Chengdu to Dali.

Staying in the old town of Chengdu was a great location if a little odd. There was a french restaurant and a "pub" called Scent of a Woman in amongst the usual Chinese restaurants, street vendors and ear cleaners (ok not so usual).

We walked quite a bit of the city centre passing the Mao statue many times. Most of the walking was due to our inept attempts to find the Schezuan Opera House. After poor directions and false information we eventually ended up close enough to it for someone to genuinely know where it was.

Chengdu similar to Xi'an and Beijing was shrouded seemingly in a perma-smog which just wouldn't budge. We were missing blue skies and the stars.

The Sichuan Opera was brilliant. We'd already had an idea of what to expect from Pablo and Lisa who were our dorm-mates. It was a bit of a variety show with music, drama, puppetry and the famous changing masks act. In case you haven't seen it, the performers are all dressed up wearing masks and then with a flick of the arms the mask has changed completely.

The following day we walked around Remin Park (Peoples Park) in the spitting rain. All seemed normal. We ate some noodle soup. Walked around the boating lake and then it all got weird. Amateur dramatic groups and line dancing groups sprung up from no where. You couldn't help but join in with a few steps and or smile as the authoritarian amateur dramatics leader rebuked members for some poor positioning. Next we stumbled upon a pavilion which contained locals performing karaoke, dancing and what can only be described as catwalking. Bizarre!

Time came to leave Chengdu and travel to the Ancient City of Lijiang. With an 11 hour overnight train and 8 hour bus ride we were hoping for a sleeper ticket on the train. They were all sold out for the next three days! We had to take a hard seat. This is the cheapest ticket available on a train and with good reason. We probably managed about 1 hours sleep each and arrived at Panzihua around 7am.

With a quick transfer to the bus station we caught the 8am bus to Lijiang. It was nice to sit in a reasonably comfy seat. Although I couldn't work out how to recline my seat and the women with child behind wasn't helping by pushing the seat forward with her foot. I was creeping closer and closer to the seat in front and was losing patience. I managed to convince Helena to swop seats for a bit. Once in the comfy reclining seat I figured I get some rest.

I was woken from my rest by the sound of our water bottle ejecting itself from the overhead luggage rack and landing in the aisle. The couple in front were not amused, suggesting the bottle had actually hit her head. After lots of apologising I retreived our water bottle. Oops.

Time for me to return to THE SEAT. Helena got stuck into some zzzs and I continued to try to work out how to recline the seat when this strong smell of s*** started eminating from behind. I turned to see the woman holding her child over one of the rubbish bins. I'm not sure who I felt more sorry for, me or the bloke sat next to her.

This poor child was not well as it seemed he needed to go quite often and so he pretty much had a rubbish bin to himself.

What with dodgy roads, steep drops, injuring a local with a water bottle, a passenger throwing up, a dodgy seat and a s*** producing child the hard seat on the train never looked so good.

Arriving at Lijiang with fat ankles and sore backsides we caught a taxi to the Panba hostel. Whilst walking to the hostel we marvelled at the white clouds and blue sky we'd missed so much.

We explored Lijiang Old Town for a couple of days and loved the traditional NaXi (Na-She) one/two storey buildings seperated by stone paths and waterways complete with goldfish. Unfortunately the beauty of the old town has meant a lot of these former dwellings are now shops selling food including Yak meat (yum), clothes and souvenirs.

With itchy feet we booked a mini-bus ride to the Leaping Tiger Gorge which arrived with an American couple and a young couple from Germany. The German chap of Chinese decent spoke Mandarin as did his girlfriend and so did the American lady. My three Chinese phrases weren't going to impress anyone here so I held them back just in case they started struggling.

The bus journey on this occasion was thankfully uneventful and upon arriving we obtained a map of our route. The young couple from Germany with a tight schedule set off whilst we and the American couple dawdled for a while. Rob and Nicole (the Americans) were from Colorado, Oregon, Massechusetts, California....It might be easier to just mention where they weren't from; Alaska and Hawaii. Teaming up we set off and immediately fell foul of the "map" and needed Nicoles perfect Mandarin to ask for directions. After about 45mins of following arrows and asking for directions we were on the right track and confident the "map" was rubbish.

With an altitude of around 2000m and the days sun already high in the sky we set off at fairly decent pace. Upon reaching the 28 bends climb we were going well and enjoying the company of our new friends. Nicole is a Chinese Historian and Rob an Environmental Economist who is going to Yale soon (I hope I got that right guys). The 28 bends climb was more like 65 bends as far as I could tell but upon reaching the top (around 2600m) we were glad the rest of the way was fairly flat or downhill.

The views were amazing and the gorge must have been around 4000m deep and only a few metres wide at it's narrowist. The opposing side was covered in lush vegetation up to about 4000m where that side of the gorge steepened into grey precipitous ridges and gulleys reaching up to around 5600m. Below the silt brown Yangtze river was squeezed by the gorge sides into what appeared to be tame rapids (we later heard a story that only 1 from 23 people have survived this stretch of river). Not so tame then.

We reached the Tea Horse guest house around 6pm and checked in. Ate some food and retired, a little sun burnt and ready for sleep.

The next day was easier with just an undulating path to follow and we'd gained another team member, Kevin from Wisconsin "Y'all". We got on well and chatted our way to Tina's guesthouse. We checked in and decided to head to the Tiger Leaping Stone tomorrow. Nicole and Rob with reserves of energy headed off to find it paying 10CNY (a quid) to use a hostels back yard to get down to the river via a ladder to this stone. It sounded fun but expensive. A quid's a quid.

The next morning we were up and at them and headed off to find the alternative free path down to the stone. After a few false starts we found what looked like the path down. After around 500m the path dropped into a gulley which had recently been landslided. Landslides had in fact closed the low road and also closed the gorge but this is China and closed doesn't always mean closed.

Having failed to get down we decided not to bother going down to see this Leaping Tiger Stone. We were glad for the exercise and views and new friends. We got a mini-bus back along the newly opened low road to Qiaotou and eventually back to Lijiang, where we said farewell to Rob and Nicole and stayed one night before heading to Dali.

The bus ride to Dali was uneventful and arriving at the East Gate we headed West up Renmin Road towards the West Gate. Instantly the differences between Dali and Lijiang were evident. Dali didn't have the same touristy feel to it. Yes there were a lot of tourists and a road called Foreigner Street but it felt more like a community than the obvious tourist trap in Lijiang.

We stayed at the Lily Pad hostel which is easily the best place we've stayed so far. A two bed room with en-suite for less than 3 quid a night each. The building like the rest in Dali is decorated with lovelly little paintings of trees, animals and landscape on whitewashed walls surrounded with grey brick frames. Ben and Erin who run the hostel are some of the best hosts you could wish to meet.

We relaxed the first day there and went shopping the next day. We bought a new day bag for 3 quid. The next day we ventured down the Erhui lake and chilled out for a bit. It was roasting by 10:30am and we had to make our retreat. Having had a rather lazy few days in Dali we decided to head up to the Cloud Pass on the Changshan mountains which look over Dali. This was a proper tourist track but we enjoyed it all the same probably covering about 10 miles at around 2600m altitude.

Whilst there we met quite a few travellers Natalia, Matt, Adam & Vicky, Ben, Lyda, Jake & Jill some of which have similar plans to ours so we may bump into them again.

Without a doubt we would return to Dali and stay at the Lily Pad. With the mountains range close by for walking and maybe as a base for seeing Tibet.

Phew! All done. It's only taken me 3 goes and 1 PC crash to write this.

Andy & Helena

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