We left Xi-an and after 18 hours of train, we arrived in Chengdu where we stopped only for the day to see the Pandas. Aaaaah we loved it! They are so cute, the reserve has fifty of them, and it was worth every kilometer traveled to get here.

After spending the afternoon with the Pandas, we went this time to the airport. Next stop Lijiang, much more in the south and like an hundred quilomètres from Tibet, a beautiful mountainous region that two Chinese that met on the road before going to China had recommended to us. It takes 36 hours by train to get there, luckily we found some cheap tickets on the net, the flight lasted just 1:30.
We were so happy to finally stay in a small town, and we didn’t get disappointed.
The old town of Lijiang is a beauty! Extremely touristic for sure, as this town of 40,000 inhabitants receives 5 million visitors per year. But that does not really bothered us because 99% of them were Chinese tourists, so we didn’t really felt surrounded by tourists. The site is protected by UNESCO and is very well preserved, little narrow streets, rivers and bridges, public places, shops, bars, restaurants, cafes, hotels, everything fits perfectly in the visual of the small town. Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and charming towns we had visited since the beginning of our adventure.

We rented bikes and went a day visiting the minority villages around Lijiang, where we could admire the old people with their traditional clothes, the scenery was beautiful, we went in the middle of wheat fields with the view on snowy mountains, and it was a sunny day, everything looked perfect…

Then we decided to go for a 2-day trek in the Tiger Leaping Gorge, the view was beautiful! We met two very nice Malayses girls on the way and we did the trekking with them. We spent the night in a nice guest house with mountain views from our bedroom window. Unfortunately we weren’t so lucky this time because the weather was cloudy during the two days, but the sun appeared for a instant so we got some good pictures.