Hiking Lasha and Wen Hai, and Tiger Leaping Gorge

After leaving the Er Hai area we headed for Lijiang, a rebuilt ancient Chinese city very popular with the Chinese tourists. A little too many tourists for us - they travel in big buses, wearing the same color hats, and all follow a guide with a flag. There are some beautiful sights though, such as old town Lijiang.

The most beautiful sight was this park where you could see Jade Dragon Snow Mountain reflecting in a pond.A lot of the locals liked to gather in the park in the mornings to listen to traditional music and do their group dance/exercise - kind of an odd site for the unitiated. Also in the park they have a Dongba Cultural Research Institute. It is an ethnic minority, the last group in the world that still read and write pictographs. There only 8 true Dongba shamans left in the world...

...and we had one of them prepare a wedding blessing for us on his traditional paper with traditional ink. It is prepared with "Chinese Medecine,"and should last for 1,000 years (if it shows up in one of the boxes we mailed home). We are officially married in the Dongba/Naxi tradition! After seeing some sights we set off for a real adventure, tapping some of the great info that Katie (friend serendipitiously met in Kunming) gave us.


We took a van to Lasha Hai, and rode bicycles around the lake, past many little villages, rice fields...

...some water buffalo...

...and a gorgeous temple.

Some kids were visiting the temple the same day, and as in much of the parts of Asia we had so far been to, they were very excited to meet some foreigners and practice their "Hello, what is your name?". That night we stayed with a Naxi family in their village. They were very kind, although we had no language in common.

It was harvest season, and everyone spent the evening sitting around talking, husking the corn that they had grown to feed the animals. It was great fun to join in and lend a hand. The next day we began a very strenuous hike up and over a 9,000' ridge with a guide who preferred straight up. The little old guy ended up carrying Char's pack and still leaving both of us in the dust. The altitude was not helping...
But it was well worth it when we arived at Wen Hai, a seasonal lake with a sleepy little village where we spent the next night. The following day we continued onward to the north with our guide...

...who you can see in front of Jon in the above photo. We descended back into some more populated areas. Our guide pointed us in the direction we needed to go to reach Tiger Leaping Gorge, turned back, and sent us on our way. We did find the Gorge, the next day.

We walked the high trail, spending a couple of nights along the way.

The trail is along a crazy steep gorge, rumored to be one of the deepest in China, or the world, or some other similar statistic.

The views were amazing, even though the 18,000'peaks that were above us rarely showed through the clouds.

We finally finished the hike, arriving beside the Mekong River. The Mekong begins in Tibet, and our next move was to head further towards its origin, in the far northwest of the Yunnan Province.