Day 150 - Chengdu, China

Seventeen hours on that last train, followed by five hours on a bus and then two more subsequent bus rides and we made it to Dali. Struggling onto packed local transport with a huge backpack and no clue where you're going is not for the feint hearted, we could barely move on the bus and the best you can hope for is to be carried along towards the exit door by the ripple of other people clamouring to get on or off. Somehow though, we made it and it was worth the hassle. Dali is a beautiful little town located in the Yunnan province of China and it nestles in a wide valley between two huge mountain ranges.

On the first night we were both pretty exhausted from the travelling so headed to the nearest and most decent looking restaurant. It was the first time that either of us had really felt cold since starting this leg of the travelling so we were sitting there in jumpers and coats while the restaurant staff lit a little stove to heat up the place. It was really cosy. We sat by the window watching the world go by and it was nice to see that the town had retained a sense of the traditional in that many of the locals were dressed in very traditional clothing. While I was staring out of the window, two of the richly dressed women wandered by and started signalling to me. I then realised that they were asking me if I wanted to buy hashish! I was quite shocked as they weren't young either, these were respectable looking, middle aged women. Their costume must have been some sort of calling card because almost everyone that offered us drugs was dressed like this. I suppose it makes it easy to sniff out that stuff if you're into it but they were so blatant about it, they even tried selling it to us when there was a police car cruising behind them.

The mountains are pretty scenic around this area and one of the days here we took a cable car up to one of the lower peaks. It only cost a few quid and it was one of the best cable car rides that I've been on. A slow, twenty minute cruise over the tree tops took us as far up the mountain as we could have walked in two hours and there we were dropped off at a convenient point to follow the trail to the downward cable car. Eleven and a half Kilometres we walked and it took us a little over two and a half hours; the guide book says to allow four and a half so we obviously walk fast. A student sort of latched onto us at the end of the walk and we thought we would never get rid of him. He obviously wanted to practice his English on us, as so often happens here, but fortunately we managed to ditch him once we descended from the mountain. We did see him again in Dali but he was scooting off to somewhere else and luckily didn't have time to talk other than to wish us well on our travels. He was another one of those weird Asian types that insisted on having his picture taken with us. I'm wondering just how many photo albums around the world that I'm going to appear in now as it always seems to happen wherever we stop.

We booked a bus from Dali to go to Lijiang which was a three hour nightmare because of the bad Chinese television that they insisted on showing plus two brain-dead, bleach-headed Chinese girls that stank of the previous nights booze and chattered like two demented parakeets for the whole journey. At one point they both lit up cigarettes (on this non-smoking bus) and the driver yelled something at them at which point they both scurried to the back of the bus and started devouring a big bag of monkey nuts. I chuckled to myself when one of them, obviously after over-indulging, took herself to the loo and started honking up. There's justice. She was very quiet when she came back out and she didn't look half as cocky as she had earlier.

Lijiang is another wonderful place. The actual city is pretty big and not that attractive, but the old town is a real treat. It's all no higher than two stories and very traditional to look at. Much of it was destroyed in an earthquake quite recently and was rebuilt, but it was all done very sympathetically and, for a Chinese place, it's quite tasteful. Wandering around the old town you're pretty much guaranteed to get lost as it's a rambling maze of cobbled streets criss-crossed by small waterways and streams. Rich was ill for most of the time we were there so I spent the first day wandering around the town myself and trying to suss out a decent place to eat that evening. The next day we took a walk to The Black Dragon Pool Park which is supposedly THE place to go and take photos of the snow mountain reflecting in the lake's clear waters. However, the sky was really cloudy that day so we didn't see any mountain. Shame for Rich, but at least I got to see it the previous day. As Rich was feeling a little better by Sunday we decided to book a trip to Tiger Leaping Gorge, well, we couldn't come to this part of China and not see it. The drive there was by minibus and I think both of us were feeling a little nervous after our previous near-encounter with a cliff edge, but the driver turned out to be pretty good and kept to the speed limits most of the time. The morning was quite cloudy and overcast again and so the drive there was pretty bleak. The only real colour that we saw were huge bunches of chilli peppers and corn cobs drying in the cool air. We got to the gorge and after a fairly decent lunch we managed to walk along the path that had been blasted out of the side of the mountain. It was a good few kilometres, but by this time the sun was shining and there was a fantastic blue sky against which the white rock of the mountain stood in stark contrast. Apparently, the gorge got it's name by an old story that a tiger once leapt across the rapidly flowing river firstly by jumping onto a big boulder and then across to the other side. It must have been a pretty impressive tiger to have managed that. The drive back was even more spectacular as we got a great view of the snowy mountains which are the highest peak of the gorge and since the sky was so blue it made the yellowing leaves on the trees and the red of the earth stand out to brilliant effect. It was a riot of primary colours and showed the countryside at its best.

