China, 31 Mar 2007 --
I try to be sparing with use of the phrase ‘you should,’ but the Yunnan province of China warrants it…seriously.
Granted, my introduction to Yunnan in the form of a 22-cum-24 hour bus ride from Chengdu to Lijiang wasn’t all that great. The alleged sleeper bus was not, and I found myself in a semi-reclined position for the entire ride. The driver took our full size bus on a series of smaller and smaller gravel roads in the interest of avoiding tolls on the Chengdu to Panzehua highway, turning a 9 hour leg into a 15 hour one.
The trip wasn’t all bad, though. They seated me next to the only other lawai (foreigner) on the bus: a friendly Aussie girl who made for good company. I got to see the second half of a kung fu flick I’d started on an earlier bus ride, which starred Jet Li as an assasin with a conscience. I got to see some pretty out of the way corners of Sichuan province…I’m pretty sure at some point that we actually drove through an active ore mine construction site for example, which made for an interesting distraction.
At any rate, Yunnan has been all uphill from there.
Lijiang is known for being a bit of a tourist trap, and I hadn’t expected much. The Disneyfied maze of cobblestone streets and endless souvenir shops was suprisingly appealing, atmospheric, and photogenic.
One of the most interesting parts of town is the ‘bar street,’ which is a long strech of two story bars with open windows facing each other across a narrow canal. Every night the bars are packed with happily inebriated groups of Chinese tourists who compete to serenade each other across the canal. They end each slurred musical tidbit with a shouted ‘yasu, yasu, ya-ya-su!’ I’m not sure what the prase means, but it always seems to stir the opposing side to new heights of out-of-tune enthusiasm.
After a late night on the bar street, I hopped on a bus early the next morning to hike Tiger Leaping Gorge with a mix of people I’d met in Chengdu, on the bus, and in Lijiang. At the trailhead, we picked up a solo Chinese hiker named ‘Daisy.’ Pretty much every Chinese person I’ve met who’s studied English has an incongruous English name that they chose the first day of class. I don’t go around introducing myself as ‘Francois’ to every French speaker I meet…but that’s another story. In any case, Daisy’s name actually suited her sweet personality quite well. Daisy was also very helpful in negotiating prices for donkey rides up steeper sections of the trail for a few of our fellow hikers who weren’t feeling too hot.
Tiger Leaping Gorge was every bit as amazing as I’d been led to believe it would be. Sheer gorge walls reach hundreds of meters towards the sky from raging rapids on the Yangtse below, and above the gorge lip snowcapped mountains shine in the background.
Hiking in China so far has been a series of well-paved concrete paths and identical stone steps, and finding myself on a rugged dirt path for once was refreshing. The hike from one end of the gorge to the other only takes about 8 hours, but the friendly Naxi minority guesthouses scattered along the way are a great excuse to break the trip into several days.
After finishing the hike and heading back to Lijiang, our trekking group headed off for different corners of China, and I climbed on the bus to Zhongdian near the Tibetan border. On the way, I met a few guys who were headed even further north to Dequin for a 4 day trek near the Meili Snow Mountains. Tagging along with them was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made on the trip, as the Dequin trek was every bit as scenic as Tiger Leaping Gorge, and not even 1/10th as developed for tourism.
A note about roads in Northern Yunnan: distances that would normally take a few hours take half a day or more in this part of the province due to the intervening valleys and mountain passes. The trip from Zhongdian to Dequin is allegedly only 71km…but between stopping for the driver to cram roadside snow into the cooling system and crawling up steep inclines it takes a full 8 hours.
Uninspiring Dequin is just a short 20 yuan taxi ride from a cluster of guesthouses perched at 3300m near Feilai Xi temple and offering a fantastic view of the Meili Snow Mountains. Fantastic, that is, as long as they aren’t completely socked in by fog as they were on the afternoon we arrived. We spent the night at ‘Watch Out,’ a very laid-back bar/guesthouse which looks like it will be the first real backpacker hangout in town once they finish renovations.
Despite even thicker fog the following morning, we started our trek by descending 1000m on a steep, rocky, 12 km trail deemed ‘dangerous’ by an offiicial looking Dequin prefecture sign at the top. At the bottom of the trail we crossed an only slightly ‘Indiana Jones’ suspension bridge festooned in prayer flags over the Mekong river below.
Crossing the bridge put us at Baiju temple, where I met a one eyed Tibetan monk named Tso Ren Do Bo. Between my lacking command of Chinese, and his even more lacking command of English we managed to communicate remarkably well. Before I left he led me around a circuit of prayer wheels three times, and showed me how to pray to the Buddha inside the temple.
