LIJIANG

With my plan only to be in Lijiang for 24 hours, arriving at early evening was the best time to see it.
The streets were filled with Chinese glowing red lanterns and was kind of a cross between newly built tourist streets and attractions as well as the old narrow winding streets towards the mountains that have no doubt been there a bit longer.

The nightlife in Lijiang was far more lively than I had expected, on rounding the first corner from my guest house there was a precession of bars, all with groups of boys and girls singing some kind of dating / contest song at each other in bizarre ( I guess local) outfits….

It remninded me of a bizarre combination of Eurovision and the film 8 mile….strange indeed.
This bizarre theme pretty much contuniued everywhere I went that night, and at the risk of changing the agenda on my trip so far I had just the one beer and headed to bed….

Before getting on what seemed liked the hundredth bus iin China so far, I had a quick look around Lijiang the next day, all was pretty much the same liveliness (apart from the singing!) as the previous night, although you could now see it was all set against the backdrop of snow covered mountains…which for the first time has given me a sense of how high up I actually am and how close Everest like conditions are.

So, another 6 hours and on to Tiger Leaping Gorge, which to me at first sounded more like a special move from Streetfighter 2 rather than a famed beauty spot….