There's no getting away from it: Lijiang is touristy. Very touristy. The hard-sell touristic touch isn't too tricky to escape, though, but the overdevelopment creeps everywhere. The area that most people know as Lijiang Old Town is properly known as 'Dayan', or 'Ink Stone', as this is what the mass of blue-grey roofs looks like to the interpretative Yunnanese eye. It's not the only old town, though, as I am discovering: I'm staying in Shuhe, another one, a few miles north, and Baisha is just a few miles further north still. Lijiang is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, although UNESCO recently threatened to take the status away, such was the overdevelopment of the area. This has since been scaled back, thankfully, although there's still some horrendous examples of it.

So, it's the evening, and I'm in my guesthouse - an old, wooden building, the room covered in natural cotton drapes, all set around a traditional Naxi-style courtyard. It's late, and my main priority is food, so I head out to a restaurant recommended by the (incredibly helpful) owner, who has by now suggested just about every place I can visit after a brief chat about what it is I enjoy doing. The restaurant is great - right by one of the main ponds (Lijiang is all based around water - the Naxi based their towns on a series of channels from the streams in the area, with a complex and highly effective use of each stream to avoid pollution and contamination) - but my knowledge of any Chinese language is scant at best, and certainly doesn't include any characters above and beyond the names of the places I'm visiting. So begins one of many nights of persuading restaurateurs to bring me something they'd recommend, and me seeing what that ends up being (a strategy that proves highly successful!) I end up with a fiery, bubbling red broth in an earthenware pot, with thick, slippery not-quite-udon noodles and some raw minced pork and spring onions, which cook as the broth cools. Not quite across-the-bridge noodles, but an interesting variant on the same theme. It goes down a treat, and I impress myself with the only moderate shirt-spattering that ensues (I really must get better at this...)

The next day, I wake up to a brisk, blue-skied morning. It's January, and we're at altitude, so the days are spring-like and warm (and the sun fierce), but the nights bitterly cold. I start off by exploring Shuhe, which is really split into three: the preserved old town, a working farming village, and a mind-bogglingly awful reconstruction, centred around "Dancing Square", where daily 'ethnic dances' take place for the cameras. I start off exploring the farming village, shortly after sunrise, mainly trying to find the Tibetan monastery, up on a hill. The village has had modern facilities installed, but I feel like I have travelled back in time. I can't bring myself to take photos here, it seems too intrusive, not that that stops everyone. The air is thick with woodsmoke (it's still rather cold) as women (it's mostly women working here) busy about, carrying water and milk on yokes, gathering wood and straw in farmyards, chatting and tending to the horses. Each elaborate gate you pass gives a tantalising glimpse at a Naxi courtyard and farmhouse, all to a traditional design, perfected over centuries. Small dogs yap at the entrance as you pass, down sheltered streets, high earth walls on both sides.

The Tibetan monastery lies at the highest point - you can tell you're on the right path by the prayer flags. It's closed, but the views - one to the inside and one panoramic view over Shuhe, are well worth the climb. Next, further down the path and round to Shuhe proper, a mix of shops, restaurants, stalls, water and patches of farmed land. Round one corner you may find a state-of-the-art digital camera shop; round the next, a woman out washing her hair in the stream running down the middle of the street, taking advantage of the last of the sunrise as it pokes over the buildings. There are scenes of pure magic everywhere in this city, enough to match every cheesy reconstruction, if you look hard enough. There's Yunnan pu'er tea and Yunnan coffee aplenty too, both well worth seeking out.

Time to do some cycling. The guesthouse lends me a little basketed single-speed, which will do the job nicely, and I head out into the countryside. The morning mist starts to clear, and reveals the hills, mountains that now remind you just how close you are to Tibet and the Himalaya. Although Lijiang and the surrounding area are mostly flat (just as well, given the single-speed), it's surrounded by some massive, snow-capped, craggy peaks. There is a lot of manual work going on in the surrounding fields, but the road is quiet, populated mainly by bicycles and carts. These can be quite disconcerting, though - cargo bikes and scooters tend to have electric motors round here, and are dead quiet. It's a little odd to find some old boy with a full load of oranges go scuttling past seemingly effortlessly, until you realise just why.

Baisha is worth the cycle ride, even if guidebooks do it down a little. The main street is lined with wooden houses and small shophouses and cafes, with street food and drink vendors grilling and boiling merrily away come lunchtime. It's low season, but even so, I see one other tourist here in my whole time in the village. People are out en famille, wandering down the main road and chatting, and pick one of the roadside cafes for some lunchtime dumplings (which turn out to be served with a quite delicious black bean and soy dip). What I hadn't noticed is that the owners seem to also be martial arts instructors, so get something of a surprise when I spot the nunchuks casually draped over the seat next to me.

My next stop is Lijiang East station, to try and get some tickets to Dali. Everybody wanted me to get the bus, not the train, but I really don't like long-distance bus travel and really do like train travel, so I decided to go ahead and do this anyway. It was quite a trek out to this brand new station from Baisha, back through the new town, looking no prettier in the daylight. There's some big western chains moving in here too, building some resorts on the road from Shuhe to the new town. This is my first experience of urban cycling in China, and it turns out to be great fun. There's much weaving and dodging, but the flow of it is quite wonderful, nothing like the bad-tempered stop/start we have at home. I worry about finding the station, but this is needless: it's down a very New China 6-lane highway, a road that seems to be serving me, an occasional no 13 bus, and a couple of women sweeping the road endlessly. The station ticket office is quite chaotic, but I get my ticket thanks to some more hastily scrawled characters, but there is only hard class left (and they can't book me the onward tickets from Dali to Kunming). No matter, it's a bargain and if my long, Russian, platskartnyy trip is anything to go by, this could be rather fun.

And so from here back to Dayan, the old town at the centre of it all, the attraction that draws in the millions. I park my bike by the entrance and get to wandering amid the tour groups being led from shop to shop. Like in Shuhe, it doesn't take long to be able to lose the groups and get glimpses of the magic of this city, whether it's children playing on a bridge, street sellers resting and gossipping, parades of delivery women effortlessly climbing the hilly back streets with fully laden wicker baskets on their backs... It's easy to see why this place draws the crowds in. I get lost in alleys, lose my bearings, but always seem to end up back at one of the main squares. As sun falls, I walk the path up to the Dragon Pools before heading back to the familiar territory of Shuhe for another pick-at-random dinner, which turns out, this time, to be a stir fry that demonstrates this area's proximity to Thailand, with the flavours a powerful mix between southern Chinese and Thai spice.

But it's all over too soon. My taxi arrives to take me to the station, and I offer profuse thanks to the wonderful guesthouse owner who helped me so effectively make the most of my short time in this beguiling place.

Some photos of Lijiang here.