A belated set of posts

Well as you've most likely noticed it's been way too long since I last updated my blog.  Now that I have a chance to write about some of the adventures I've had in the past almost month I'll do my best to keep it short and sweet.  After Kunming I headed north through Yunnan, hitting the towns of Dali, Lijiang and the famous Tiger Leaping Gorge to hike for a couple of days.  Outside of Dali I conquered the 4090m peak of Cang Shan in a day (a challenge I'd set myself after an aborted attempt 4 years ago when I first visted Dali).  The dramatic scenery of Tiger Leaping Gorge and the savagery of the fast-flowing Yangzi River were made all the more exciting by the closed road, occasional (and occasionally up-close) dynamite blasts and incredibly dangerous ladder-path down to the river.  From TLG I took the unconventional back road to Shangrila via Haba Snow mountain.  Haba provided a little interest of its own with an unexpected snow storm high on the mountain near a lake we'd hiked to at an elevation of 4100m.  Next stop was the Baishuitai white limestone terraces - very like a mini version of the white half of the former Pink and White Terraces in NZ.  Shangrila failed to live up to its name but I had a chance to get up close and personal with the construction of Tibetan rammed earth houses and local pig-herding.  After a day in Shangrila with patchy water and power supply once I headed back south and west via Dali once again to the Nu Jiang river valley for some seriously off the beaten track exploration.  A few days of checking out some of the remote stretches of the valley heading up to the Tibetan border were followed by a tough 3 day hike over the mountain range to the Mekong River valley and eventually to the small Tibetan city of Deqin, very close to the Tibetan border.  For this hike I picked up a travelling companion - an American guy from California who's an experienced outdoorsman and more adventrous than me.  He's a good guy to travel with and we've been roaming now for 2 weeks or so I think - it's good at least to have someone to speak English with in all these very much off the tourist map places I've been visisting.  From Deqin a very circuitous, dangerous and exciting 3 days of travel via the towns of Benzilan, Derong and Xiangcheng landed me in Sichuan province in the town of Litang at 4014m.  Two of the roads into and out of Deqin are in a continuous state of re-construction and mostly unpassable by vehicles.  Clambering on foot over 45 degree scree slopes with 100m+ falls to the river and certain death were not at all discouraged.  Waiting hours with the car while huge landslides were cleared by heavy earthmoving equipment was the norm.  Once in Sichuan things started to get a little less crazy - but defintely not sane!  Litang is very much the "Tibetan Wild West" as described in the guidebooks.  Endless grasslands in one direction and endless mountain ranges in the other surround a town of mostly Tibetan-style stone buildings and a huge, ornately decorated lamasery complex overlooks the town.  This is really not the fast-paced China you see in magazines - more like the Tibet you'd see in Nat Geo.  They even still carry out the Tibetan "Sky Burial" practice here (it involves feeding dead people to the vultures) - we weren't fortunate enough to get to see it first hand but here is the process for those of you with a strong stomach http://cogitz.com/2009/09/11/sky-burial-eco-friendly-funerals/  After Litang we moved on eastward to Kangding and that's where I'm lucky to be writing this update from.  During the 8 hour minivan drive yesterday from Litang to Kangding I witnessed some of the most shockingly, stupidly, unnesessarily dangerous driving moments of my life and had to intervene twice in the process.  I was truly aghast at the momentous idiocy that passes for driving in this country and definitey had something to say about it.  I was also relieved (and concerned) to be in the passenger seat and able to grab the steering wheel to rectify an "on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road-for-no-reason-around-a-blind-corner-and-showing-no-sign-of-getting-back-on-the-correct-side" situation on one accasion.  The driver wasn't happy, as you can imagine, but that I have survived is quite a nice thing for me.  Anyway, that's the summary, now to some photos, starting in Yunnan.