In Lijiang we were staying with the wonderful Mama Naxi.  A tiny woman, with a loud voice. She had the disarming habit of talking about herself in the third person eg: [to Jamie] 'YOU SLEEP WITH MAMA?' meaning - did you sleep at my hostel? ”Yes.” “GOOD YOU GET FROM MAMA: BANANA”  As well as booming questions and instructions to all her guests she also arranged everything for everyone. She organised our transport to the gorge and probably had a part to play in sorting out the weather too.

 

We walked for five hours in the warm sunshine gauping at the incredible ridge that twinkled it's snow at us from the opposite valley.  We trudged up the famously soul destroying 28 turns to be greeted by a wonderful view and a man with a sign "8 kwai for photo".  "You can go and look," he said " but if you take a photo you must pay 8 kwai". I invited him to frisk me to check that I had no camera and so was no risk to his business, he declined, in the meantime Jamie delighted by the challenge shot off a lot of pictures and sneaked off.

 

We spent a night in a hostel (cannily called the Halfway Guesthouse although it was actually about 2 thirds along the path).  The place had been stayed in by Michael Palin and his crew.  With classic wit he describes the loo with the view - see page 182 of his Himalaya book. We too “lingered long after our business was done”.

 

The next day of the trek we descended 1000m to the river and tiger leaping stone (where the famous and daring tiger was once said to have leapt across the Yangze).  The gorge was spectacular, steep sided sandy rock with a raging blue river at it’s foot.  Again enterprising local families had stuck a price tag on the place - 10 kwai to descend and once you got to the bottom another 10 to come back up again! This was apparently to pay for the maintenance of the path and the “dangerous ladders” that precariously hung from the rock.

 

As we left the gorge the weather began to close in, it seemed Mama Naxi must have been distracted, when we returned to Lijiang we found that she was.  She was a whirlwind of activity buying incense and a pig for New Year.  When we left she gave us a big kiss a bunch of bananas and a lucky trinket to guard against the pick pockets on the nightbus. It worked.

 

H