28 May - Time flies and we reached the last day of our Yunnan holiday trip. Using the remaining morning time, we made a last trip to 独克宗古城 to take photos of the iconic 大佛寺 from another angle.
27 May - We made an impromptu decision today to visit 石卡雪山 in the morning as we have a break in the schedule and the 雪山 location is just a 15mins ride away. 石卡雪山, being not as famous as 玉龙雪山, have significantly fewer tourists. Even the cable car that is bringing us up the mountain is more friendly (I felt) compared to 玉龙雪山. For 石卡雪山, the cable car operates in 2 stages: the first stage will bring you up to the mid mountain, where you can take a short break to acclimatize and tour around the site which also houses the 亚纳青波牧场. If you do not have any major discomfort, you can proceed to the second stage which will take around 15mins each way.
26 May - 香格里拉, located at an average altitude of 3200m is considered a high altitude city which puts you at risk of catching altitude sickness. General advice is to spend a few days at a lower-altitude city (like Lijiang at 2400 meters) before heading to Shangri-La to let your body acclimatize. Golden rule is to go slow in whatever you do, no strenuous activities and always equipped with an oxygen canister which will help to increase your blood oxygen content and relief some altitude sickness symptoms.
For today, our group plan is to visit 纳帕海 in the morning followed by 普达措国家公园 in the afternoon. As the rainy season has not arrived yet, the grassland in 纳帕海 is still not flooded. Basically we just see a normal grassland with horses for tourist riding. Going in the morning has its merits as we have the 大经幡 wholly for ourselves.
25 May - As we depart 丽江 and move to 香格里拉, we booked a driver for this journey, dropping by 虎跳峡 and 白水台 along the way. It was a pretty scenic drive, with beautiful mountains, raging river and beautiful white terraces. What an amazing work that God has created!
24 May - Today is the highlight of the trip, going up to the highest point we ever reached in our entire life, 玉龙雪山观景台 at 4506m. As I still have not recovered from my bout of cough, I gave up climbing to another higher platform at 4608m. To start the day, we woke up super early at 5am just to catch the 日照金山 view. Before that, we listened in to a safety briefing on 高反 as the cable car that is going to bring all of us up will be ascending 1000m in 10mins. Pretty much a high risk event that most people will experience some sort of discomfort. To lower the risk, they recommended some 中药 mixture that will help elevate the oxygen content in the blood so that the risk of 高反 is lowered. Well, health is more important, so we just buy the mixture and drink, especially we just saw a news that a Malaysia tourist died after visiting 玉龙雪山 a few weeks before this trip. To prepare for ascending 玉龙雪山, a common advice widely circulated is not to wash your hair 1 day before and after as washing hair might increase blood circulation and make the 高反 worse.
