Yuanyang (June 21 – June 23)

I arrived in Kunming, which was my transfer city to Yuanyang, at around 7am. The bus taking me to Yuanyang was leaving at 10am so I had a bit of time to spare. I had had approximately 3 or 4 hours of sleep on the bus so my exhaustion compelled me to stay in the station and just wait patiently.

I saw dozens of families move their entire life’s belongings from city to city through that bus station, business men from small towns hoping to make some money in The Big City, and drifters making a few dollars by selling pens and gum to travelers.

I finally found myself in the bus that would get me to Yuanyang and it was on that ride that I met Baptiste and Marie – both French speakers but Baptiste was French and Marie was Canadian.

We finally arrived in Yuanyang after having dealt with an 8 hour ride, trench-like “toilets”, cockroaches, sick Chinese passengers, and a strange sour smell we quickly connected with a cardboard box that was leaking meat juice from meats that had thawed albeit being frozen at the beginning of our journey. And yes that box had been placed under the bus along with all of our backpacks, and we definitely laughed all the way to the hostel trying to determine whose bag had marinated in the meat juice because the smell followed us all the way up.

Soon after checking into our hostel we secured a driver who would chauffeur us around the terraces the following day, starting at 6am. We then met up with a few other travelers that Marie had previously befriended in Kunming and we grabbed a good supper at one of the local restaurants and shared some beer before heading to bed before our early start the next morning.

I woke up early the next morning to the sound of rain and my heart sunk as I thought of the rainy and wet day that lay ahead of me. What would happen to the beautiful landscapes I was so looking forward to? Fortunately, the rain spit out its last few drops as we drove up a hill to our first terrace and my spirit once again regained its enthusiasm.

Although we had arrived in the middle of season and the rice was already half grown, I was still left in awe for most of the day as we toured the hills and were presented with mountains that seemed to have been carved by the gods themselves. It was with constant reminders that we would remember that these mountains had been shaped over hundreds of years by the Hani people, and were left with an intense appreciation for human tenacity.

Were they in a more accessible part of China these terraces would already have been heavily developed for tourism, and no doubt lost much of their appeal. Perhaps then it is a blessing in disguise that by accident of modern geography they lie in Yunnan, a province so abundant in natural beauty and diverse scenery that these rice terraces have so far been overlooked to a certain extent... Most of the information on this area I had to procure through blogs on the internet!

If anyone is interested in going, please feel free to contact me. I’ll try and help as much as possible, everyone should be lucky enough to witness such outstanding beauty. It was a true privilege that I saw these hills and hope to remember them for the rest of my life.

An older Hani woman carrying water up to her village

Sunset views at one of the lookout points

The small village we stayed in.

xx!