Travelogue Travelling the Himalayas Yunnan and Sichuan – the end of the range In this account, we reach the eastern end of the Himalayas, the foothills that stretch into the northern part of the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan. Yunnan is bordered by Myanmar to the West and Laos and Vietnam to the South. It is therefore another enigma with a history intermingling Chinese culture with that of the Tibetan Plateau and South East Asian societies. Yunnan provides the last of the magnificent Himalayan snow-capped peaks (highest elevation 6,740 metres). However, it also has lush tropical valleys to the South kept moist by the mountain barrier to the West. This results in it being China’s most bio diverse province, probably the richest botanically in the world’s temperate regions, harbouring 42.6% of all protected plant species and 72.5% of all protected wild animals. It was settled very early and the Yuanmou Man, a Homo erectus fossil, was unearthed in the 1960s. This was considered to be the oldest known hominid fossil in China although there is an ongoing debate about the dating. Some theories speculate that the Tibetan plateau was populated initially by migration from the Yunnan region. It is also the most culturally diverse province in China with
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7 main indigenous ethnic groups plus Tibetan and Han Chinese, with 25 ethnic minority languages. Ethnic minority groups are now 34% of the population following several Han Chinese inwards migrations over many centuries. One of the most interesting ethnic groups are the Naxi (Nashi). They traded over the dangerous overland ‘Tea and Horse’ caravan routes linking with Sichuan, Tibet and India. The Nashi have their own writing, their own distinct language and pictographic script, musical scores and native dress. They also make their own paper. Naxi pictogram script
