Robjstaples's travel blogs:
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Climbing the Dragon
Entry 11 of 43 | show all | print this entry |
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The advice Boby had given me was interesting: "Go to Guilin, take a bus to Heping and get off and find a guide." To me, that last part is normally anathema, but his enthusiastic insistence and my suspicion that something might be getting lost in translation convinced me to give it a go. After all, I now felt confident that my improved Chinese would help or save me if need be so it seemed worth a try, especially as this was a chance to visit the famous Dragon Spine rice terraces. When the bus driver stopped on a bare corner on this hilly road and kindly indicated that this was where I'd bought a ticket to my convictions were being seriously tested, especially as I was the only passenger getting off here.
As we'd come away from Guilin, the scenery had become more and more rural and considerably more hilly. The further behind we'd left the city, the more agricultural tools had appeared on the bus as people hopped on and off and negotiated a price of a few mao (20 mao = 1.2 pence) for a ride to the next village or collection of farm buildings. Now, this really did feel like the middle of nowhere standing on the outside of a bend at the top of a cliff watching the bus pull away in a cloud of dust. I was quite relieved to see two people emerge from the dust hurrying toward me.
It was immediately obvious that the man and the woman who'd come towards me were offering accommodation. What wasn't so obvious to yours truly, was that they were talking about different hotels. I thought I'd negotiated a room price with the lady and details of meals with the the man. As ever in China, food came to the rescue and in the time it took me to choose and eat my meal at the roadside stir-fry restaurant (this also involved being told to go and get my ingredients out of the fridge), I realised I'd got myself in a slightly awkward situation. It was an easy choice to make though because the lady was far more able to understand my Chinese even though she spoke almost no English. So it was that as another cloud of dust pulled up in the form of a bus, we climbed in where there was apparently no space to do so and drove straight at the trees, where it emerged there was a "road".
The road that winds up the valley to Longji Titian is multi-surfaced, which is to say that whatever came to hand or fell off the mountain is on it. The valley itself is very pretty with steep cliffs rising above the river. There's obviously been a lot of rain and sections of the hillside have slid away both above and beneath the road. In some places the road is a very narrow single track and I can only hope that the driver has as much of an aversion to the idea of plunging into the river as I do. The bus is funny though. It's a community in itself. I'm half expecting to hear the theme music from Postman Pat. Everyone knows everyone else, parcels are passed through the windows and people hop on and off all the way up the valley. A couple of guys pay to send a few bags of rocks up the road to where their mates are waiting for them.
 
We swing through a village with a huge sign announcing that it has been certified by the Guinness Book of Records as the village with the longest hair in the World. I think what this means is that the native Yao ladies grow their hair long and wear it under a sort of colourful turban, but here they've figured out that they can use it as a tourist attraction. The car park full of small tour buses is testament to this. We also pass a bridge where I swear I saw a sign that said entrance to Lonji Titian national park which was where I though I was going. The bus, however, goes up and up, and by the time the we e reach the top of the valley, my hostess and I are the only two people on the bus.
As I'm learning about China though, there is always somewhere to buy a ticket, and this is not an exception. 50 Yuan seems pretty steep just to get into the park but there's not a lot of Choice at this point, although I suspect I understand why about 6 Chinese tourists got off the bus 250m from the roadhead and clambered up a grassy bank.
Entering the park, I feel like I've walked onto a film set. The people are noticeably smaller and they all cheerfully greet me and my host. The brook is crystal and clear and bubbles musically and the walking is pleasantly flat. Then, we start to go up. A few steps here, past a few wooden houses, up a long incline again, and we go up some more, and still further. It's warm and I've got 16kg of luggage on my back so this is starting to wear on me and sweats dripping down my nose. Several octogenarian ladies have offered to carry my bag in their on the way up, but I couldn't conceive of doing this with my modern backpack and anyway, it couldn't be much further could it? More fool me on both counts. If you come here, pay the 5 or 10 kuai it will cost you and enjoy the walk. This climbing went on for the best part of 45 minutes in silence, except when we stopped to take in the view. It was worth every step, and a bit of hard work is good for you too anyway. I was knackered, but elated at the top, not least because I knew that anyone staying in a hotel at the bottom would be doing that every day to enjoy the views I was now enjoying.
On reflection, it's surprising the things you do when you're in travelling mode: get off a bus with no idea where, meet a total stranger and let them take you to you don't know where, and then walk until your legs and shoulders are screaming at you, but you're still grinning and enjoying it. I'd never normally do it at home, you wouldn't think it safe, but here and now I'm having a great time and the shackles of urban life have been shed for a while. I don't really know where I am and I don't care!
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