LIjiang old town

Lijiang old town from a bar we stopped at while walking around one afternoon.  Lijiang old town is very touristy but has interesting architecture and a great place to spend a couple of days.  However, if you are looking for something more authentic it is best to explore the small towns and villages around Lijiang.

Meili Mountain Sacred Waterfall

This is a Sacred Buddhist waterfall （美丽雪山神瀑) near Yubeng, Yunnan, China. It is an amazing place with Tibetan prayer flags everywhere and this massive waterfall with fresh water from the snow topped Meili mountain.

Dali City wall

Dali is surrounded by a city wall and next to a lake that you can see in the distance. I took this one from the top of the city wall. We biked down to the lake later in the day.

Colorful Trail

The trail to the sacred waterfall near Yubeng in the Meili Mountain range is lined with prayer flags. This is one of the most sacred places for Tibetan Buddhists and many make the pilgrimage to the waterfall each year.

Comfortable House in Yubeng

This house sits on the side of the mountain in upper Yubeng, and overlooks the valley to lower Yubeng. The owners have a pretty impressive view while having their morning tea.

Sacred Trail Head

Beyond this abandoned Tibetan style house on the path to the left leads to a sacred site for for Tibetan Buddhists. The trail follows the mountains to the left and ends at an impressive waterfall created from the melting snow from the sacred mountain of Kawagebo.

Upper Yubeng

Upper Yubeng consists of these houses and a couple more behind me. The school is in the top right. Currently, it is still underdeveloped but with a major upgrade to the road to the Meili Mountain area to be finished in the summer of 2011, more tourist dollars should flow through Yubeng and it will become more developed.

Lower Yubeng Town Crops

Lower Yubeng consists of about ten homes of farmers but most also open their homes as hotels. They aren?t much but they drink from the clean cold water of the Meili Mountain tops and live in a beautiful valley.

Bottom of the steps

These waterfalls go down in steps, they are almost to perfect to be natural ...

Yulong Snow Mountain Waterfall

Yulong Snow Mountain is just north of Lijiang and doesn’t feel like what most thing of China. It is a similar landscape to the rocky mountains in North America, and just as beautiful.

Flowing Mountain Waterfall

When I visited Yulong snow mountain it was a cloudy day which didn't allow for many good landscape photos but the clouds allowed me to get some slow shutter waterfall photos where the water looks silky smooth, like this one

Tibetan Temple Entrance

Entrance to a small temple at Yak Meadow.  When we arrived the temple was surrounded by fog and had an eerie feel to it.  Very peaceful place.

Erhai Lake Boats

Found these boats next to a small village alongside Erhai lake. The owners offered to take us out for a ride but we were happy to snap a couple of photos and get back on our bikes to continue down the road.

Old Tibetan Woman

This woman was hanging out at the trail side at Yak Meadow in Yulong mountain park. She was kind enough to let me take her photo. Unfortunatly, she couldn't speak Manderin so I wasn't able to chat with her, which would have been even better.

Chinese Praying Mantis

I took this photo back in 2008 with a point and shoot. I rested the camera on a pop can to steady the lens then used the timer to get the shot without pressing the button. I was pretty proud of myself at the time but would be much easier now that I have a DSLR that I know how to use.

Praying Tibetan

One morning in Western China I came across this Tibetan doing morning prayers next to a Buddhist monastery.

Donghai bridge

Donghai bridge was the longest cross-sea bridge in the world until Hangzhou Bay Bridge opened on May 1st 2008. I took this photo just before passing under the bridge on a fairy on the way to Shengsi Island.

At the Edge of China

One of the last stops in Sichuan on the long road from Beijing to Lasa is Litang.  A quite little town in western Sichuan and my favorite place in China

Litang View

This is one from back in 2007. Today my cell phone camera is better than the point and shoot camera I had back then but still captured the moment of a great view of this cool little Chinese town.

Old Sichuan

I took this photo six years ago on the tail end of a three month road trip around southeast Asia. At the time, I had a point and shoot camera and was disappointed I could not capture the beauty of this place. I think this was the place where my interest in improving my photography skills started. I would love to return now that I know what I am doing with a camera.

Top of Hill

While in Daocheng, which is near the southern border of Sichuan province in China, I decided to climb a high hill to take some photos of the view but found the view at the top of the hill was more interesting than the valley below because of this makeshift stupa

Beautiful Snow Mountain (Meili Xue Shan)

This is the highest peak in the Meili xue Mountain range whose name directly translates to Beautiful Snow mountain, it is an amazing place and marks the border between Yunnan province and the Tibet Autonomous regoin.

Boy monk

Back in 2007 I was picked up by a Chinese photographer when hitch hiking in Northern Yunnan province. He knew when these monks were having prayers and we arrived to watch with many other locals. I took this photo as the monks were leaving the temple. I was the only foreigner there that day, maybe even that year ... This boy took a good long look at me as he walked by.

Yuan for your thoughts

Taken outside the Songzanlin Monastery in Yunnan.