Last day in Lijiang and 2 days to get home

First of all -- let's begin at the end...its Sunday afternoon, and although we left Lijiang at 7 am on Saturday, we have just gotten home. Although we thought we planned a trip that would not coincide with the Chinese New Year travel rush...we did catch a bit of it. Our flight from Lijiang was canceled and the next flight did not get us to Kunming in time for our connecting flight. There were no seats from Kunming to Xiamen for 3 DAYS or more, so we booked a flight from Kunming to Chengdu (straight north -- wrong direction entirely), the airline put us up in a crummy hotel, and we caught a morning flight to Xiamen. Which I am happy to say was sunny and green and lovely to greet us when we finally arrived today. So we are all a bit tired, but I wanted to get the "rest of the story" out before I forget anything.
For our last day, we had a big decision to make. We had tentatively planned a trip up close to this mountain ..the Yulong Xueshan, or Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. You can take a bus ride up to a cable car which takes you up to 13,000 feet on this 18,000 ft mountain. The day dawned bright, sunny and a bit cold. While initially we decided to try, it, we got a late start and would have had to wait until almost noon to get a bus up, so we abandoned our plan and decided to go back to the park we went to yesterday and climb Elephant Hill, a modestly strenuous but short hike to the top of the hill where the mountains meet the city of Lijiang. We had passed the path the day before but been too tired to try.

This is Helen's "look Mom it's snowing" picture...the climb was stairs straight up for about an hour and a half..and since we were at 8000 feet to begin with, at that elevation it was slow going for everyone, especially Michael with Sophia having her "last ride" in the backpack.

In a pine forest about two thirds of the way up were a number of graves, including this inviting seat next to the path, and a Tibetan ceremonial display of some kind.


Finally Sophia got out and hiked her little self up the rest of the way. It was quite cold and windy on the hill...

And when we got to the top and saw the snow squalls on the big mountain we were sure glad we hadn't spent all day heading up into a snowstorm on a bus. While the views weren't that clear, they were majestic and mysterious with all that snow blowing around up there.



Here is Lijiang and the park as we headed back down.

When we got back to town, we decided to make one of Sophia's little dreams come true. For her, Lijiang was all about the PONIES. So we all mounted up..after some difficulty as the first horse refused to carry me and started rearing... and took a leisurely ride through the Old Town, with the Tibetan (or Naxi?) horsemen guiding the ponies....

Isn't that a great hat?


The guy in the picture, as it turns out, is the guy who is on the cover of all the books about Lijiang and this part of the Tibetan plateau.

Here is a woman making baba, the flat bread which along with Yak yogurt was the favored snack while we were here.

We caught the end of a troupe of women dancing..their costumes were pretty fancy, so not sure if they are locals are not, but very colorful.


Also we shot this video of traditional Naxi musicians. In the guidebook I had read that some of these musicians had buried their instruments during the Cultural Revolution to keep them from being destroyed and that some of these instruments were rarely heard anymore as a result of so many of them being destroyed.

So our vacation has come to an end and we are back safely in Xiamen for the Chinese New Year holiday...not sure what we will do or see here, as it seems to be primarily a family event, but we will try to find some friends to hook up with. I really enjoyed the diversity of Yunnan, Lijiang's charm, the excellent shopping (!), the new foods and well prepared Western food, our hangout..Lamu's House of Tibet, and the clear pure air at 8000 feet!

While we have been away, I think China has been in the news worldwide for the severe winter weather which has plagued much of the country, stranding travelers and taxing an infrastructure that is pretty tentative to begin with in some remote areas. I have added a link above to Half the Sky..a worthy agency which helps to increase the nurturing programs in Chinese orphanages. They are also launching campaign for assistance to the orphanages to supply them with food and fuel, which is becoming scare in many areas and consequently more expensive. Some of the orphanages run on tight budgets anyway, and the disaster is stretching these to the limit. The orphanages in the Hunan province, Helen's home province, have been hard hit and as they are pretty far south, they are unused to coping with this much snow. If you are interested in helping them out, you can go to the link to find out more.