Wednesday, May 24, 2006
May 23-24: Lugu Lake
Instead of being a sensible person and going on to Dali like I planned, I decided to go on another long-distance bus journey to Lugu Lake and back. I heard it's cool. Plus, Jean-Brice (from the Tiger Leaping Gorge hike) was going there. I managed to convince someone else, a Japanese girl named Miky, to come along as well. Also on the trip were Hebe (a very cool Chinese girl from Shenzhen) and Gal (yet another Israeli, but he didn't have a food-related nickname). We had quite the crew.
Lugu Lake is a large alpine lake on the border of Yunnan and Sichuan. It was advertised to be a 6-hr bus ride from Lijiang, when in reality it takes 8 hours to get there. By bus. The upside is that it's 8 hours of looking at stunning, gorgeous, unbelievable Yunnan scenery. Big mountains all around, deep valleys, gorges, wow. Stunning. But it's still 8 hours of bouncing around in a bus, and doing that as an overnight journey sucks. Moreover, getting there is quite expensive - 120 kuai for a roundtrip bus, and another 80 kuai to get into the Lugu Lake area, which is ridiculous and reeks of corruption. At least I got the 50% student discount.
The area around Lugu Lake is inhabited by the Mosuo people, which are a spinoff of the Naxi. The main neat thing about them is that they are one of the few remaining totally matriarchal societies in the world. The girls run the show. They pick the husbands. Moreover, if they want to leave the marriage they're free to do this at any time, and get to keep the property and kids. The man gets nothing. I wonder if he has to pay child support...
Anyway, the Mosuo people are very cool. They dress neatly. They seem to practice a blend of Tibetan Buddhism mixed in with something else - I definitely saw prayer flags and katas, although I didn't see any prostrating monks. Picture to the right stolen shamelessly from the web.
Instead of the main Lugu Lake village (Luoshui) we stayed at a smaller village, Lishi. This is not a village per se, it's a collection of construction and concrete hell. Fortunately, if you walk 500m to the nearby peninsula, you reach some nice wooden guesthouses and get away from the Chinese construction hell the bus dropped us off at. I should disclose that when we arrived and I saw where we ended up (we were at Luoshui village first, and opted to stay on) I nearly lost it because I was already on a bus for far too long and faced the propsect of leaving early the next day and not enjoying the place fully.
Fortunately, the lake itself is very nice. Surrounded by mountains on all sides. The view is pretty awesome. Picture also shamelessly stolen from the web.
Near the guesthouse was a bay, and another peninsula which is effectively three small connected mountains. Jean-Brice and I looked at it and said "that's hikeable, maybe we can walk along the coast to the end." We decided to go and have a look at it that afternoon, and maybe hike it the next morning. Miky came along. We started walking at around 5:30 and made some good time. The coastline looked promising for a while, until we encountered a rock. Jean-Brice and I are both stubborn assholes who don't want to stop, and besides, we were having fun.
The following hour or so was a grueling, painful slog up bush-filled mountainside. No trail. No real idea of when we would reach the end. Total bushwhacking. Really tough. I was quietly thinking to myself "we better not be coming down this crap in the dark, or we're in real shit here." It was awesome.
At 6:30 we reached the end of the peninsula. The view is an incredible 360 degree of the lake. Stunning. At 6:45 we turned back, only this time we had a trail (the "Lugu Highway") along the spine of the peninsula. More bushwacking. More tough routefinding. We eventually came down to the beach we abandoned to find that Hebe, Gal and a small dog decided to be a private search party and make sure we were okay. I think they figured we don't know what we're doing, and I won't discuss the veracity of that claim.
Anyway, we were back at dinner by 8. The hike, though pretty short, made the 16 hours of travel all worth it. Moreover, this was only Miky's second hike, ever - the first being the Tiger Leaping Gorge. In a matter of three days she managed to do a pretty tough mountain hike in the Gorge, and a quick, difficult and absolutely gorgeous bushwacking trip. One hell of an introduction to being outdoorsy - I'm proud. She's hooked forever.
The next morning Miky & I boarded a bus back to Lijiang at 10:30 and suffered another 8 hours in a bus, consoled by more stunning Yunnan scenery. The other three folk stayed on another day in Lugu Lake, and they're all continuing elsewhere overland from there.
Other good news: Katie, the girl I met in Beijing and who suffered dog-bites in Kham, is almost certainly coming on the Zanskar trek with me. I guess my efforts to convince her weren't all for naught. Anyway, I'm pretty excited about this latest development. The trek is shaping up really, really well - and it'd be great to have Katie along.
