Last (shopping) day in Lijiang

We woke up late in the morning and had an excellent breakfast at N's Kitchen.
The sun was out, and the view from the near by window had an incredible lighting.



We roamed the streets and bought a cool chopsticks set, as well as several beautiful other presents for family and friends.
We stopped to eat lunch at one of the street stalls. A lady prepared delicious dumplings with a side dish - LAG BAOMER potatoes!



It looks like everyone in Lijiang is so talent. Its not only that there are a huge amount of shops selling stuff. The shop owners are also the ones who produce these stuff, whether it is paintings, wood carvings, bells, jewelery,...

We took some pictures of a portrait art gallery for Maayan's mother:


We lost our way and found the Three Pit Well. In ancient times the first was used for drinking, the second for washing food and the third for laundry. Nowadays, only the second one is used to wash vegetables.


And here is yet another talented person playing a local Sitar-like instrument:



That's it. Tomorrow we take a flight from Lijiang to Xian, where we'll see the famous Terracotta warriors.

More groups

Party, the Lijiang style...

We came back to Lijiang after a long day at the Tiger Leaping Gorge. But, the night was still young, so we went to one of the local disco clubs to meet with Daniel and David.
Daniel described the place in a higly accurate fashion - "IT IS CRAZY"!



And we thought the japanese knew how to parry... Take a look at these Chinese cow-girls...







The music was terrible. One of the worst D.Js we have ever listened to. The sound was about 200 Decibel louder than the upper limit of the human ear, and a beer cost 40 RMB (Fucking Nuts!). So, we decided to leave pretty early.

The gorge is gorgeous (Tiger Leaping Gorge Hike)

We stayed in Lijiang two days for the weather to clear up before starting the hike.

We took the first bus from Li-jiang to make an early start. We arrived at the start of the path at around 09:30, and the view was spectacular!








We went along the road that went up the mountain. After half an hour we met a farmer who wanted to be our guide. We kindly refused, but he still showed us a "shortcut". The shortcut turned out to be a 1.5h detour from the path. Luckily, somehow we managed to get back on track, and we continued with increased pace to compensate for the delay.



The track starts at about 1900m and goes all the way up to 2600m. It was a difficult climb, with little air to breath.





There were occasional showers, and mud was abundant:


As we went on the gorge revealed itself little by little. We passed several small villages along the way:


The gorge is actually a very deep valley. On one side is the path (and Haba-mountain, which peaks at 5300m), and on the other is Yulong mountain that peaks at around 5500m. It was covered with clouds most of the way:




We made a brief stop, cooking noodles, and continued with increased pace. The path has many arrows showing the way and commercial for guest houses to stay the night. We decided to aim for the one called "Halfway Inn":






There were several small streams that kept crossing the road...





Finally, after about 8.5h hiking, we finally arrived to Halfway Inn, which has a fantastic view of Yulong mountain.


The room as pretty basic, but the food was great! (specially the garlic Ba-Ba).

The staff was always busy in the small kitchen:


In the Inn we met David, Daniel (from Germany) and Ana (from Spain).




We also met three Americans and two Israelis. We all set for dinner and had funny drinking games (i.e., CIRCLE OF DEATH!!!)





Next morning, we started at about 08:30 with David, Daniel and Ana:



The view was awesome. We could see how the river bends and becomes narrower and narrower along the gorge. The water are brown due to the mud, and they go FAST!



It seems that the track on the second day was more interesting. The path went more along the actual cliff:






And crossed several streams that went down to the river. At times, it was necessary to cross them and get wet:




After about 2 hours we finally arrived to a Guesthouse called "Tina's", which was the end of the hike, but also the start of another short one that lead to the Tiger Leaping Stone. This short hike (3 hours) goes all the way down to the river and to a stone that, according the legend, a tiger leaped from one side of the river to the other. We stopped at Tina's for lunch, and had some trouble deciding what to order from the interesting menu:




And here is the Doc, inspecting the menu as well...


Mai got mint tee, while Shay got a black one. Both arrived with a smile and a nose :)


After lunch, we started the hike down to the river:


David & Daniel kept us company and made us laugh all the way.



Here is a snap shot of how the river looks like from the bottom of the gorge. The big stone in the river is the Tiger Leaping Stone.


It was a beautiful weather, so we stopped to take pictures




Finally, we arrived at the stone:




At a first glance, it seemed like you can not cross, since the river flooded the short path to it.

The water looked terrible. There were turbulence and huge mud waves going extremely fast:




However, it didn't kept David and Daniel to try and crossing it to the stone. CRAZY GERMANS!!!





After the stone, we climbed back up, but not before Mai found yet another cat to adopt:


The way up had a funny path. At a certain point there was a sign saying "SAFE WAY" (to the left) or "LADDER" to the right. Obviously, we choose right...



We stopped along to way to take a breath, and contemplated whether people can actually reach their nose with their lips:




We also met Ana along the way (She didn't come with us, since she wanted to find out some information about another trek). Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time for her to go all the way down, so she climbed back with us.

The landscape was gorgeous! Sun came out, and all the mountains were revealed in their glory:






One last group photo!