crossing paradise - Longji ... the dragon backbones

from the golden buddha peak
longji rice terrace, longsheng
guangxi, china
august 2016

i slept almost throughout of our morning flight to guilin that day. obviously, because of my lack of sleep the night before, guarding myself to get readied for the meet up with the rarecation team as early as 3am. i recalled my short conversation with jimmy, and then sal. the 4-hours flight, for the part of where i stayed awake, turned out a smooth one. well...you know my phobia with flying, aite?

we met andy, our guide and then rode on the bus to Longsheng for our first leg of the journey. the ride was a dreary one, as most of us decided to continue the affair with our rem cycle. we woke up as noticing the dwindling road as we started to ascend the hilly part of the region.

jimmy bought all the last available hot meals sold by the flight as our lunch, and we had a quick bite while waiting for our bus to the cable car station. once done, we were on our way to the cable car station, which was a short ride passing a more dwindling and narrow road. well..you could drive straight away to the station, if yours is a small vehicle. another short cable-car ride brought us to one of the peaks of the county, feasting us with the magnificent view of this hundred years tradition that still intact. voila!

we had to hike up and down for almost 2 hours, to get to our hotel. well...it was worth a journey, as the view was nothing short from breathtaking. obviously, everything made my admiration on Tegallalang and Jatiluwih of Bali went to the drain. this one obviously 1000x awesome, in my humble opinion.

so we arrived at our hotel. it was good everybody back into mood, after some of us struggling to complete the long hike, while entertaining Andy's non-sense of  everything 'just around the corner'. till then.