9 Hours from TLG to Dali
Trip Start
Dec 26, 2005
1
101
285
Trip End
Jan 25, 2009
Dali,
China
Monday, May 1, 2006
Today was fascinating, made even more interesting by our hilarious, very overweight female bus driver. She was hilarious... I love her.
We left Sean's Guesthouse at 9am on a local van, skirting the sides of the towering Tiger Leaping Gorge. I was on the left hand side so had a stomach-moving view of down below. I couldn't help thinking what it would be like towering down to the bottom if by any chance our van happened to skid off the side of the road. We had since heard that there had been a couple of sand slides which made the conditions a bit more dangerous. Another thing that was interesting is that a lot of the van drivers were being arrested by local police for transporting foreigners..
Dongli attending to the radiator.
. interesting place:)Today was very long... made even longer by no bus or van waiting to pick us up from Margo's place. John earnt his money today by negotiating heavily for several hours for a bus trip back to Lijiang, and then on to Dali.
Bliss... John managed to score a deal with an amazing lady called Dongli. Dongli was a tough old lady, bossing around everyone. But she was a score with a bus to follow. During our very entertaining 2 hour bus ride back to Lijiang, the radiator bellowed smoke (fixed by a tank of water situated in front of me at the front of the bus), we came across local men selling snakes along the road (one was dangling a very large live snake), Dongli had to navigate a huge pile of cow dung placed in the middle of the road which ended resulted in her driving through a school yard full of kids and through two very narrow concrete pilings, and then navigating through the back streets of Lijiang. I must admit driving through the backstreets was fascinating for it gave us a close up view of local life. But I loved Dongli, her bus and the subsequent adventure we went through to eventually arrive in Lijiang. Dongli had an amazing smile, laugh and sense of humour... but so bossy... and she spoke a few words of English which made for a more entertaining time:) Great lady!
We had a brief stop over in Lijiang before boarding Dongli's uncle's bus. This bus was a little better. The trip from Lijiang to Dali took forever... about 5 hours all up and given the lack of toilet spots along the road, I ended our day rushing to the toilet! A long day, we ended up arriving in Dali at 6pm after 9 hours of travel
Filling up the radiator.
.Dali appears to be a beautiful city... will use the next 48 hours to explore it in more detail. We went to Jim's Cafe and had an amazing feast of Tibettan food, including dessert. Jim is another one of those amazing people I'm meeting on this trip - he spoke fluent English and I got to know him a lot better by staying later with John and Jayne for a few rounds of local beer. Jim is typically Tibettan with the full range of colours, hat and beard to follow.
We are staying at the Number 5 Guesthouse in Dali... a hostel in a tree house. The hostel has all the basic facilities including free internet (good for catching up on this), bar, adequate rooms but ever so small, and free breakfast. I'm sharing the room with Ronald... a 50 year or so Information Knowledge specialist. I'd love to run a place like this... maybe my next career?
