![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/P51300381.jpg\" "\\"The")
<\/a><\/p>\nWe pondered our next moves while enjoying the unbeatable hospitality and decadent luxury of Stewart’s apartment. We spent our time wheeling around Kunming, feasting on the wireless Internet in Stew’s apartment, eating plenty of Hui food, and drinking brass monkeys while arguing over trivia <\/a>during the evenings in the cool dry air of Stew’s apartment balcony.<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/P5140142.jpg\" "\\"Selecting")
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<\/a><\/div>\nMost nights we lit off a Chinese lantern<\/a>. These are giant, paper fire hazards that can be purchased for about one USD in the cities to the north of Kunming. Once unfolded, they are large hollow fingers, about the size of a respectable lawn gnome. They sport a large chunk of wax hanging from the bottom of them, via a system of wires. The wax chunk can then be carefully ignited and, after patiently waiting for the air inside the finger\/gnome cavity to get hot, the lantern may be set aloft, on a suicide mission, up to the heavens where it either self-ignites and plummets to the earth or runs out of fuel and does the same.<\/div>\n
Anyway we had ourselves a grand old time, covering these lanterns with all kinds of decorations and secret wishes and setting them to whisk off, at the whim of the breeze, over the rooftops of Kunming, many threatening to rain fire onto the hundreds of tall concrete buildings.<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/P5140129.jpg\" "\\"Kunming")
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<\/a><\/div>\nAmong\u00a0other things, our time in Kunming was healing and productive, but lest we fall into another Bangkok-like black hole, we needed to once again heed the call of the open road.<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/P5130079.jpg\" "\\"Inspecting")
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<\/div>\nSo although our thirst for chilling was far from quenched, we set about planning our last few days with Motta in the fine land of Yunnan, cooking\u00a0copious\u00a0amounts of tofu and chili, and eating plenty of noodles.<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/P5150181.jpg\" "\\"Tofus\\"")
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<\/a><\/div>\nAfter returning to the aforementioned list of more extreme choices for adventure in Yunnan, and after some careful weighing of the options, we finally settled on Haba as the extreme portion of our Yunnan experience.<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/P5160183.jpg\" "\\"Chinese")
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<\/a><\/div>\nAnd with that, we climbed onto the cycles and began collecting what we would need for the trip. From what we read, it was not that cold on the summit. This is somewhat surprising since Haba is actually taller than any mountain in the lower 48 states. Stewart explained to us that to the best of his knowledge, we should be able to do it in just a few layers of warm clothes, hiking poles, and crampons\u00a0(which we could rent at basecamp).<\/div>\n
First things first: we needed to get tickets on that evening’s train to Lijiang. Lijiang, to the north of Kunming, is a tourist city and a gateway to the wilder lands of Tiger Leaping Gorge and beyond. Getting the train tickets was no problem. We climbed on bikes and wheeled downhill to the station, through a particularly savage bit of construction, and rolled up to the ticket windows, where they were playing a thunderous patriotic communist anthem over the loudspeaker. Stewart hopped off his cycle and walked directly past the giant arching queue of Chinese people over to a closed window, where a woman was hard at work at a computer terminal. He somehow smooth-talked the woman, in Chinese, into opening up her station and selling him tickets, saving us the time in the queue.<\/div>\n
Motta walked back toward us grinning, “I don’t wait in lines.”<\/div>\n