Xizhou - Tacheng

April 14 2013: Xizhou - Tacheng

In the morning,  we found ourselves with half an hour to spare after breakfast, so snuck off for a wee nose around the village. It was so beautiful, clean and relatively affluent as it was surrounded by fertile valley fields of broad beans, barley et al.  One of the old men invited us in to his ancient dwelling, a biggish house around a central courtyard, which seemed to shelter 3 or 4 different families judging by the electric meters!  An old lady then invited us to stay for “cha”, but we had to decline, as pressed for time.  I did manage to buy a beautiful table runner from the one craft shop that has opened with the advent of tourists to the guest house. The enterprising Chinese are always quick to meet demand!

On the road again, through increasingly beautiful scenery until we stopped for lunch at Lijiang.  We are returning there to stay later in the trip and will visit the old part of town, however, for the rest of it, you could be anywhere in China, save for some fancy Yunnan trim on the tops of the thousands of new high-rise apartment blocks standing empty on the road into town.

The real thing?

After a fairly average dumpling lunch – we Hong Kongers have high standards! - we set off to head north towards Tibet and to find the Yangtze river .  We had a good photo opportunity of it at Shigu where this mighty river takes an astonishing 120’ turn to flow almost North, circumnavigating Lijiang before it turns again to flow South again.

Crossing The Yangtze

Our First Stupa!

The blue/black external home decorations became rarer as we headed along the Yangtze valley through terraced farmlands of barley and buckwheat (rice is later in the year), and were replaced by homes with a very Tibetan influence. Likewise the people too, more and more having the distinctive features of the Tibetans who many years ago had invaded the area and never returned.  We finally turned west up the hills to the side of the valley, arriving at Hada, at our next lodgings close to Tacheng. This proved to be one of several Songtsam Lodges set up in the area by a trio of Tibetan, Chinese and Singaporean founders; all are very similar in design and utterly delightful.  The staff are local Tibetans, and so helpful and charming.  We were to stay in four different Songtsam Lodges and it was hard to find fault with anything – the food was fresh local produce, mainly superb vegetables,  pork and yak meat, tofu and wonderful soups. All very healthy!   However, this day, we arrived in a torrential downpour, so no external photos, but then the sun peeped out and we had a fabulous rainbow across the terraces from our balcony: