Shangrila-di-da

Here I am on a rainy Sunday afternoon, sitting on my bed in my very noisy guesthouse, writing notes for my blog. It's not something I do often, spend an afternoon in my room, but right now, it's feeling right. I've been mostly lucky with the weather these past months, so much so that I've lost the habit gained in New Zealand of walking around in the rain. Besides, it's a good thing to try and keep up with the blog, n'est-ce pas?


The past week in China has been great. More than great actually. The places I've seen and people I've met made me thankful for my decision to come to China, but it's been more than that that has made this week excellent.


If you've read my last entry, you'll know that I somehow dreaded making the change from South East Asia to China. Leaving the relative comfort of somewhere you've come to know and heading into the unknown. But once that step was taken, it really helped me to realise how far I've come in the past 6 months. In terms of traveling savy, I'm very different from the girl who stepped off the plane in Auckland with a too heavy backpack and no idea how I was going to travel around the world. And in terms of personal growth, the changes are huge. Now, I haven't gone all 'hippy', started growing dreads (although you might think it if you saw me today, but more on that later) and go around talking about world peace all the time, but you can't help but be changed by seeing more of the world, how people live, how we are all 'same same but different'. And add the fact that, while I've met tons of people on the road, I do spend most of my time on my own, and spend most of that time thinking about different things than I do when I'm at home working, you've got the perfect recipe for change. When I think back to this time last year, when I first decided to take this trip, and the anxiety-filled months that followed, I'm just amazed at the change. But enough introspection for now...


The past week was spent exploring more of the Yunnan province, in south-west China. Dali was absolutely crazy, a tourist town filled to capacity with Chinese tourists. Think le Vieux-Montreal on the busiest summer day * 1000. That's how crazy it was. It so happens I was there during their Spring festival, so I guess that explained it. After a few hours walking around the walled city, with it's cobblestone streets and hundreds of souvenir shops, I decided to get the hell out of town and head for the mountain. There is a mountain just outside the town itself, that is quite easy to walk to, and you can get a chairlift up to the top. To give you an idea of the crowds, the 3 km walk from my guesthouse to the chairlift took my more than 1.5 hours, simply because I could walk no faster than the mass of Chinese surrounding me. And for those who think/know that I usually walk quite slowly, well, you ain't seen nothing till you've come to China. There is one speed and that is SLOW!


Once I actually made it to the chairlift, I then spent the best afternoon I'd had in a while, just walking on the mountain, appreciating the sunny day. The crowds were non-existent, with only a handful of Chinese actually venturing up the mountain. The paths were great and the views spectacular. I had an excellent day.


I have to mention that the guardian angels and lucky charms I was given as going-away presents before I left home seem to be working really well. I was walking down the street that morning on my way to the chairlift, in a less crowded part of town, when I just happened to pass by some friends I'd had drinks with the night before (the Dutch couple whom I'd crossed the border to China with). I stopped to say Hi, and just then the guy walked right passed me and started talking to a little girl. I thought it was odd, cause he was sort of talking loudly to her and was holding on to her hand, but I had no clue what was going on. It turns out the little girl was walking right next to me and had her hand inside my bag. I checked it and nothing was gone, but my camera was sort of sitting at the top of the bag, not where it usually is. If we hadn't crossed paths when we did, I would almost certainly be out of a camera right now! As for my pickpocket, she was a little Chinese girl of no more than 8 years old. She just about crapped her pants when she got caught, but I guess that come with the territory when your job is being a pickpocket...


