So after the frustration of seeing yet another hours' typing go down the toilet thanks to unreliable internet connections over here in china, this is the next installment of my journal for a second time(for me anyway) The lasttime you heard from me i was in Dali, a very pleasant town on the banks of the Erhui lake in the province of Yunnan(which borders Laos and Burma), my flashing dot is wrong, i'm not in burma, but it won't move where i want it to! The day after i wrote my last entry i decided to climb(well, hike) up one of the hills over looking the old town of Dali(the new town is about 30 mins south and like anyother modern chinese city, lots of concrete and pollution. the hill was called Cang Sheng and had a temple about 2/3s the way up which is as far as you can go. For the sick, lame and lazy there is a chair lift but this would have been the easy option(not to mention expensive). The hike started off pretty steady a bit of an incline but nothing drastic. However this changed and it became almost sheer in places, alone the route that i took anyway(there are many and choosing one is very much by chance), unfortunately for me mine went directly under the chairlift so everyman and his dog could see the trail of sweat streaming behind me, not a prety sight! Although an aussie shouted some encouragement from the chairlift offering me his respect, this brought a wry smile and i felt like retorting something about the the ashes and the fact they we 'poms' are actually more than we are given credit for, i due to my heavy breathing i held my tongue. From the top the vistas over the lake and the town were quite impressive, but on the other side of the lake they have started developing something or other which spoils the view a bit. On the way down, i found myself whistling 'jerusalem', i don't really know why, maybe it was because of the fact that i had just proved to that aussie, what it is that makes us britons great? That afternoon i just sat in a couple of cafes drinking banana yoghurt shakes and listningto Dylan (Bob, rather than Thomas)and Simon and Garfunkel, dali is the natural environment to listen to the melodic tones of these folks. The next day i took a bus to Shangri-la, how's that possible i hear you ask, as shangri-la is a fictitious place? Well the chinese gov in all their arrogance have decided that the place that James Hilton was describing in 'Lost horizons' was actually a place called Zhongdian just on the border with Tibet. The bus journey was quite long and dull altho we did seem to be running over lots of hay as people were laying in the roads for us to run over, this hapened for kilometre after kilometre and i was still baffled. Some chinese guy tried to tell me in his seagull english but i still haven't a clue what ws going on. The city of shangri-la stands at 3200m, which is amazing by european standards, i did feel the altitude slightly when walking up stairs and such but nothing drastic. When i arrived in the new town i was thinking that Dundee better resembles shangri-la than this place(anybody who knows Dundee will see the point, but equally you could throw the comparison with Bradford as well). But once you escape the concrete monstrosaties and reach the old town(there's an old town in almost every chinese city it seems) you can se why they have renamed the place. There's an overwhelming tibetan feeling to the place, which is not only refreshng but very insightful as i'm not going into Tibet i could see what life is like there. I noticed the change in temperature(a high of only 15 degrees, after having averages of 25 this was a bit of a shock). As i arrived in the evening i did very little and just hit the sack. The next day was truly awesome, as it turned out the Panchen lama was in town, now for all you non tibetan buddhists, he's like the second most spiritual chap in tibetan buddhism after the Dalai, but as he is in exile and banned by the chinese, this fellow is the most spiritual accessible leader. There's a bit of a story behind him, the last one (the tenth reincarnation died in '89) but then the Dalai lama and his crew chosethe next one as what usually happens, but since china invaded (liberated, if you are that way inclined or just chinese) they wanted to control the process of finding the next one, so to cut along story short te dalai's choice and his family miraculously disappeared, and the chinese chose their man to become the panchen lama, so some argue he is just a pawn for Beijing. Anyway he is still revered by the tibetans regardless of this whole rigmarole and he is rolled out very rarely by the government to do tours (like the rolling stones i suppose), so this is a big deal for your average Joe Tibetan. Before everyone gets excited, i missed him by minutes it seems, as it seems to have been the case for one of the avid readers of this journal a few years back. But what i did witness was a crowd of about 20000(i couldn't tell you exactly) tibetans all in their traditional dress come to worship the man whom they hold so highly in their hearts. Speaking to a local, he said that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for most, and thats why so many people were there. To see this for me was truly special, all this people had made the 'pilgrimage' from their villages crammed into the back of trucks(you'll see why i put the photos up) and on horses and whatever they could put their hands on. They were all so happy and the atmosphere was indescribable, to me, this was the ultimate people watching session, just wandering thru the crowds, some of the children hadn't seen a foreigner before and stared at me some in horror others in bemusement. The thing that strruck me was that among the crowds there was an abundance of old ladies but very few old men, then i hit me that many of the men of that age would have been victims of the horrific persecution of the tibetans between 1950 and the 1970s, its amazing to think that in Europe all the talk is about the Holocaust(and maybe rightly so) but just a while afterwards on the other side of the world the people of tibet underwent suffering of arguably a similar magnitude and yet most of us know very little about it, either through the chinese covering the facts(partly true) or just ignorance on our part.The experience of being amongst these amazing people will be one that stays with me forever. After all this excitement i continued the theme and went to Ganden Sumptselling Gompa, which is described as the most important monastry outside of Tibet, it is reminiscent of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, resting majestically on the side of a hill overlooking the village below. AS the Panchen was in town all the 600 monks were out getting drunk with him or whatever it is they do when he comes to town, which was a bit disappointing but i still got to see this incredible place. The next day i had to move on, my destination was Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the deepest in the world which stands at 2600m at its highest point. It was a two day trek i had been told by some travellers i had met but as i arrived in the afternoon i decided to make a start anyway. I dumped my big rucksack at a cafe in a place called Qiaotoa(pronounced Chiaotoa) and carried on with a small one i had bought in Hong Kong, which is falling apart already! I find myself thinking 'they don't make 'em like they used to'. Anyway, the first two hours were what i expected mostly uphill but nothing too drastic, i stopped for a late lunch, and then carried on to the steepest part, it apparently has 28 bends crisscrossing the mountain side but i can tell you it feels like 4 times that number. I'd have to say that this was unquestionably one of th4e most challenging and exhausting things i've done. I don't know whether the altitude played a part or whether i'm not in the prime physical condtion i once was, i hope the former but realistically i think its the latter. At onbe point i was offered a horse to continue which was at the time very enticing, but i thought to myself Edmund Hiliary didn't jump on a horse and nor shall i. Once at the top the views were beautiful and every bit worth the effort. From then on the rest of the day was down hill and i stopped at a place called Tea Horse(not a spelling mistake by me!) but i think rather an unfortunate mistranslation on the owners part. the next day i rose early due to a cockerel crowing continually from 5am ,at about 8 and then did the last bit to a place calles Tina's(very chinese i know)in time for the 11am bus back to Qiaotoa, where i caught the bus to Lijiang where i find myself now. Iarrived yesterday just afer lunch and spent the afternoon recovering and watching Shawshank Redemption in my hostel, which was like heaven after the arduous 24 hours i had just done. I spent today looking around a park with a huge mountain rising(to 4500m) in the background, that is a sight and a half! The old town here is magnificent, it like something out of the last century and despite an earthquake 10 yrs ago, its still in tact. It reminds me of the stuff you see on the last samurai or Memoirs of a Geisha(except a bit more chinese, rather than japanese, but back then it was difficult to tell the difference). Thats about all for the last few days, next i'm going back to Dali for a night then on to a place called Chengdu a bit further northeast. thanks for all your messages on my board i didn't know it existed till a couple of days ago! Hope you are all well Matt