As we continued to the Xidang Hot Springs, we were invited to a free lunch in the village of Yongzong. I have to say, Tibetan yak butter tea…though it has a cool high-mountain ring to it…is disgustingly rancid. Every time I’ve been offered the stuff, I force down as much as I can before politely declining a refil. Tibetan temples and homes tend to smell strongly of the stuff, since the candles are made from the same fat as the tea and I have to admit, I gag a little each time I catch a whiff.
After a long climb to the Xidang hot springs, we met a group of local women heading in the other direction. They had stopped for dinner on the porch of the one guesthouse at the springs. They were kind enough to share their steaming pot of potent egg whiskey with us, and I think they got a kick out of watching our reactions as we each gan-bei‘d (Chinese for bottom’s up) our sizable bowls.
The hot springs themselves could be experienced in a series of small, seriously grotty (to borrow a Rough Guide favorite) shacks. The friendly guesthouse owner cooked us a tasty dinner in her kichen, though, and we spent a pleasant evening huddled around the houapan (cast iron pan full of warm coals) instead.
The next morning we set off in only slightly improved weather for the top of Nonzongla Pass, a tough 1000m+ climb. At the top, we got an only slightly cloud-obscured view of some spectacular mountains and drank hot tea with a shopkeeper who has a shack there.
After a brief break, we decended the other side of the pass to Lower Yubeng Village which sits in a broad, grassy valley in the shadow of the (cloud obscurred) Meili Mountains. There we found a festival comemorating the anniversary of the founding of the village in progress. The group of about 40 villagers sat on the grass near a small temple, and offered us candy, cookies, soft drinks, and, of course, baijio (rice whiskey) which we dutifully gulped down.
On some signal I missed, most of the villagers got up and processed back up to Upper Yubeng Village from where they had come, beating gongs and drums the whole way. This left us three men sitting with a group of about 15 women and 3 local men. Surprisingly, the women then began to pick up each of the village guys by their arms and legs in turn and to swing them back and forth. We pretty much figured we were next, and we weren’t wrong. After finishing with me, the last male to be swung, the women fell to the ground giggling and breathing hard.
Only slightly drunk, we climbed back to the ‘Hiker Dwelling House’ halfway between Upper and Lower Yubeng. This guesthouse, with log stools on a stone terrace overlooking the valley, is far more welcoming than the ‘Aqinbu’s Shenpu Lodge’ in Lower Yubeng recommended by Rough Guide and Lonely Planet.
We awoke the next morning at 7 to an oh-my-god view from the window of our room. The clouds had finally lifted, and the white mountains stood out sharply against the deep blue pre-dawn sky. We shot some great sunrise pictures before setting off on a 15km day hike up a valley towards the mountains. As we reached the end of the valley we were forced to leave the trail for the streambed by knee deep snow. After about half an hour of rock hopping up the stream, the valley opened into a spectacular 180 degree mountain bowl. We sat and dried our socks in the sun while watching the occasional avalanche cascade down the mountain face before deciding we weren’t equipped to go any further in the deep snow.
We had similarly specatular weather the next day for our hike out, and we chose to make an end run around the valley ridge rather than climb the 1000m back to Nonzongla Pass. After a few hours of hiking along an increasingly raging mountain stream, we came to what may be the best section of trail I’ve ever hiked.
Just after the trail crosses the stream on a log bridge, the villagers from downriver Ninong have diverted some of the water for agricultural use. Their man made canal runs between the gorge wall and the trail. As the gorge floor drops steeply away, the trail and canal cling to the valley wall, decending gradually. Soon, you find yourself walking a narrow trail between a vertical rock wall and calmly babbling brook on your left and a sheer drop on your right.
The effort required to create this several kilometer long canal must have been huge. It’s amazing to see the canal turn the corner where the gorge meets the Mekong valley and flow 500m above the Mekong and in the opposite direction. Seeing Ninong high above the Mekong, though, it does make sense…moving water uphill from the Mekong would have been even more difficult than diverting the stream so far out of its way.
We enjoyed a quick lunch in a family home in Ninong, and finished the fantastic 4 days of trekking with a brutally hot 8 km stretch along the Mekong valley back to Yongzong. There, we chartered a van for the drive back up to Feilai Xi to enjoy a few bottles of Dali Beer as we watched the sun set behind the Meili Mountains.
There’s a 12 day pilgrimage circuit that runs from Feilai Xi, behind the mountains, and into Tibet. I think that’s reason enough for me to come back to Yunnan some day…and reason enough for Yunnan to deserve a hearty ‘you should.’
Categories China
