A gratefully early start from the guesthouse left us sitting penniless in Deqen an hour and a half later. Scouring for banks to change dollar into Yuan it was soon apparent that in this town that was going to be an impossible feat, despite the sprawling development that seems to tag onto the end of most of Chinas once pretty towns. Thinking we were screwed we resorted to our bank cards, after using mine it seemed we were even more screwed but somehow Prue uses h...

Now I am not one who usually complains, honest. But I occasionally find myself and my travel companions subjected to certain treatments that I feel deserve to be complained about, and I am not afraid to approach them and make others aware. For a lot of my travel life I have refused to take guided tours, the wealth obtained from ahieving such ventures on your own generally far exceed those where you are constricted to anothers schedule. I do think of the benefits ...

3 day hike from Dimaluo on the Nu Jiang river to Cizhong on the parallel Mekong river (across the Biluo snow mountain which summits at 4652m). It has been a mere 3 days and 2 nights on the mountainside and I have learnt so much about myself, Prue, our relationship, my relationship with a guide, the amount of respect I can hold for a mule and the exact reason why I have lugged a bloody sleeping bag a third the way around the globe. A late start after a gr...

Day 1. River exploration, a 15km meander. Bingzhongluo sits at around 1800m, not so much when you consider the towering hillsides that engulf it. There are a couple of restaurants on the one street town, a few cars and then with the exception of the odd rice terrace it is all to the wilderness, and what a wilderness it is. Let us begin with opening the curtains to a green canvass ripped apart by streamers of clouds, and then a walk in the direction of the famo...

I imagine how many traveller has asked this question while gazing upon the Salween river in Nu Jiang valley, at 2815k km long it is one of the largest flowing rivers in the world. Originated from the glaciers within the Quinghai mountain in Tibet, Salween/ Nu Jiang runs through Yunnan, Myanmar and Thailand. Pushing a fantastic 4876 cube meters of water per second it is not without occasional tantrums of rapids and backflow. Cascading waterfalls supplying its ev...