Yarden in Vietnam 4: Chapter 19

Chapter 19

China 2 or the amazing Yunnan

And that's an understatement.

In addition we had great weather on this period of rain and thunderstorms ... not a drop, blue skies and sunshine, even in Guilin.

Yes it is very important especially for the highlight of this trip, the Tiger Leaping Gorge, which is closed by bad weather, and it'd better be!

By cons for the English, it's not that at all, except for Yarden that gets by very well now.

We ended up choosing only the hotels in which they spoke it, ie roughly the hostels. But finally in China they are very good.

In fact it is mostly because of the first hotel that Gilad had booked and paid in advance on Agoda: they made us understand that they had no agreement with them and that our reservation was worthless. It starts well.

We therefore decided not to book the hotels; well it takes a little longer on arriving at the middle of the night but finally we managed very well.

Kunming

We started by the crossing the bridge noodles, very good

and a small supply of cherries that have done half the trip,

then we went for a first trip

to the beautiful cave of Jiu Xiang.

You go down,

and down,

you make a little

boat trip,

then go on

along the wall

among hundreds

of bats

to enter a large room

where again they did not skimp on the neon.

The problem is that we had to go back up...

I have never thought that one day we would try the sedan chair.

All we needed was the costume,

but we did after.

Anyway we won at least one hour with Yarden who finds that her dad's shoulders are very comfortable.

To end the visit, after a few strokes,

we tested the chairlift.

In the afternoon the stone forest;

fortunately they have left few trees

among large lawns

that you can't step on.

There's even a TV in the bathroom!

It's still a nice walk

and we

well assimilated.

Before our flight to the next step,

a little trip to the city center

where you can fish goldfish in a fountain.

Lijiang

This is a very nice pedestrian city

with a lot of channels,

inns,

silk,

tea,

coffee,

calligraphy,

and other souvenirs shops,

everything is done for the tourist (except English here too;

but as most are Chinese ...)

even the horses in the square in the morning

and the old people dancing in the afternoon.

One can spend hours

walking without tiring.

Well arriving with suitcases trying to find where to sleep, it's less funny though Yarden has kindly walked for two hours pulling her suitcase on the pavement.

We therefore spent the day roaming the streets,

stopping occasionally for a bite to eat

or a coffee to drink,

do a little prayer

at the top of the hill

and even hold an eagle at the wheel.

The tiger leaping gorge

Fortunately we had already done a small pony tour in the Hermon and in the jardin d'acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne before this somewhat extreme saddle on.

Here we are on horseback, well the one with the big ears, for a first real trail ride and not any;

one of the finest in China, on a 300 m high one meter wide path, sometimes less, but sometimes also more still, on a cliff that sheers,. But it was so beautiful and great. So many emotions and especially adrenaline.

Without these brave mules and their foot so steady, we would never have done this trek with Yarden.

Not once has she moaned or been afraid, except in the way down as I crushed her when she had to be all by herself.

After the night at the Tea Horse Guesthouse,

the view is superb,

the next day we did it again,

this time with a pony,

all the way to the next hostel where we left the bags

to make a round trip on foot

to the waterfall,

a passage too narrow does not let the horses through.

The way down we finally decided to make it by taxi especially to spare Gilad's shoulders, because I could never carry her there.

Shangri La

We immediately continued to Shangri La,

a completely Tibetan village a little further north

where we could see the little Potala,

the old town

and especially the Napa Hai Valley full of different herds including yaks.

Suhe

Then we returned to Lijiang to retrieve the luggage we had left at the hotel before the trek

and especially to organize the trip's end. At first we wanted to go to Chengdu, but given the number of things that are to see in Sichuan, we finally decided to leave the region for next time and finish our stay in Guilin.