I have managed that rarest of feats when travelling at an upsettingly early hour—to get up, pack, and be asleep on my seat on the coach without truly waking up.

Normally, I’m incapable of sleeping in an upright position.

But the lack of sleep, unholy hour, and my savage hangover are all working synergistically in my favour.

I'm on a guided tour to visit the exotic multicoloured lakes in the Yellow Dragon Valley, otherwise called Huánglóng Valley.

Visiting Huánglóng Valley's great tourist bazaar

I’ve been told our destination is three hours away by bus.

If I sleep for the duration of a trip, there is an opportunity to double, perhaps even triple the sleep score on my Fitbit.

Vaguely, I'm aware of red lights and echoes in a tunnel, some respectfully hushed conversations, and the occasional rustle of someone munching their breakfast.

What must be minutes after achieving a deep sleep, I'm harshly awoken into maximum sleep inertia and confusion.

There is hustling and bustling all around me, and the atmosphere is URGENT.

My tour guide is informing us in a slight panic that we’re already VASTLY behind schedule—somehow—and we need to get off the bus and have breakfast QUICK!

Still dazed, I’m swept off the bus in a torrent of bodies so fast my neck pillow is still on.

I’m washed into what I was promised was a breakfast establishment, but actually proves instead to be a confusing and overwhelming assault on the senses.

From the pre-pre-dawn, I emerge into a humming bazaar, lit with piercing yellow and red lights garishly lighting up every stall, wall, door, and ceiling.

All around are paintings, murals, statues, and other effigies of giant caterpillars with horns equal to their body length.

There is yelling, selling, and tinkling music in my ears and spices, incense, flowery teas, and hard liquor up my nose.

All of this is overlaid with the un-breakfast-like odour of potted yak.

The room is laid out in an efficient labyrinth to maximise the product surface area each visitor is exposed to.

Horny caterpillars and Cordyceps fungus

As I wind through in my dazed state I am expecting at some point to have to fight a half‑man, half‑horned‑caterpillar, but instead I'm rewarded with a wheezing climb up a staircase to a cavernous hangar of a food hall.

That explains the potted yak notes.

As I sit down gormlessly, shoving some food into my face, an employee is enthusiastically trying to explain the previous room to me.

Apparently, the horned caterpillars are no such thing.

Dōng chóng xià cǎo (冬虫夏草) is the fungus Ophiocordyceps sinensis (Cordyceps), which, in this region, infects and kills ghost moth larvae.

Once the fungus has depleted its host, it shoots a fungal stalk out of its head. This stalk is a fruiting body that produces fungal spores—which I had mistakenly believed was the caterpillar's horn.

Occurring only at altitudes above 3500 m, which we had passed through while I slept on the bus, these poor, squiggly little fellas (the moth larvae) are sold dried whole, steeped in liquor, or as powders for a variety of medicinal purposes, such as:

• Inflammation
• Kidney health
• Good old-fashioned “male vitality”

We’re almost at our destination when our bus stops, and an old lady boards, holding a compressed gas cylinder and a mystery sack over her shoulder, as if we're all about to climb Everest.

She delivers a lecture on the perils of altitude sickness.

Apparently, under no circumstances should you wash your hair, drink alcohol the night before, or sleep on the coach.

Well, I've scored 0 out of 3 on those.

If, heaven forbid, you do any of these, you’re in grave danger of contracting a vague, unspecified ailment.

NOT TO WORRY!

If you have transgressed any of these rules, you can purchase a canister of compressed oxygen or some special medicinal altitude teas from this old lady’s sac magique.

The lecture/sales pitch finishes, and not one passenger has moved a muscle.

Everybody is collectively hoping that, like a T. rex, this woman's vision is based on movement.

It works!

Without so much as a tea-leaf or millibar of oxygen sold, this sales Cerberus grants us passage, and we power towards our final destination.

The sights of Huánglóng Valley. 黄龙

I’m a lofty 4000 m above sea level.

An 8-minute cable car ride whizzed me the last 500 m up the mountainside.

In front of me is one of the most fantastic valleys I have ever set eyes upon.

The limestone-rich slope is bright yellow and has the approximate outline of a dragon, hence its name, Huánglóng (黄龙), which literally means "Yellow Dragon."

It's about a kilometre long and surrounded by luscious green, misty peaks.

But the most outstanding feature is the stepped pools of varying shades of blue, green, orange, and red that descend all the way down the slope.

How Yellow Dragon Valley's pools get their colour

The geochemistry that gives the valley its colourful features is quite complex. The exact process is different for each colour, but is basically as follows:

Yellow

As the alkaline groundwater rises to the surface and the sunlight hits it, carbon dioxide escapes, and an incredibly soft, porous calcium carbonate mineral called travertine precipitates.

Blue and green

Colloidal suspensions of travertine also scatter light in the pools, producing a range of greens and blues. The depth of the suspension determines its colour.

Red and orange

A healthy dose of iron oxide and assorted organic matter accounts for the oranges and reds.

Even at this altitude, it is a balmy 12°C and I have to remove my boil-in-the-bag 5XL coat that I purchased at a service station by order of my tour guide—specifically for this visit.

I wonder what his commission was.

Then again, that coat and my surreal sales-tour through the fungus bazaar was more than worth the opportunity to have seen the Yellow Dragon Valley's glowing terraces and staggering natural beauty.