six hour bus ride from Kunming, enough time to explore the old town of Dali.
The following day the group split; I joined the group going for a bike ride. At first we headed down to the port to get a ferry to the other side of ErHai sea. Here we passed through a temple complex to finally follow a street to the next bigger village – and ended up doing a 40 km loop.
Kunming
We spent a whole day traveling from YangShuo to Kunming. This was now a full day in Kunming, which could easily be called Temple Day.
We started of with the grottoes, sculptures and pavilions just called Dragon Gate built by Taoist monks. Later in the day we visited several temples in the area, as well as famous Bamboo Temple.
On to YangShuo
We continued from Chongqing to Guilin by plane; here we got picked up and made our way to YangShuo and its strange limestone pinnacles by bus. We made it to YangShuo in the late afternoon – with just enough time for some exploration of town.
The next day was fully dedicated to YangShup and performed by bike. We kicked if off through rice paddies and small villages to arrive near Moon Hill shortly before lunch. In the afternoon the group split up; some went to do some cooking; Marc and myself ended up visiting Water Cave (the real one of course!). In the evening we had an introduction to Cormorant Fishing.
On to Wanxian and Chongqing
This day after the spectacular cruise through the Three Gorges started of in Wanxian. During an excursion in the morning we visited the local tourist trap aka Three Gorges Museum, afterwards we spent some time on a local food market. The afternoon we cruised slowly up the Jangtze to our final destination Chongqing.
Three Gorges Cruise
We arrived in Yichang in the morning and were straight transferred to our five star cruise boat Princess Jeannie. Here we got the choice between having lunch or going on an excursion to see the Three Gorges Dam from various viewing points. In the late afternoon we passed through the ship lock to reach the upper Yangtze river.
In the morning of the second day of our cruise along the Yangtze an excursion to see the Shen Nong river small gorges was offered. At first we transferred to a ferry to then switch to traditional wooden flat boats for a more intimate experience in the small gorges. In the afternoon if was back to the big gorges – we passed through Wu and Qutang Gorge.
Xi’An
We had spent the night on a train and made it into Xi’An in the early morning, From the train station we directly transferred to the Terracotta Warrior site, where we had an extensive tour. Afterwards we drove back to town, checked into our hotel and started to explore the city and the nearby Muslim quarter.
On a second day in Xi’An we had further opportunity for exploration, I used that to walk a portion of the old city wall. The afternoon was spent shopping and preparing for another train journey; this time a 17 hours trip bound for Yichang.
Tiananmen Square & the Forbidden City
We had a further full in Beijing, now fully dedicated to a visit to the (in)famous Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City (or Imperial Palace).
The Great Wall of China
Today we had an early start and made it to the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall (about 3 hours driving time one way). From here we started a hike along the Great Wall to Simatai – overall twelve km.
