In a remote section of the Himalayas straddling Yunnan and Sichuan provinces lies Lake Lugu, a place so enchanting that many who make the seven-hour journey over the rough, winding road from Lijiang, the nearest large city, feel they have entered paradise. Surrounded on all sides by unspoiled, densely forested mountains, Lugu's azure waters are as pure and unpolluted as you're likely to find anywhere in the world's most populous country, and are broken only by a few small, lush islands dotted with Tibetan temples.

So clean and remote from city lights are the skies above the lake that at night one can almost read by starlight. But nature's splendours alone are not responsible for Lugu's popularity. What makes the area so attractive (to anthropologists as well as tourists) is its people. Lugu is home to the Mosuo, the last purely matriarchal tribe in China, in which women make most major decisions, control household finances and pass their surnames on to their children. On the mainland, Lugu is known as the Country of Women.

Here, a woman chooses her lover freely from among the men of the tribe, inviting whomever takes her fancy to spend the night with her in her home. There is said to be little jealousy or duplicity, which are frowned upon in Mosuo culture. Children born of these unions are raised semi-communally and in the mother's home. There is no word in the Mosuo language for father; the term for the closest male parental figure might be translated as 'uncle', of which a child might have several.