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  Dali, China
Monday, January 29, 2007

Due to the size of our group, leaving The Gorge was easy: the seven of us squeezed in a minibus, paid 10Y each (about $1.25) and held on tight while the driver zoomed around the mountain roads, hugging the shoulder all the way. Once at the trailhead, we collected our packs and walked back to Qiaotou, where we only had to wait about five minutes for a bus heading south to arrive. We hopped on, paid our 20Y each (about $2.50), and we were on the road back to Lijiang. The drive only took about two hours, and there we purchased tickets onward to Dali, a town not terribly far away. Shortly thereafter, we were back on the bus and headed 160 kilometers further south.

Konrad and I were the last to get on the bus, so we were relegated to the back seats, which were very cramped and a bit raised above the others - which meant we couldn't really see the landscape, which was a shame because the bits and pieces I saw looked well worth it

Dali Door

. No worries, I was working on an excellent book: Paulo Cohelo's Eleven Minutes. Speaking of books, we've found it incredibly difficult to find them in China. We chanced upon an excellent café in Lijiang which had a good book exchange, but other than that, we haven't really found much - a bit of a problem, as I tend to devour books whilst traveling. I've been pacing myself and crossing my fingers that Laos will be a book lover's heaven.

Four and a half hours later, we were dropped off at the gate to the city. Konrad got off first, grabbed some of our bags from the top shelf, and jumped off. I looked up on the shelf, saw our tripod, picked it and my backpack up, and followed him. We grabbed our packs from the back of the bus and were getting ready to leave when we realized that neither of us had grabbed our food bag from the bus - we both thought the other had taken it. Alas, the bus had already departed, so we were out of luck (and a lot of oatmeal, hot chocolate, granola bars, silverware, etc.). Nothing we could do about it then, so we made our way into town in search of a hotel (incidentally, the nice folks at our hotel later called the station for us to check on it and were informed they hadn't seen hide of hair of it). We were both pretty worn out from all the traveling (I know, sitting on buses all day shouldn't be tiring, but for some reason it can be exhausting!), so our heart wasn't really in it. After longer than we'd hoped, we settled on a Korean guesthouse which had a little heater - a big bonus as we were still experiencing pretty chilly weather. Neither of us had showered since Zhongdian, so we eagerly anticipated a hot, cleansing shower. Konrad hopped in first... and the tepid water quit on him just as he rinsed the shampoo out of his hair. I had the fortune to shower in another room that had hot water, but we were a bit put off because of it. That, coupled with the bar noise from the street below led us to move to another hotel the next day (which didn't have heat, and damn, was it cold there!).

Dali is still quite high in the mountains, over 6,000 feet, and sits on the edge of one of China's largest freshwater lakes - we never really saw it because of the weather, but it's supposed to be lovely. Dali is a popular spot with tourists: there are lots of pretty vistas, tons of shopping, and many spots in which to relax. The clouds had followed us all the way from Zhongdian, and the next day was still chilly and overcast, which meant most of Dali's incredible scenery was obscured. We gave it a fair shake, but our intention was to leave Hanoi to avoid the winter, which we were doing a very poor job of, so after two days of cold and clouds we were back on the trail headed south.

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