Kunming - the city of 'eternal spring'

Kunming is a big and crowded place, but the pace is much slower than elsewhere in China. This city offers everything. There are not many sights within the city (the only place worth mentioning is Yuantong Shi - a Chinese Temple),



but you can find interesting places if you leave the city. Such as the famous Kunming Stone Forest.

Dali

A pretty old town (famous for its 3 Pagodas) is situated right by the vast Erhai Lake. The view also includes a mountain rage that is constantly covered in clouds. The old town itself isn't comparable to Lijiang, but is less hectic.

Shangri-La / Zhongdian

... a beautiful place about 150km (or 4 hours by bus) northwest of Lijiang. Its literally on the border to Tibet - thats why Tibetan culture is present everywhyere.



First I explored the Old Town (very quiet here compared to Lijiang), then visited the local temple, featuring a giant bell-like object that was being revolved by people pulling some strings.



Finally visiting the famous Songzanlin Monastery - this place could have well been somewhere in Tibet.



There were lots of monks about making the picture more complete. I was lucky enough to get a picture of and with them. They are usually very shy when it comes to this.

Baisha Village

... one of the earliest Naxi (local tribe people) settlement in this area.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

The Tiger Leaping Gorge is a canyon on the Yangtze River. The name (Tiger Leaping Gorge) comes from a legend, saying that in order to escape from a hunter, a tiger jumped across the river at the narrowest point (still 25 metres wide). The rapids were amazingly strong and fast creating water mountains up to 20 meters....

Lijiang

After 6 enjoyable days in Kuching / Borneo, I left on a plane headed for Macau. I spent less than 1 hour here, as I got straight on the bus which took me to the chinese border. After getting the immigration formalities out of the way I found myself in Zhuhai, in China. From here, I took the bus to Shenzhen (the last one - and it was only 9.30pm) where I arrived at midnight.

I spent the next 2 days in Shenzhen, getting prepared for the journey ahead to Lijiang in the Yunnan province; it would be a long one. On saturday I took off to Guangzhou, where I spent the night before getting on the train the next morning heading for Kunming - the entire train journey would last 25 hours. Don't ask me how I survived it - I slept, I read, I studied, I looked out the window and I drank and ate. I wasn't feeling too bad when I arrived in Kunming, so I decided to get straight on the bus to Lijiang - another 9 hours plus 3 hours of waiting for the bus to get moving.



The bus journey was without major events, though the view was fanstastic. Finally, I arrived in Lijiang on Monday evening. I was surprised about how big, but beautiful the Old Town was. Lots of tourists were about - which kind of destroys a bit of the atmosphere. However, it still is an amazing place to visit. Just check out some of the pictures. Today, I went to the Black Dragon Pool - one of Lijiang's famous sights (on clear days you can see the snow mountain in the background)



I took those pictures some days later ...