9th birthday, a hidden museum and Richard Long

It's A's birthday so she opens a few presents before breakfast before we head out to Napa Lake just west of town... well, a lake at certain times of the year but now more like marshland with grazing cattle - half yak, half cow (cak, yow?). The afternoon is spent wandering around the Old Town: a few souvenirs, a temple and massive prayer wheel on the hill, and a surprise birthday cake for A at a nice cafe just off the square. 9 years old... Before I know it, she'll be a teenager!

Continuing the Joseph Rock theme, we visited a small, very private museum about explorers. It was founded by the interestingly named Wong How Man who also runs the China Exploration and Research Society, but it's not in any guides and only opens by appointment. Anyway, four fascinating, beautifully presented rooms covering women explorers in SW China, expeditions to find the sources of the Yangtze and Mekong and a well-stocked library including Tintin in Tibet in Chinese (which translates as Tintin in Chinese Tibet). And no-one knows it's there.  

Finish the day at a lovely traditional Tibetan house which Amy co-owns with two artists, and where Richard Long stayed as part of a residency last summer. Looking forward to seeing the results of that in due course: the perfect landscape for Long.   

The Royal Wedding from Shangri-la

Awake to a perfect sky - blue with just the right amount of cotton wool clouds - and all aboard the bus to Genden Sumtseling Monastery, just north of town. It was established in 1679 by the Fifth Dalai Lama and is the largest Tibetan monastery in south west China. Beautiful place. There used to be 2,000 monks here but it's dwindled to around 500 now. Our guide does his best to explain the intricacies of Dalai and Panchen lamas, living buddhas, the cycles of life, mandalas and other amazing murals... but it's difficult to get your head round it all.

After that we visit a Tibetan home (dark, pungent smell of yak butter and surprisingly roomy), and then off to Shika Snow Mountain, just to the west of town. There's a 40 mins cable car which takes you all the way to the 4,500m summit, past a nomadic village and swathes of yet-to-bloom rhodedendrons. Snowy and cold but beautiful views stretching as far as Burma to the west and Sichuan to the east.

Back in time to catch the Royal Wedding on Dragon TV. There is something very strange yet almost fitting about watching this piece of British pageant high up in the Tibetan foothills, as Westminster Abbey becomes Will & Kate's own personal Shangri-la for an hour or so. Anyway, we toast the happy couple with glasses of Dali beer.     

In the evening we visit the Old Town which is a bit like a smaller version of Lijiang and without all the tourists. Lovely cobbled streets, wooden buildings and in the square people dancing in a giant circle. We hook up with Amy, a curator friend of Caroline's, for dinner at a fabulous Tibetan restaurant called Karma's. Dodgy name but the best food we've had all holiday. And after that we slip across the lane to what could almost be described as a pub to drink Tibetan wine and listen to a Tibetan musician. His ambient singing, little cymbals and feintly-touched drum sends the girls off to sleep and we have to carry them to two waiting taxis.       

Tiger Leaping Gorge

We head north to Tiger Leaping Gorge on the River Yangtze. It's only 60km north of Lijiang as the crow flies but because we're not crows, we have a 3hr drive round the mountains. Finally we arrive and pick up our new Tibetan guide, the strangely named Wanda. It's one of the deepest gorges in the world, between Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (5,596m) on the south side and Haba Xueshan (5,396m) on the north, and so-called because at its narrowest point (25m) a tiger was said to have, er, leapt across to escape a hunter. The Yangtze rages below and suffice it to say, I wouldn't want to canoe down it.

Continuing north we climb into more mountains, heading for the once-prosaically named Zhongdian, now formerly re-named Shangri-la. Back in 2001, some bright spark decided the location of James Hilton's fictitious garden of eden was indeed Zhongdian. Brilliant. It's now a major tourist destination. Sadly, our hotel was about as far removed from paradise as you could imagine, so we moved to another one called... Paradise Hotel.

