Wandering Fractal

Rock formations of the park. Only 50 km from Ulaanbaatar you can find the Gorkhi-Terejl national park. It's a bit less wild than the rest of Mongolia (you will find tourist camps a bit everywhere), but it's easy to reach from the capital and offers some beautiful landscape. I took a public bus to go there. It was already the low season and the number of bus per day went from 2 to 1. I didn't have any difficulty to find a Ger to sleep during the night. I just went to what looked like a tourist camp and asked. The next day I hiked some more in the park. I really enjoyed the sensation of freedom. You could walk to any place that looked interesting. To go back, I had already missed the only bus to Ulaanbaatar so I hitchhiked. Luckily the first car that came by stopped. It was a group of Korean Christian missionary. They were so nice they even invited my for a late lunch at a Korean restaurant on our way back to the capital. Ariyabal meditation temple.

The roaring Jinsha river. On the second day of hiking I finished the trail and arrived at Tina's guesthouse. It's the place where you can catch the bus back to Lijiang and also the starting point to go down the gorge. You can take a free shuttle at Tina that will drive you to the start of the trail. You need to pay a small fee to local people that maintain the trail. It's a steep way down to reach the river. Until now I only saw the river from fare up. Getting close make you realize the size and power of the water that has carved the gorge. You can walk along the river and then go back up by another trail. The way up is though, especially after a day and a half of hiking. I got back at Tina's guesthouse and had a cold beer  while waiting for the bus. One of the best thing about this hike is that you meet other hikers on the way. Even if some goes faster or slower than you, you will bump into each other many times, sharing a meal, a beer or the place you are stay...

The Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the most famous scenery in China. Fortunately if you go there to hike it won't be crowded like other famous place in the country. I met other foreigners on the trail, but not a single Chinese tourist. They all take the bus and only go at the bottom of the gorge. According to the legend, a long time ago a hunter was chasing a tiger. To escape, the animal has leaped over the river. Hence the name: Tiger Leaping Gorge. To do this hike I first took the bullet train to go from Nanning to Kunming. I stayed one night in the capital of the Yunnan province. Kunming is at 1892 meters of altitude and thus the air was cooler. I found that this city had surprisingly a lot of character. It might be due to the diversity brought by all the ethnic minorities living in the province. At the Kunming West Coach Station, I took a bus to Lijiang. The bus terminal is on the line 3 of the subway system. It took around 8 hours to reach this town in the mountains...

Mount Bromo on the left and mount Batok in the front. They are all contained inside the huge caldera of  the ancient Tengger volcano. Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park on east Java offer an astonishing view over volcanoes. There you can hike a sea of black sand, peak at the mouth of an active volcano and experience life in a mountain village. When I was there most people rushed the visit in one day. They went before sunrise to a view point, crossed the sea of sand, got to the rim of the Bromo and finally left around 9 to 10 am. I would advise to go to the village of Cemoro Lawang by yourself and stay there 2 nights. This will give you plenty of time to enjoy the place and avoid the crowd. Everybody rush to the Bromo between 7 to 9 am, so if you go latter in the morning it will be less crowded. What I did was: Wake up at 3am to leave the village of Cemoro Lawang and start hiking to the King Kong viewpoint. You just need a torchlight and warm clothes. To go there you fir...

Kyushu is the southernmost of the four main islands of Japan. We went down to Kagoshima. A city around a bay with an active volcano at its center. From there, we took a ferry to the island of Yakushima. We spent a few days hiking and soaking in natural hot springs. The best onsen of those three weeks was, without a doubt, the Hirauchi undersea hot spring. It's a group of pools that are under the sea during high tide. At low tide the pools fills up with spring water bursting from the rocks. If you're shy don't go there, cause it's unisex and you can't wear a swimsuit, just like the bath used to be in good old times. Dolphin from the Kagoshima aquarium. Three times a day they let them play in a closed part of the sea around the aquarium. Thus we could see them for free. Trail close to the summit of the Miyanoura dake. It's the highest peak of Yakushima and the whole Kyushu region (1936m). Yakushima is famous for it's forest covered in moss....

Kegon waterfall near Nikko. After the thrill of the big city, we moved to the quiet mountains. We went north of Tokyo to the small village of Nikko. There we enjoyed walks in the snowy forest and hot bathes in Onsen. Walk in the snowy forest near Nikko. After Nikko we went to the west coast with a one day stop in Matsumoto to visit the castle. On the coast, we stayed in the city of Kanazawa. There lies one of the most beautiful garden of Japan, the Kenroku-en. It was still half covered in snow, but it didn't lose of its magnificence. Kenroku-en in Kanazawa. From Kanazawa, we made a one day trip to the Shirakawa-go village. There the villager perpetuates the tradition of thatched houses famous in the region. Traditional thatched house in Shirakawa-go. Shirakawa-go. Trout living in the canals of the Shirakawa-go village. Roughly the path we took from Tokyo.

We went to a Ryokan (traditional japanese inn) in the mountains. The inn is in a village with volcanic water bursting from the ground. Each Ryokan has its own bathes filled with burning hot water. Nothing beats a good bath in the chill of winter will admiring the mountains and river. In the evening we could go stroll the village and see the lanterns above the river. After that we could enjoy a traditional japanese meal. The first goal of this trip to the mountains was to move the bones of my family (aunt, grandparents and great-grandparents). They where kept in vases stored in the neighborhood's ossuary. They are now buried in a cemetery in the mountain. Kurokawa river. A traditional japanese meal served in a Ryokan. Yukata weared inside the Ryokan. The mountains in Aso.