Huang Long (Yellow Dragon) waterfall at Maling river gorge
Xingyi (興義). It's a tier 4 city. I had asked a couple of Chinese people I knew back home about it and neither had heard of it. There was barely any information about the city online. Hop on to Wikipedia and there's about 4 lines of text about it. Guizhou province on the whole was completely unknown to us during our pre-holiday research and we had both thought we would simply breeze past it to get to Zhangjiajie. I was told that Guizhou was the home of Maotai, which seemed to be the only remarkable thing to note about the province, which was one of the poorest in the country. And now I know it's also the birthplace of Lao Gan Ma, the famous chilli oil.
Keichousaurus fossil
So we were finally going to leave Kunming today. We've been here long enough! Except…
Lions at Yuantong temple
Another leisurely day in Kunming where we visited ONE site and ate food :\
Bridge in Green lake park (Cui Hu Park)
It was a leisurely day today. Didn't do a whole lot except walk around Green lake, ate Dairy Queen and had a surprisingly beefy noodle soup.
Jade Chicken Arch
Kunming (昆明) is the capital of Yunnan province and naturally we had to head that way to get out of the province. We decided not to stop in the popular Dali (大理) because it didn't interest us that much. It didn't seem like there was much to see apart from the famous Three Pagodas.
Yulong Mountain as seen from Tibet Guesthouse, Lower Tiger Leaping Gorge
Whoo hoo! A could tick off Tiger Leaping Gorge off his bucket list! Our plan for TLG had gone without a hitch and most importantly, there was no rain. Now, having bought our bus ticket back to Lijiang from Tibet guesthouse the night before, it was time to say good bye to this great wonder.
Stone marker for Middle Tiger Leaping Gorge, Shangri-La, Yunnan
Day 2 on the Tiger Leaping Gorge trail and our bodies were still kinda tired from the previous day.
The peaks of Yulong Mountain (5596m elevation), seen from Upper Tiger Leaping Gorge
Hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge (虎跳峽, hutiaoxia) was something that was on the top of A‘s list for this trip. This was his number one.
Tiger Leaping Gorge is an impressive gorge in between two huge mountain ranges - Haba Snow Mountain (5396m elevation) and Yulong Snow Mountain (5596m elevation). These two mountains are some of the tallest mountains in Yunnan province. The river that runs in the gorge is the Jinsha river (Gold Sand river).
Yulong Mountain on a bad day. Overcast and lots of clouds hovering around the peak
We were supposed to stay in Lijiang for one night and move on to Tiger Leaping Gorge. We stayed another night as the power of the sun was not enough to dry our clothes, which meant that it would need another day! It's a bit of a silly reason but I didn't mind so much, as this meant we could climb Elephant Hill, which was right beside Black Dragon Lake and had an elevation of 2700m. Lijiang itself has an elevation of 2400m.
Rooftops of Lijiang Old Town
Lijiang (麗江 or if you prefer the bastardised version: 丽江) means “beautiful river”. I'm pretty sure the name refers to the Jinsha river (Gold Sand river), which is quite a signifant river as it flows into and forms the Yangtze river (a.k.a. Chang Jiang/Long river) in Sichuan province. The Jinsha itself is formed in Qinghai province and is used heavily for hydro power. Interestingly, Lijiang is bordered in the East and West by the Jinsha river.
