The past two days have been spent at beautiful Lugu Lake. It was long and windy eight hour bus ride from Kunming, but the scenery was spectacular. Our bus snaked north through the mountains, ascending from Lijiangs 1800 meters to Lugu’s 2700. Besides the usual food, toilet, roadwork breaks, we stopped just short of our destination for a canoe ride. We had already arrived at the lake and were just minutes from the village we were headed to, but I think the bus driver got some sort of commission. Despite that, our entire bus emptied and boarded two hollowed out logs. The local boatmen (boys) rowed us about a half-hour to an island in the middle of the lake. The incredibly still and smooth, creating awesome reflections of the mountains and clouds in the dark blue water. The island was small, but supported a small Tibetan monastery nonetheless. I assume food is boated in regularly. It was nice little ride with some nice scenery, but I could have done without the ride.

a nice view on the ride to Lugu

canoe ride on the glassy lake

I made a lot of interesting observations even before we reached our final destination though. As we drove further and further into the mountains, farther from development and into remoteness, things began to change. One, litter began to increase all along the roadside. The small villages we passed through were worlds away from Kunming and touristy Lijiang. It was interesting to see poverty in China for the first time. The miserable road-building camps and all. But it wasn’t all bad, not even mostly. Yunnan is supposedly the most diverse state and as we drove, Han Chinese gradually thinned out to nil. We were headed into Mosu land, a Chinese minority group. Faces darker, some could’ve passed for South Indian or Black. The women wore these huge hats, which resembled oversize graduation caps. But perhaps most interesting were the signs describing the customs of the local people. The Mosu are a matriarchal society, supposedly one of the last practicing ones in the world. The women can take on multiple lovers and control all property, even the children. Apparently Chinese tourists like the multiple lover thing, because I read that prostitution has become a problem in the area. Anyways, we ended up in the village of Lige.

cobalt skies at Lake Lugu

Our guidebook described Lige as a sleepy little place with a single guesthouse. When we arrived though, there were probably a dozen new guesthouses/hotels with another dozen still being built. The sudden increase in capacity made it easy for us to find a cheap room, at a Hostelling International place. We actually bought a membership card in Lijiang and it should pay for itself pretty soon. But I’m becoming a fan of Hostelling International affiliated places in China, because they have English speaking staff and good quality rooms, travel services, and free internet. Back to Lige, there’s not a whole lot. For every breakfast and dinner, we went to the same restaurant (one of only a handful in Lige). It was just simple family-run place constructed out of wooden planks, but it was always busy with Chinese tourists. The specialty in Lige are tables with BBQs in the middle. You order the food, they bring it, and you grill it. Our first night, we got some zucchini, eggplant, and what I thought was bacon. Well, it was sort of bacon, but mostly it was just cubes of white jelly stuff. Then I remembered something I’d read, grilled pig fat is a local specialty. It was too late to change our order, so I chowed down on the local fare. With the provided seasoning it actually wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t good enough to ever order again though, too.

The next two days were pretty lethargic. We took a scenic hike up into the hills on our first morning. The vistas were amazing. The deep blue sky only found at altitude, bright greens of the crops and forest, and the stillest lake I’ve ever seen. Besides that, we didn’t do anything of note for two days. We walked along the lakeside quite a few times, talked a lot, read, wrote. The second day was some sort of holiday, so we saw people wearing grass ornaments on their heads, burning offerings in little white stupas, and the women gathered together to hang out in the afternoon. We did a lot of thinking and talking about the future: our visit home this summer, our itinerary after that, and our plans for reentry in 2009. I guess if you’re gonna do nothing, Lige isn’t a bad place to come. It could’ve been really boring, but it was good retreat from our travels of late. It was scenic and all the local people were unbelievably friendly.