Travel Log 19

Dali is an ancient city that has been partly reconstructed and partly renovated by the Chinese government. The city is set in beautiful surroundings with a 4000m mountain on one side and a huge lake on the other. The town itself although pretty has been turned into a tourist town and is backpacker central. It was quite quiet when I was there as it was the beginning of the season but you can tell it is a backpackers heaven because the old ladies come up to you and ask very politely if you would like some Ganja. So the town was unfortunately touristy but I did enjoy walking up the mountain and going to see the river under a very threatening sky.

   

From Dali I took a bus up to Lijiang which is another reconstructed ancient town more complete than Dali and also more touristy with every building filled with shops and restaurants and the streets filled with groups of Chinese tourists. Here I met a Scandinavian guy who joined me in eating cakes and drinking tea in the Prague cafe and watching the pretty groups of beautiful Chinese women wander by. Nearby Lijiang is the Tiger Leaping Gorge which is a river valley surrounded by huge mountains up to 5500m high. This is one of the most spectacular sights I have seen on my travels. We hiked up the mountain in the sunshine for 7 hours to reach a guesthouse to stay the night in. The guesthouse had the most amazing view of the side of the mountain and the river. The next day we tried to hike to another village to catch the bus back to Lijiang but unfortunately the new mountain road that was being built had a section that was not passable and we had to back track for an hour and a half. I got a little bit worried that we wouldn’t make it back into town that night and I might miss my bus the next day.

 

Luckily we caught a minivan back to the village we started the hike at and then got a minivan back to Lijiang. On the van two English guys recommended Mama’s guesthouse to us. This guesthouse was cheaper than the one we had been previously staying at and they offered a cheap communal meal of local Chinese food.

The next day I hopped on a bus that would take me to Chengdu. The bus had to wind through the mountains often stuck behind several slow moving trucks. On the journey (which took 25 hours) we went through a true Bladerunner city that had nearby power plants with flames rising from the chimneys, red and blue lit up skyscapers and shops. It was just like Bladerunner as we past in the middle of the night. We also past a lorry in a tunnel that one of the back wheels had completely fallen off and was in the middle of the road on fire and smoking out the tunnel and the lorry was sat there sitting on the three remaining sets of wheels. At about 4 in the morning our own tyre decided to give in and we had to stop and wake up a mechanic so that he could replace it. Another thing which made the journey memorable is that for the entire journey we had two babies crying and pooping. The mother would change the nappy on the bus and then put the used nappy in the bin next to your head (the buses were sleeper buses and the bins were in the aisle). Also one of the little girls on the bus was allowed by her mother to pull her trousers down and pee in the aisle this might have been to wash away the spit that is a constant feature on any bit of ground in China. Another thing about this being China is that the toilets at the toilet stops were the most disgusting things I have ever seen. What they are is a series of concrete holes in the ground in an outhouse where you stand and try to pee next to a guy squatting down taking a grunt, often these holes have not been washed for a few days possibly weeks and have a healthy pile waiting to be spread on the fields.

After 25 hours of the China experience we finally arrived in Chengdu home of the Giant Pandas.