June 6, Lijiang: Snow Mountain and other villages

June 6 will stand out as one of the best days of our trip to Western China. Our day began early again, with an 8 AM departure to the van for the ride up to the mountain. Along the way, as with other tours, there were several stops. Instead of "factories" however, which often sold highly overpriced items, this tour had better stops - including the holiest site of the local religion of the Naxi people, who inhabit this part of the province. Below you can see their most important statue of a Buddha, with the belief that the ground on which it rests is protected from earthquakes and other natural disasters. In 1996, an earthquake hit the area (much like last week, but not an hour away, right near the site), killing 300 or so people in the village surrounding the area. But the statue was unharmed, furthering the belief. We were not allowed to take pictures, so I snuck one from a bit far away. See below.

After that stop, we made one more in an old village, much like a tour of the West would stop in an Indian village. In this small town, all of the old cultural traditions had been kept, including the hand carving of special characters into wood. Below is a picture of one of the artisans, who kept a small kitten in her lap the whole time!

We then made the trip to the base camp of Snow Mountain, which was at about 3100 meters, or 10,010 feet:


A cable car system took us to about 4000m, and it was up to us - Chris, Alex, our new friend Justin, and myself, to hike the last 2,000 feet or so to the scalable peak at 4680 meters, or about 16,000 feet. The actual mountain tops out at 5,596 meters, or 18,790 feet, but unlike the Rockies, for example, there is much more of a jagged edge to the top of these mountains, and it was not scaleable:



We returned back to the hotel around 7 PM, to a pre-arranged dinner cooked by the proprietor's wife, who has taken a liking to the three of us. (It might have something to do with spending 5 nights here, buying tours through them, etc.) But in any case, she cooked a full meal characteristic of the northeastern provinces where she and her husband hail from. I'll get the picture up as soon as I can, but we'll just say that the endless dishes of cooked sprouts and veggies, marinated pork, potato-like starches, boiled tomato and egg, cucumbers and garlic, and tasty rice put us under for quite a while:


After dinner, we walked the busy night streets of the old town until about 12, and then called it a night. After all, we are scheduled to play the world's longest golf course tomorrow - set at the highest altitude in the world as well - 8548 yards at 10,200 feet!

Please enjoy the pictures. Thanks to all for comments, e-mails, facebook messages, wall posts, and more - it's really kept me going on this end with all of the poor internet!

Mike

P.S. Despite my Pistons loyalty, I promised Chris that I would post this quote from him: "Go Cavs!"