After 5 days in LiJiang (a protracted time due to the closure of close-by Tiger Leaping Gorge) we were glad to head out of the ancient city (approx 800 years old) and the "Disney China" feeling that it can attract. Early in the morning lit-up at night it's very pretty, but otherwise can be extremely full of Chinese tourists and every shop seems to sell the same, cheap crap for tourists to buy. We were glad to end 'musical guesthouses', as every place but the last night had enough of a problem to compel us to move on the next day. The 'highlight' being a quite nice guesthouse which turned out to be across the road from the town's nightclub strip which made sleep impossible. In changing hostels late at night we did, however, manage to sneak a peak in the daggiest clubs and pubs I've seen since Frankston.
From LiJiang a day-long bus ride took us back to Kunming to connect with the train overnight to Chengdu in Sichuan province. The train ride, 16 hours of it all up, was saved by the amazing scenery from the window. We rode along the river for kilometres, with views of dozens of gorges.
Some were tight, rising vertically from a narrow river to the mountain's zenith. Others were wider, allowing space for a rice paddy either flat or sloping up the mountain side, a living grown, so long as the river maintained its banks. Mist either clung to the gorge sides or else stole the mountain tops in its deep swathe. Down many of the cliffs small streams were busy creating new gorges. My favourite gorges were intimidating. Wide, raging, chocolate rivers, vertical, hard cliffs that I want to call granite but which weren't, and mountain tops lost to the eye in mist. Our buildings and bridges sat over nature, not replacing, engaging or enhancing it.
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