At one of the fabulous places I worked in the lead-up to this trip, there was a poster on the wall of the room that housed the printers and photocopiers. The poster depicted a turquoise lake surrounded by majestic trees in Autumnal burnt amber, and waters so clear you could see straight through them. Even more incredibly, whole trees had tumbled down into the lake, and now fanned out lengthways under the water, preserved in its mineral-enriched brilliant aquamarine.

Using the printer umpteen times a day, I would look up at that poster and say to myself, 'I'm gonna go THERE!'

And now, may I present to you Juizhaigou in all its snow-tipped glory:

The lakes (and there are scores of them within this protected reserve) really are that intense a colour. It's nothing short of show-stopping to see.

The area's name in Mandarin Chinese refers to the nine Tibetan villages that are scattered on the hillsides here. The whole place is shot through with tattered prayer flags and squat, low homes with pitched roofs and traditional Tibetan fabrics hanging in the doorways. Additionally, there are round brass-coloured 'prayer wheels' sunk into some of the smaller rivers and streams, which turn slowly as the waters travel under them.

In typically Chinese fashion, the lakes themselves have wonderfully OTT names invoking golden bells and arrow bamboo and panda bears and peacock plumage. The sheer scale of the beauty here astounds you. The bodies of water go on and on - each more lovely than the last.

There are myriad less attractive features too: the park's development is somewhat problematic from a conservation perspective, as it's geared to busing container-loads of tourists through each day. Since the 1970s, the Party has had this place earmarked as a site of major touristic potential - to be developed come hell or high water.

Some 10,000 tourists swarm through here daily in high season - a fact which is incredible when you take into account the long, uncomfortable bus journey it takes to get here. Within the 'eco-park' itself, there are a zillion roads, and tourist buses roar up and down them from 7am to 7pm daily. Tibetans mill at the most photogenic lakeside spots, wearing bright colours and forced smiles. They come to sell trinkets and photographs with white llamas, and will repetitively pose like 'happy, colourful minority peoples' in the snapping frenzy that the domestic tourists are conducting.

Outside the park gates, the feeling in this tiny valley is a little Vegas-like: in the middle of nowhere, legions of hotels have sprung up like concrete mushrooms. The river that runs through town is choked with empty whiskey bottles and cigarette packets and pieces of plastic and wood. Trucks and cars blare their horns constantly, and the mountainsides are covered in concrete to prevent landslides from occuring. At night, some hotels project massive, whirling, strobe-style disco lights up onto the hillsides behind their properties.

A high price to pay for the 'pristine' condition of the woods and waters within the park walls, in anyone's book.

It's hard not to be judgmental about this sort of develoment being 'wrong'. Even harder when you hear that an airport is soon to be in place here. If a twelve hour bus journey over pot-holed mountain roads brings in 10,000 visitors a day, what will an airport do?

I feel guilty about contributing to the flow of feet and water bottles and happy snappers. The guilt rolls around, but finds nowhere to go.

We stay an extra night in town to go back into the park for another glimpse, but wake this morning to find that it is not to be. Snow has flurried in overnight, and all the mountainsides are hung low with clouds and misted over with fresh drifts of white.

It looks whimsical: as though the gods are shaking a tub of talcum powder in their global bathroom, but the drop in temperature is nothing short of shrill. With bulbous grey clouds filling the sky, it is evident that the yesterday's impossibly beautiful waters will today be taking a rest from their brilliance. Sad, but c'est la vie in travel as in life ...

We stay the day in mini-Vegas instead.