Unknown Sweet Mountain

After poking around Kunming a little and checking out the Stone Forest, I wanted to explore things a little further afield (i.e. things outside the ubiquitous 5 million person cities that are everywhere in China). I needed to get the hell out of dodge and, for me, there is only one proper way to do that - cram myself on a night bus headed for Lijiang. I REALLY wish I had some pictures from this night bus because it was a true debacle. They smush about 36 beds on a normal sized bus. Now, I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, there is no way that you could possibly fit 36 beds on a bus (even if you're thinking about those crappy, extra-small beds that they give you in college dorms). Well, you're right - there's no way they could possibly fit that many beds on a bus. So instead, they just mark off 36 flat enclosed areas and call them beds. To make things more amusing, not all these "beds" are created equal. For example, next to the wheel there is a bed that was no more than 4 ft long (I kid you not) and then my favorite was in the back they just put 5 people together in one superwide bed. No separaters, no barriers, just some 5 person spooning with strangers in the back (I had the good fortune of not being stuck in the back, but some of my friends were not quite as lucky). I really should get to more interesting topics, but a little more must be said about the night bus. So, on the night bus I think it is required that they find the silliest Chinese movie they can get their hands on and then blast it at deafening volume until midnight. These are the RULES! (This isn't 'Nam after all.) Anyways, the movie that I had on the first night bus was a hilarious movie about some painter who created paintings by making some other guy get completely naked, dunking him in ink, and then beating him up all over a piece of canvas. Now that's wushu and yishi combined!

Arrival in Lijiang was also fairly amusing. We rolled into the town proper around 6:30am or 7:00am and there wasn't a soul to be seen. (Side note: part of the reason nobody was awake yet is the fact that all of China runs on Beijing time, there are no separate time zones. One country, One Time Zone.) So we're basically wandering around a deserted city banging on any hostel door we can. The most unbelieveable part is that nobody would answer... You'd think they'd be used to getting the backpackers from the night bus. We probably walked around for an hour before we were finally able to rouse a guy at the Ancient Town Youth Hostel and promptly collapsed for a couple hours of sleep.

Refreshed from our nap, we headed out right away for a nearby mountain (unfortunately, I can't recall the name). The Lonely Planet did a pretty terririfically bad job of explaining where to go, how to get there, and how much it would cost, but we were able to sort things out on our own and 1 minivan, 1 bus, and 1 cable car later we found ourselves 4600m above sea level starring out over Yunnan.

Me at the base of the mountain

"Base Camp" on the mountain, 4500m above sea level

I'm taking a new job making Communist propaganda...

It was really cool to be up so high. The views were tremendous and even the air seemed cleaner up there. It was pretty hard to breathe though and we couldn't hike much more than 100 ft before stopping to rest a little. It's pretty cool how fast your heart will beat from just a little walking at that altitude. We were in no rush and spent a couple of hours exploring the mountain and glacier nearby. While we were chilling on some rocks, a group of Chinese men started stripping off their shirts and taking photos. The cold weather didn't bother these guys at all and it made for some hilarious photo ops...

Ridiculous Shirtless Chinese Mountain Men

Little Wooden Message Panels

- Jon