Shangrilla and MeiLi Snow Mountain

This is hands down one of the most amazing places I've been in China. From Dali you take a 10hour bus to Shangrilla than another 6hour bus to a small town with just some hostels and restaurants for hikers. At this point you are on the border to Tibet, from there on it's all by foot or on the back of a Donkey, NO TOUR GROUPS. The hike into the village took us around 7 hours and that was going at a good pace, the other people we were with took close to 9 hours. Once your in Yubong village there are only 31 families and because it takes so much effort to get into you'll find only a hand full of backpackers, more Chinese than Western. From there it's another few hour hike to the 150ft. waterfall coming down from the snow melt, the Tibetans in the area all make a pilgrimage once a year to the Mountain and the Waterfall, they run through 3 times go to a sacred cave and go back for three more turns. I could not recommend this more to anyone that makes their way to Yunnan. ps: the hike out of the village and back to a car took over 9 hours along a dessert cliff...