The next day, I left my charming 1.25$/day dorm in Dali and headed to Lijiang, the next tourist destination on my path. There are buses that leave every hour from Dali to Lijiang, and it so happened that my new Dutch friends got on the same one as I. The ride from Dali to Lijiang is only about 3 hours and is usually quite uneventful, but not ours. As our bus was going up one of the numerous hills in the area, I saw that a truck was stopped about 100m in front of us (changing gears to go up the hill, I think). Our bus driver started to brake, but he must have been going too fast, cause it was obvious he was not going to stop in time. I braced myself, and sure enough, he rammed the truck pretty hard. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt, only 1 guy with a bloody finger (he was sleeping, so he didn't see it coming) and the bus driver's legs smashed up enough to be bloody. The bus was out of commission, since the steering wheel was almost outside of the bus, so we waited a little while to get another bus. It didn't take too long, they were suprisingly organised in getting us new transportation. I wonder if this happens a lot...
As for myself, I was fine, just another little bruise and scratch to add to my growing collection on my knees.


Lijiang is another little cobblestone old town, much like Dali but with more charm in my opinion. It is called the Venice of China, because of the canals and bridges running through it. It's maze-like streets make it impossible to get your bearings, and if I hadn't been with the Dutch couple that first day, I would probably still be wandering the streets looking for my guesthouse right about now. It was a nice place to visit for a day or so, with still a lot of tourists (all Chinese), but much less than in Dali.


From Lijiang, I did a day trip to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. As usual, I was stressed about the hike down and back up the gorge, mostly because it is with a group and I feel pressured to go faster. I shouldn't have worried, as I was not the slowest of the group (Yay!). The scheduled 3-4 hour walk took more like 5 hours, cause the Mom half of an Australian mother/daughter duo hadn't realised that the hike was not an easy one. The way down was fine, but we had to stop very often on the way back up, which suited me just fine. Day trips are really hit-or-miss, you sometimes get a very ordinary group and/or guide. This day trip was one of the best I've had, with a great group of people. We were 6 westerners and 3 Chinese, and it was fun to see us bond without really being able to communicate clearly. I spent most of the hike back up the gorge in the middle of the pack along with a 20-something Chinese girl, who huffed and puffed just as badly as I. These Chinese girls may be thin, but it doesn't mean they are all fit! The group was treated for lunch by an American ex-pat living in China for the past 7 years, while I was treated to dinner by 2 French women who were impressed that I was traveling on my own for a whole year. Pretty good day!


My final destination in the Yunnan province is a place called Zhondian, also know as Shangri-La. I'd heard the name Shangri-La before, but besides sounding exotic, I had no clue what it was supposed to be. It turns out there's this guy who wrote a book in the 1930's describing a place called Shangri-La, a supposed Tibetan paradise in the foothills of the Himilayas. 'They' (whoever 'they' are) have debated it's actual location for years, and decided that Zhondian is it. I'll admit the name of the place intrigued me, but I decided to take the 6-hour bus to get there because it is as close as you can get to Tibet these days, and I was curious. It is a very calm, quiet place compared to Lijiang and Dali, so I liked it a lot. I visited the largest Tibetan monastery outside of Tibet and walked around in the FREEZING cold. At somewhere around 5C, it's the coldest I've felt in a while. I was the only guest in the youth hostel (no kidding!), so I had an 8-bed dorm room all to myself. And even though they advertise 24-hour hot water showers, the whole place is unheated, so it was unthinkable of taking a shower while I was there. I spent 3 days wearing the same clothes (jeans, long-sleeved t-shirt, short-sleeved t-shirt, scarf, hoodie), even at nightime, cause they were the warmest things I have. That may explain the new 'dreadlock' look I was sporting by the time I got back from Shangrila, not having washed my hair in 6 days. May be too much information to share with all of you, but whatever :-)


I am now back in Lijiang, spending another rainy afternoon in the only Internet cafe I've found in a while. I'm a bit disappointed that I have to backtrack all the way to Kunming to take the train to my next destination, but there didn't seem to be a simpler way of doing things. I now have an overnight bus to Kunming to look forward to (not!), followed by a day of aimlessly wandering the streets of Kunming before taking a 19-hour overnight train to Chengdu. Wish me luck!


PS. For some reason, the Internet in China allows me to publish posts to my blog, but not too actually see my blog. Keep this in mind if you see weird formatting or errors... Isn't censorship fun?