Sunrise in the rice terraces

Bus left at 6.30 for 15 minute drive to a viewpoint over the rice terraces for the sunrise. It was very busy, on different levels. We found a spot, still in total darkness. The mist was hovering in the valley but the stars were out so the day looked promising. (They have had wet or cloudy and cold days here since Chinese New Year.) As the sky began to lighten even more people arrived, pushing. We stepped back, offering our place, and most of them smiled then moved on after taking a few photos. As the sun came up the light appeared on the water pools, and the cloud patches were reflected. It was stunning.

We got back to the hotel for breakfast. It was very Chinese which is fine for us for lunch or dinner but I just don’t feel like a transparent blob of goo which oozes a black slurry when poked with a chopstick at that time of day.

By 9.15 we were back in the bus, heading for a village where we met a local guide who took us walking down on an uneven earth path, a few hundred feet through and around the rice terraces in hot sun. It was lovely - few people apart from occasional men hoeing out the terrace, or later, a gang of women walking back from working. The guide says the women of the Yi ethnic group do the hard work here, then when they get home the husbands tell them to go out and buy them beer. The one child policy wasn’t enforced here, and we saw families with several children. Around one terrace we heard shrieks - some small boys had been stripped naked playing in waterfall from the channel bringing water down to the terraces. They were grabbing their stuff and struggling to pull on jeans over wet legs.

It was quite a pull back up the steep steps to the village. My ankle is quite sore as it got quite swollen with sitting 9 hours in the bus yesterday. We had walked 12 km and were grateful to be taken to the guide’s sister’s little place where we had a tasty late lunch to share - a whole carp, green veg, mushrooms and pork, chicken and peanuts, scrambled egg and tomato, various other meat dishes, cauliflower, very oily aubergine and red rice. We did enjoy our beer at £1 a bottle.

We had another enjoyable walk before sunset when the workers were returning* from the fields. Old women plodded up carrying large loads of wood on their backs, and men drive the buffalo.