(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-02-15 09:29

Catching sight of my acrophobic younger sister beside me, ashen-faced with eyes clamped shut against the world, I threw my own petrified state into sharp relief. Like her, I had stubbornly ignored the coaxing drawl of our local guide as we lurched around the curves of this magnificent mountain in Southwest China's Yunnan province.

A street garden in Dali's old town.

"Look, it's beautiful, isn't it? Beauuuutiful," the guide said over and over, turning from the relative comfort of the front seat to encourage the unappreciative tourists behind her.

But the blackened view from behind our eyelids seemed preferable to gauging exactly how far above sea level we were, even if it meant missing whatever scenes were keeping her so enthralled.

I'd kept a white-knuckled grip on my seat to stop from banging my head against the roof of the knockabout van as we bounced around on an impossibly narrow track hewn into the side of the mountain.

But hearing my sister's stifled whimpers, I steeled myself in an effort to prove our fears irrational and gazed down cautiously. Dramatically terraced fields and tiny villages unfolded far below, a steep tableau as wonderful as it was terrifying.

It was a Christmas Day like no other, far removed from our usual December celebrations, which were spent seaside on the other side of the world. We had booked a minibus that took us from the gorgeous old town of Lijiang towards the perennially snow-capped peak of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, located nearly 6,000 m above sea level.

The day's spectacular - if nerve-wracking - tour concluded the first leg of our Yunnan holiday. Returning after dark to our guesthouse, we arranged for the same minibus to shuttle us to Dali the next morning, quickly forgetting any misgivings over the driver's earlier handling of those startling mountain bends.

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