Tomorrow I am heading to Dali, another town in Yunnan, for a night at a mountaintop guesthouse. The next day I'll be heading to Kunming, and I'm flying to Shenzhen on the weekend and taking either a train or a boat to Hong Kong. So much to do, so little time.
Lugu Lake is a large alpine lake on the border of Yunnan and Sichuan. It was advertised to be a 6-hr bus ride from Lijiang, when in reality it takes 8 hours to get there. By bus. The upside is that it's 8 hours of looking at stunning, gorgeous, unbelievable Yunnan scenery. Big mountains all around, deep valleys, gorges, wow. Stunning. But it's still 8 hours of bouncing around in a bus, and doing that as an overnight journey sucks. Moreover, getting there is quite expensive - 120 kuai for a roundtrip bus, and another 80 kuai to get into the Lugu Lake area, which is ridiculous and reeks of corruption. At least I got the 50% student discount.
The area around Lugu Lake is inhabited by the Mosuo people, which are a spinoff of the Naxi. The main neat thing about them is that they are one of the few remaining totally matriarchal societies in the world. The girls run the show. They pick the husbands. Moreover, if they want to leave the marriage they're free to do this at any time, and get to keep the property and kids. The man gets nothing. I wonder if he has to pay child support...
Anyway, the Mosuo people are very cool. They dress neatly. They seem to practice a blend of Tibetan Buddhism mixed in with something else - I definitely saw prayer flags and katas, although I didn't see any prostrating monks. Picture to the right stolen shamelessly from the web.Instead of the main Lugu Lake village (Luoshui) we stayed at a smaller village, Lishi. This is not a village per se, it's a collection of construction and concrete hell. Fortunately, if you walk 500m to the nearby peninsula, you reach some nice wooden guesthouses and get away from the Chinese construction hell the bus dropped us off at. I should disclose that when we arrived and I saw where we ended up (we were at Luoshui village first, and opted to stay on) I nearly lost it because I was already on a bus for far too long and faced the propsect of leaving early the next day and not enjoying the place fully.
Fortunately, the lake itself is very nice. Surrounded by mountains on all sides. The view is pretty awesome. Picture also shamelessly stolen from the web.Near the guesthouse was a bay, and another peninsula which is effectively three small connected mountains. Jean-Brice and I looked at it and said "that's hikeable, maybe we can walk along the coast to the end." We decided to go and have a look at it that afternoon, and maybe hike it the next morning. Miky came along. We started walking at around 5:30 and made some good time. The coastline looked promising for a while, until we encountered a rock. Jean-Brice and I are both stubborn assholes who don't want to stop, and besides, we were having fun.
The following hour or so was a grueling, painful slog up bush-filled mountainside. No trail. No real idea of when we would reach the end. Total bushwhacking. Really tough. I was quietly thinking to myself "we better not be coming down this crap in the dark, or we're in real shit here." It was awesome.
At 6:30 we reached the end of the peninsula. The view is an incredible 360 degree of the lake. Stunning. At 6:45 we turned back, only this time we had a trail (the "Lugu Highway") along the spine of the peninsula. More bushwacking. More tough routefinding. We eventually came down to the beach we abandoned to find that Hebe, Gal and a small dog decided to be a private search party and make sure we were okay. I think they figured we don't know what we're doing, and I won't discuss the veracity of that claim.
Anyway, we were back at dinner by 8. The hike, though pretty short, made the 16 hours of travel all worth it. Moreover, this was only Miky's second hike, ever - the first being the Tiger Leaping Gorge. In a matter of three days she managed to do a pretty tough mountain hike in the Gorge, and a quick, difficult and absolutely gorgeous bushwacking trip. One hell of an introduction to being outdoorsy - I'm proud. She's hooked forever.
The next morning Miky & I boarded a bus back to Lijiang at 10:30 and suffered another 8 hours in a bus, consoled by more stunning Yunnan scenery. The other three folk stayed on another day in Lugu Lake, and they're all continuing elsewhere overland from there.
Other good news: Katie, the girl I met in Beijing and who suffered dog-bites in Kham, is almost certainly coming on the Zanskar trek with me. I guess my efforts to convince her weren't all for naught. Anyway, I'm pretty excited about this latest development. The trek is shaping up really, really well - and it'd be great to have Katie along.
Tomorrow I am heading to Dali, another town in Yunnan, for a night at a mountaintop guesthouse. The next day I'll be heading to Kunming, and I'm flying to Shenzhen on the weekend and taking either a train or a boat to Hong Kong. So much to do, so little time.
# posted by Alex Perel @ 9:13 AM 
