Great Firewall of China Part 11: Old world China

9/14 I got up early and spent the morning exploring Lijiang. Getting
lost in the narrow and winding cobblestone streets. It's a real cool
town with canals gushing everywhere and red lanterns hanging from all
the old buildings. It's truly a town steeped in old world charm.
There are also lots of good food things to try, my favorite being yak
and these walnut sweets. But yea, just basically wondered around the
town all morning, looking in at some of the shops, checking out the
waterwheels, squares, and other interesting things. It's just a vey
quaint and cute and old world city, so it is quite neat to explore.
Until about 10, I had the town to myself before the chinese tourists
woke up and had breakfast and came out. But then it is still quite
interesting as all of hustle and bustle with them around. Hiked to
the top of a hill with a big temple on it to look down on the town and
to see if I could get a glimpse of the big jade snow mountain, but it
was covered behind the clouds.

In the afternoon, we went to pick up our visa extensions and when we
got back it was raining pretty hard, so we just hung out at the cool
hostel and got some food. I ran into a guy named Erik from sweden who
is one of the 3 other people on my tibet tour. Small travel world
here in China.

Tomorrow I leave for the Tiger Leaping Gorge trek. It can take as
little as 2 days as it is not that long, but I think I will do it in 3
days as I have an extra day and I can do some side hikes, and it also
gives me more of a chance to get some good weather to see down into
the world's largest gorge and out across to the tall snow mountains.

I have included some pictures from Huangshan (reaching the summit and
also some west canyon hiking) and also some from biking and hiking
around guilin as well as the two chinese in wuhan who helped me get to
guillin.