Whew!! A whirlwind! I am here in the NuJiang valley on the border between Myanmar and China. In tow are 9 incredible students and my wonderful co-leaders Mark and Lear. It is a week to the day since the students arrived in Kunming where we held a brief 3 day orientation before piling them onto sleeper-buses (loaded with itsy bitsy bunk beds) and headed up to the 3,500 meter mountain town of Shangri-la. This town, formerly known as Zhong Dian) was a center of the Yunnan lumber industry for ages until early this century when the timber trade was sharply curtailed. In an effort to drum up a tourist industry, Zhong Dian was renamed after the mystical hamlet of Shangri-La... and it worked! This largely Tibetan town has seen a dramatic rise in tourism- and rightly so. It is ringed by sky-scraping peaks crowned by mountain-top temples and at the far end of the Valley lies South Western China's largest monastery- home to 600 Buddhist monks.
Down from Shangri-La. Many sleeper buses later and the dozen of us find ourselves here. The crumbling roads that led us here are carved out of the walls of deep and stunning river gorges. The rubble and residue of landslides presented surmountable obstacles - though slightly terrifying. Our chain-smoking team of drivers encouraged each other as the bus lurched and chugged its way over muddy gashes and around newly-tumbled boulders. I sat on my bunk and focused all of my energy and safety-vibes onto their white-knuckled hands. And it worked! Here we are in the town of Fu Gong. We will hop a van up to Gong Shan and then hike a couple of miles in to the village of Di Ma Luo where we will outfit with a local guide, gather a couple of pack horses, buy a goat to slaughter along the way, and trek off into the mountains for 4 days of intense challenge, stunning scenery, small village visits, and intense group bonding. I can't wait!!