Six hours and 200km northwest of Lijiang, the road climbs out of a steadily narrowing gorge onto a high, barren plateau grazed by shaggy-tailed yaks and ringed by frosted mountains - the borderland between Yunnan, Sichuan and Tibet. First stop is ZHONGDIAN , an initially unpreposessing Han-style outpost with a heavy police presence and a good number of Tibetans wandering around. It's not a bad place, however, and the splendid Jietang Songlin Monastery (¥5) just north of town will keep you busy for a few hours - catch a northbound bus #3 from the main street for ¥1. Destroyed during the 1960s, it is now reactivated and houses four hundred Tibetan monks; amongst butter sculptures and a forest of pillars, the freshly painted murals in the claustrophobic, windowless main hall are typically gruesome and colourful, all lit by low-wattage bulbs. Don't forget to walk clockwise around both the monastery and each hall.

 

Zhongdian's wide, kilometre-long main street points north, with the bus station and post office about halfway along, and the rest a string of markets, hardware stores, and souvenir shops selling Tibetan knives, clothes and trinkets. The best accommodation is 700m southeast of the centre - catch a south-bound bus #3 - at the Tibet Long Life Hotel (tel 0887/8222448, fax 8223863; ¥30-75), whose nice staff and warm, conservatory dining-room are unbelievably welcome in winter. Otherwise, there's not much in the way of places to eat , just a Sichuanese restaurant back on the main street, and a couple of ever-changing foreigners' cafés on the road north of the hotel and parallel with the main street. Cafés and accommodation also provide information on trips out from Zhongdian - including the three-day hike via Baishui to Tiger Leaping Gorge - and in the past have arranged travel permits from here to Lhasa with the PSB, though this is very unlikely at present.

Moving on , there are five buses daily back to Lijiang, and at least daily services north to Deqin , last stop before the Tibetan border, and northeast into Sichuan . You need to check on the latest situation, but in January 1999 this latter road - along with almost all of western Sichuan - was apparently opened up to foreigners on a permanent basis. If so, get ready for an extremely rough, scenic and unpredictably long 300km to Litang in Sichuan , accompanied by wild-eyed fellow passangers reeking of yak butter, followed by the best part of a day's travel from Litang to Kangding.