We're now in Chengdu after having caught a flight from Lijiang and it's a pretty grim place. The whole place is covered in a thick coating of grime and the air is thick with a polluted fog that makes everything look grey. We went for a walk this afternoon and the only interesting things I saw were strings of sausages hanging from the same line as someone's washing effectively being 'smoked' in the fuggy air. We got a bit depressed that we have to stay here until at least Friday (4 days) until we can head to Tibet. We spent the morning booking our trip to Tibet and, since the riots back in April, it has now become even more restrictive to foreigners than ever before. We knew that one of the rules of going to Tibet is that you have to join a tour, which can consist of only one person if necessary, and once you've got your permit to enter you could pretty much abandon that tour and travel fairly independently. That's not the case now. You still have to join a tour, but as well as that you have to employ a guide to accompany you throughout your stay in Tibet. This makes things really expensive as well as restrictive because you also have to provide a full itinerary which the guide will follow. We've got a couple of days booked in Lhasa and will be taking the train there from Chengdu so we can try and acclimatise to the altitude. If either of us gets ill though, I'm not sure what we'll do; I guess we'll just have to take some of this dodgy Chinese medicine and plough on with the schedule hoping for the best.

Tomorrow we're planning on going to the giant panda breeding centre which should be pretty good. Luckily we've missed the 'falling in love period' when the park closes to give the pandas a little privacy, but I'm hoping to see lots of little baby ones.

We've been in China for about two weeks now and though I've really enjoyed it, I am looking forward to moving on to somewhere else. China has some amazing places to see but there are some things that I won't miss. Firstly, everything in China is REALLY LOUD. People shout all the time, especially on their mobile phones. Their mobile phones always ring at the loudest level possible and for some reason the people just stare blankly at the screen for ages before answering it. Bus horns are loud enough to shake you out of your skin and since they use them incessantly on busy roads your nerves are frazzled by the time you've reached your destination. The worst thing though is the spitting. Chinese men in particular, but not exclusively, love to spit. It's not just a gentle ejection of a little bit of spittle to clear one's throat, but a full gut-wrenching, nasal passage clearing, lung-straining hoik that is loud enough to warn ships at sea in heavy fog. It's disgusting and they do it all the time. Even on our flight here to Chengdu, all you could hear over the droning of the engines was this constant gobbing and rattling as their abandoned load hit the bottom of their sick bags. Utterly vile.

This guesthouse that we're staying in is probably the most backpacker style place that we've been in since all of the travelling. It's fairly basic but comfortable and the helpfulness of the staff more than makes up for its lack of style. The only worry that I have is that when coming up the stairs there are big blobs of plaster missing and cracks in the walls exposing shattered brickwork. Beneath this is a sign telling us not to worry about it, it's just damage caused by the last earthquake and they're not going to get it repaired as there are still aftershocks going on. If you don't hear from me again, you may find me under a pile of rubble where Sim's Cosy Guesthouse once stood.

Bye for now!