Joseph Rock and Lijiang

A few houses away from our guest house is Joseph Rock's former home, now a very modest, little-frequented museum of faded photographs and dusty artefacts. Rock was born in Austria but moved to America in 1905 to become a self-taught but brilliant botanist. He was then employed by the US Department of Agriculture to track down plants and seeds in south-west China, which is where he spent most of working life, branching out into ethnography (his study of the Naxi is still the standard), and good old fashioned exploration. It was a turbulent time (1922-49) to be in China, however remote. His National Geographic articles influenced everyone from James Hilton (Lost Horizons) and Herge (Tintin in Tibet), to Bruce Chatwin and Michael Palin. 

Afternoon in Lijiang: a beautifully (some might say, overly) preserved town with cobbled streets, cafes, crafts shops and criss-crossing mini-canals filled with surprisingly clear water. Yes, it's very touristy but it's still a great place to stroll, relax and soak up the picture-skew-ness of it all.

Sort of by accident, we meet our friends Fiona, Nick and children for lunch in a rooftop cafe. Incredibly lucky with the weather, though Fiona has just broken her arm in an accident too complicated to explain. I buy a tome on Joseph Rock in a nice little bookstore.   

There was a big earthquake here in 1996. Interestingly, most of the old Naxi houses survived, so the government rebuilt the town with traditional Naxi architecture. It's now a UNESCO heritage site. 

Jade Dragon Snow Mountain

Awake to a cold morning, the sight of snow-covered mountains and a simple breakfast of boiled eggs, pitta bread and apple jam. Our new half-Han, half-Naxi guide, Eleanor, accompanies us up the valley to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain national park. It's very touristy with heavy entrance fee, massive coach park and a full-on open-air show about the myths and legends of the Naxi people (co-directed by Zhang Yimou) with mountains as backdrop, a cast of hundreds and a dozen horses. It reminded me of the Millennium Dome show: spectacular but somewhat vacuous.

Still, beyond that there's yaks loitering around a crystal clear river, a cable-car ride up to a meadow and pine forest with well-laid out trails, and fabulous views of the main peak, Shanjidou, 5,596m. Our guide said it had never been climbed, but a quick search reveals that it has - just once - by an American expedition in 1987. While up there we witnessed an amazing ring round the sun. Apparently it's called a 22 degree sun halo which I'd never even heard of let alone seen. 

Back at Nguluko guest house we huddled around a fire in the middle of the courtyard, practising our bad Chinese with Mr and Mrs He, looking up at the stars and drinking damn fine Dali beer.

Don't Dilly Dali on the Way

We head north in our jolly bus, along winding roads and watching kids' DVDs, to Shizhong Mountain, miles from anywhere. It has a small temple built precariously out of the cliff face. Then on to Shaxi which was an important staging point on the old tea route to Burma and Tibet. It's been beautifully preserved by a combination of a technical college in Zurich and the local council. It's also eerily quiet - totally unlike Dali Old Town. An oasis of calm - see right.

Continue northwards, eventually reaching Lijiang and the tiny village of Yuhu just the other side of it at around 9pm. We're booked into the small and rustic Nguluko guest house, run by a sweet old couple, who've stayed up to serve us some dinner. It's basic (just 4 rooms - we have the place to ourselves) but has a lovely away-from-it-all charm. The village is in the shadow of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and was where the expolorer, botanist and ethnographer Joseph Rock was based between 1922-49. More about him later.

Cormorants, pagodas and mahjong

Interesting morning poking around the market in Xizhou and then down to Erhai Lake for a spot of fishing... with cormorants. The birds are trained to dive into the water and invariably bring back a decent sized fish which, because of string tied round their throats, they can't swallow - but it still takes some doing to get them to part with it.

Lunch and a wander in Dali Old Town, which used to be the capital of Dali kingdom and was pretty much independent until the last century. The French came here, up the Mekong, in the late 19th Century, and the Brits shortly afterwards from Burma. It's nicely preserved but very touristy. A bit more tranquil are the Three Pagodas, built out of brick covered in white mud around 900AD, though they've been renovated a hundred times since.

In the evening we were entertained by some Bai musicians in the courtyard of the Linden Centre. The Bai are the main ethnic minority in the area - around 2m of them. Following that, Caroline and I learned how to play mahjong with two Chinese girls. Quite complicated but against all the odds I managed to win the game.