After checking out chilly Chengdu I flew down to the Chinese southwestern city of Lijiang. Famed for it's beautiful setting and amazing old town, I based myself there for a week, checking out the yawningly deep Tiger Leaping Gorge a couple of hours north of here.
Chengdu. Eight million people and growing faster than you can say 'Develop the West'.
Warming up on tea at a chilly Sichuan Opera performance.
The Sichuan Opera is a medley of shadow puppetry, slapstick and magic mask changing. And uniquely Chinese.
Fire breathing actors.
Off to see the cuddly pandas at the Chengdu Panda Research base. They say there is only about a thousand of them left in the world - most of them in the bamboo forests west of Chengdu.
Choosing veges for a fiery hotpot lunch!
The amazing Old Town of Lijiang.
With Shine, a Chinese girl I met in Lijiang and her friend Maymay's Grandmother. It was amazing to see four generations living under one roof!
With Grandma.
Yunnan countryside.
Day trip to Baishia, a rustic village filled with drying corn, maijong and papaya smoothies!
Tiger Leaping Gorge. The twenty km hike took a group of us a day and a half. These locals with horses followed behind us on the uphill to make easy prey of stragglers!
At the top!
The appropriately named hotel which we spent the night.
Gorge team poses at the hotel which Michael Palin describes as having the toilet with the best view in the world!
Climbing up from the bottom on a ricketing wooden ladder.
Mama Naxi's guesthouse. Every night at 6pm she cooks for everyone in the guesthouse. A massive delicious meal for about 80 pence!
2 comments:
Great pictures....your certainly doing some interesting things...keep safe!
dan can you stop having so much fun now!? It's getting annoying.
xx
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