Crossing the mountains of Lijiang, (part one)

Back story: The school I work for is involved in a charity organisation that supports several rural mountain schools in northern Yunnan. Our school has been helping them out for about 4 years and this year foreign staff were invited on a trip to met the kids, visit the school and deliver some school supplies and sporting equipment that the school was donating. No-one else in our school was interested so Nat and I jumped at the chance to get another trip and see somewhere we would never have been able to get to otherwise.


Snow Mountain

We met at the train station on the Sunday night, already a little shattered after a weekend at work but ready for our 8 hour journey to LiJiang. From the western staff it was just Nat and I from DianChi (our school) and Stefan and Harriet from TaoYuan (the older school) plus about 6 Chinese staff and the big boss Kevin so we made a fair size group.

I've been to LiJiang before but not in a long time so I couldn't remember much of the place. It turned out we were staying in ShuHu which is about 20 minutes away and coincidentally where we went for my first Christmas away. We were staying in a little hostel somewhere though a  maze of alleyways and fences. The place was really nice and had some comfortable and cosy bed, so we were happy.



Dr Ho

Kevin played tour guide for most of the day and we had a jam packed day. Our first stop was another village called BaiShan (I think) in which we went to meet a local Doctor who has become something of a celebrity. This guy has met hundreds of very important people including Michael Palin, members of European royal families and more. He is a 94 years old and has fantastic self taught English. He made us all take pictures of his advice for a long and healthy life, picture here. Basically don't drink/smoke/stay up late/eat meat or sugar and drink lots of herbal tea, we might have to make a few adjustments to our lives?!


Then we shipped off to meet the woman who live somewhere just outside of Lijiang who organises all of the charity donations and fund raising for most of Yunnan. From her we picked up all of the stuff were taking to the kids the following day.

Our final stop was old town LiJiang where we were set free to wander about and explore. Kevin had taken us for a huge meal so Nat and I were walkign very slowly and slightly uncomfortably, also by this time we were completely shattered and as it was nearly the evening we didn't spend much time there. Nat and I got very lost and had to stop in a tourist information and look at at map, we were only about a 40 minute walk from where we wanted to be. The lesson here, Nat's directional instincts are not as great as first though, always consult a map! We were basically in the old town long enough to wander about and buy some yac steak pieces.

We headed back to the hostel and decided on an early night as we had to leave at about 4am the following morning.