So J and I set off from school around 5 am and the city was absolutely empty... for once! After our one hour flight from Kunming to Zhongdian (Shangri-la) we flagged down a cab and had him take us to Dragoncloud Guesthouse in old town so that... we could get to old town. From there we walked down the street - past a lot of doggies! - to Shangri-la Traveler's Club, a hostel that Lonely Planet loves. We had some coffee and some French toast and eggy-weggs then went to the bus station and bought a couple tickets to Deqin. We got directions from some cabbies to the other bus line then went to Songzanlin Si (Ganden Sumteseling Gompa) which is a 300-year-old Tibetan monestary. We walked around for a while and watched the monks eat in the dark and whatnot for a bit, then headed back to the station to start our 6 hour bus ride to Deqin.
We past some of the most beautiful scenery along the way, as the road teetered on the edge of a mountain. And when I say that, I mean that there was one narrow road with no guardrail and a sheer drop down the gorge. But it was great! :] We were eye-level with clouds and little waterfalls would trickle down the mountains through a sea of red, orange, yellow, purple, and green bushes and trees, from evergreens to redwood-looking trees (haha I have such an extensive knowledge of trees, you know...) to cacti and elephant ears. As we rounded the bend toward Deqin we got our first look at Meili Xue Shan and the other 12 peaks. Even though the mountaintops were obscured by clouds, they looked massive. and impressive. Massively impressive, in fact. Deqin is in a valley and is heavily Tibetan as it is the last stop overland from Yunnan into Tibet. Once we got off the bus, a gal from Tashi's Mountain Lodge accosted us - but in a good way - and gave us a flyer. The lodge it turns out is in a village inbetween Deqin and Feilai Si, which is where I wanted to go early the next morning. It sounded pretty good, so we hitched a ride with her to the lodge with a couple of backpackers who had just started learning Chinese in Kunming - one was a computer nerd, the other a passive-aggressive who'd get upset that J and I could speak Chinese. Whatever, weirdo...! We got a room on the 2nd floor with a great view down the valley and after tea and dinner, we planned the next few days activities with the girls who worked there who gave us great advice on how to make the most of our time. We got to our room and went to sleep pretty quickly, until J suddenly sat up in his bed and said "don't get out of bed!" I was so confused, I figured that our space heater must have caught my blanket on fire or something, but as it turns out there was a big ol' bat hanging over my head. While I hid, J got our rooms switched and we ended up staying downstairs.

Monday morning we got up just before 6 and went to Feilai Si, which is a village (and also a temple) that has the best view of the sunrise over the mountains. It was a bit cloudy (maybe there were Japanese around? (okay, side note... Chinese people hate Japanese and it's a saying that if you go to Feilai Si and can't see the peaks, it's because there are Japanese around! Horribly racist, I know... haha)) But the clouds eventually burnt off long enough for us to get some shots and see the sun illuminate the peak before a thick fog rolled in.
We headed back to Tashi's for breakfast (aka dinner plus some rolls) and drove down toward the Mingyong Village. We got our cab driver's number so we could call him and have him pick us up the next day. Then we went to see a man about a horse. A man being a whole village. It's a 5 hour hike uphill and with my asthma and lack of stamina, riding a horse was definitely my only choice. Poor J... Chinese horses are basically donkeys so he couldn't ride them... but I did get some funny pics of them trying to put him on one!

So for 5 hours I rode and J walked, thus he became my hero! We stopped along the way to refuel with hard-boiled eggs, zanba (a roasted Tibetan flatbread) and - of course - yak butter tea! That was an experience... at the first stop, J liked it, but at the 2nd, I thought it tasted a lot better. There were beautiful sights along the way (see the pictures!) and after a rest at the peak I ditched the horse and we headed down the other side in our converse and new balance and street clothes... a funny sight for all the hardcore trekkers we met along the way. Speaking of, we were the only foreigners there so it was a great chance for us to practice our language skills. We had my horse lady call us a hostel before we started heading down and when we arrived we had the last room - no heat, electricity, a holey-fence seperated our room from the next and the door could neither lock nor open all the way. We napped until dark and then forced ourselves out of bed to eat. Scrambled eggs and tomatoes, beef and onions, rice and tea... our meals for the next few days! We watched some gals from Guangzhou play a Chinese version of 'go fish' and laugh at us until they realized we could understand their crazy canto-mandarin accents and we chatted with them a bit before heading back to bed and sleeping in our coats.

In the morning we awoke to a beautiful rainbow landing on the mountains. We ate our freshly pulled noodle soup and met a group of girls who were from a city just outside of Shanghai. As it turns out, they were also headed to the waterfalls after breakfast. We decided to join them since they seemed to know what they were doing a lot more than us so we grabbed some tiny red bulls, said bye to the piggies, and headed down to lower Yubong Village. It was a fairly flat and easy trail for the first hour or so and we strolled around stacking 'wish stones' and leaving little offerings on trees and boulders. It was a nice experience going with them because we got a little cultural insight on things along the way that we never would have got on our own. And they definitely knew about the whole 'Japanese people mean you can't see Meili Xue Shan at Feilai Si!' thing which is interesting, because we thought that only old people thought that. Of course the trek got harder and we had to walk up a (barely flowing) waterfall to get to the next stage. From then on, it was uphill. It would be flat for a bit and we met some friendly yaks that let us take pictures with them. We finally got to the waterfalls and ran around at the bottom, cooling off and just being ecstatic that we FINALLY made it!
We hurried back and after eating lunch at the crazy hostel we started back on the 7 hour trek. It wasn’t as bad the way back and we ran into the two weird treehuggers trying to climb the mountain. The poor computer nerd was lagging behind and his friend wasn't even waiting for him. Turns out the "experienced hikers" had brought too much stuff! We called our taxi driver when we were a few hours from the bottom of the mountain and met him around 8 pm. Then, we arrived back at Tashi's at about 10pm. Worn out and smelly, we got the very last room - a cottage, in fact, took a cool shower (the warmest you can be expected to take) then had dinner. They were completely packed with pseudo-intellectual backpackers who think that because they're traveling in another country, they must be the coolest people ever. haha! but it's not like we don't meet people like that all the time anyway...So the next morning we left Tashi's and went into Deqin with a couple kiwis and got our bus tickets for the trip back to Shangri-la. We grabbed some breakfast and then made the trip back. This time... wasn't so comfortable. We were in the very back where they have five seats and the guy next to me had his kid in his lap, so...yeah. But we had music and books and our own AMAZING personalities, so it went by quickly :]. Once back in Shangri-la, we went to a couple hotels, but since it was National Holiday, they were both booked up. So, we asked our cab driver if he knew of anywhere and we ended up with a great room with a bathroom and computers with free internet! After resting for about an hour, we went to the town square, where I had read on the Lonely Planet message boards that everyone in the town goes to dance at night. When we got to the town center, it was amazing. There were so many people just dancing around to Tibetan techno music - young and old alike. They were set dances too, that everyone knew the steps to and for two hours every single night, the whole town comes out to dance. It was great... we watched them for a while, then went and watched them from a second floor restaurant. After a good night's sleep, we woke up early and headed to the airport, thus concluding our not so restful vacation to Shangri-la!


Things I learned on the trip:
1. 20-year-old Tibetans look like they're 50, 50-year-old Tibetans look 800.
2. I have the mathematically impossible ability to fall while standing on flat ground. Countless times.
3. Chinese people think that J is King Kong.
4. Yak butter tea can be quite tasty!