China | New Bohemians

Change in Latitude; Arriving in Southern Yunnan

Claire:
With a 13-hour bus ride, we’ve changed the backdrop of our tour from a temperate to a tropical climate. The sleeper bus was an experience we’d wanted to try after seeing them on our 2005 tour. In my research, I learned to expect a noisy, smoky and cramped ride of up to 24 hours. We found the bus fine (no smoking), though we would have both been a little more comfortable if we could have removed our feet along with our shoes, as everyone is required to do. (Stepping on the bus, the first thing I noticed is the smell of sour feet, but I can stand anything for a day.) The bunks shoehorn together with the feet of the person behind tucking into an angled cubbyhole that props up the head of the person in front.

After a while, we learned to adjust our positions and use extra blankets to prop up our knees. We tossed and rolled through the curves and bumps of the night, glad to not be riding Zippy on these steep, switch-backed and largely unpaved roads. Being at the very back of the bus (not by choice), meant that some bumps launched me clear of my bunk, landing me in a completely different position than the one I’d carefully arranged. I finally started using my safety belt when, unable to sleep around midnight, I watched the bus driver pass fuel trucks on blind curves of a particularly mountainous road.

Lessons learned: Take advantage of every bush break or you’ll regret it later; Women: bring your funnel so you can stand on the roadside along with the men (ignore the curious stares), and never, EVER step anywhere you can’t see (I almost went over a ten-foot wall at the 2:00 a.m. stop and ended up covered in mud from catching myself). Thirteen hours into the trip, we were just getting the hang of it, so you can imagine our surprise, when at 8:00 a.m., we learned we were already in Jinghong and and had to hastily offload and ready Zippy. We didn’t expect to arrive until 7:00 p.m. and had planned to shoot a video, read, nap and enjoy the scenery. We’ll be glad to get back on Zippy tomorrow.

Another Transition

Hibiscus in Southern Yunnan

Woman cops a Nap while selling Chickens

Bob:
All we had read about these long haul sleeping buses was that the experience was torture. We are both fairly small people, and that must have helped us find reasonable positions on the tiny beds. We have a motorhome with two bunk beds at the back, and they are two feet longer and a foot wider than these bus beds. The scent was not as bad as it could have been; only one man insisted on smoking, out the window he thought, while we were stopped. I would have died in the old days when smoking was allowed anytime during the trip.

The road was very rough and I am glad we didn’t have to put Zippy through that section; he’s had enough of the fist sized rocks, deep potholes and mud, thought I expect SE Asia will provide more of that.

Besides the great change in plants and weather from 2000 meters down to 550 meters, we have noticed that many of the people do not speak Chinese, and many of the signs are in another language, perhaps Bai (Thai/Lao?). We will soon find out; off tomorrow for a few days cycling in the humid hills for the border with Laos.

I like the food here. The hot is a SE Asia hot, hot but it goes away after awhile, unlike Sichuan hot which lingers. We ate at a street fandian twice today: a bowl of rice topped with any mix of at least a dozen different selections. I picked a smokey fatty hot pork and a couple of vegetables. Yum. I think the best food in Asia is found on the street, but then we never eat at high end places for foreigners; we eat what the people eat.

We sat on a stone planter with construction workers on stools or squatting, shoveling in the good stuff. We went back this evening, tried some different toppings to the rice, and a Snow Mountain beer, as we watched the rush hour of mothers hauling young school children on bicycles, recyclers on their truck/tricycles, buses and motorcycles.

Small groups played cards on short tables under the palms, settling in for a long evening of street socializing. There is no place like Asia. I think we’re going to like this part. I’ll let you know if the hills are smaller after a few days.

More Photos From Dali; a Quiet Walk

Lucky Goes Tourist at the Three Pagodas

School Girl Stopping For A Read

View From A Street In Dali

Working

Quiet Street in Dali

Dali and Plans for Beyond

Snow Mountain

October 14, 2009
Leaving Lijiang

Claire:
We may be out of the mountains, but we’re not out of the really big hills yet. Language got in our way again as we attempted to leave Lijiang. I didn’t expect to have trouble, but somehow we missed a turn to the new expressway? and ended up on a road that quickly deteriorated to a dirt track. With no one to ask and no traffic, our confidence that we were on the right track flagged. Everyone we had asked earlier and even the road signs indicated this was the way to the next town, Heqing. But this can’t be right! Finally, after 10 kilometers, we saw the expressway and realized our track was a shortcut to it. Soon enough we were back to wishing for less traffic than was on the expressway. Everyone in China, it seemed, was either on the way to or from Dali. And the mid-autumn holiday is supposed to be over.

Along The Way

Working The Rice Fields

Making Charcoal By Hand

Harvest Time

Dali Old Town

One Dali Old Town Gate

“Ethnic” guides in Dali

Bob:
Two days from Lijiang, and one big hill later, we are in Dali tourist Mecca for the Chinese if there ever was one. We are not having any luck finding a helmet for Claire, the Chinese only wear helmets, on motorcycles not bicycles, and not many even then. We have glue and will apply it liberally to the crack.

The landscape is changing with big hills farther apart, and the summits at lower elevations. Most of yesterday was in flat rice fields, many being harvested and others being prepared for winter crops, with lots of rice chaff and manure, animal and human, being dug in by hand. The amount of hand labor involved in raising rice here is amazing, but there are a lot of people to do the labor. Large paddies are filled with people doing various jobs, and the roadsides are piled high with manure, or harvested rice, forcing us to compete with buses and trucks for the roadway. When the shoulder (yes they often have them in the flats) is clear we cruise in the mid twenties kph, with little effort.

Yesterday we had bunch of school kids trying to keep up with us on their way home to lunch (they all go home for lunch here, biking). They were all yelling and laughing as we passed; we must be quite a sight to them with all our bags. It’s fun to show them something different. I can imagine them being difficult in afternoon classes, trying to figure out what we were.

We Could Rent This In Dali

We are, however, weeks behind schedule due to the unexpected number of 15,000 ft passes on the Tea Horse Route, our hospital visit, and poor planning on the part of the route planner, me. The mountains took nearly two weeks longer than planned for.

Since we are leaving the mountains now, and the ethnic areas we came to see, now we are going to live dangerously: we will take a bus to southern Yunnan to the sub-tropic mountains, and catch up a bit. Laos calls. Lonely Planet says a long distance bus trip in China is a Rite of Passage. We’ll see.

So did we find Shangri-la?

Of course we did. You knew it all along, didn’t you? Shangri-la is a dream, an imagination, and for us it is The Journey, the travel, the things we learn, the things we see and marvel at, and the others we will never understand.

Come with us to Southeast Asia.

The Journey continues through the mountains of Southern Yunnan and Laos, down the valley of the Mekong, over more mountains into Vietnam, Cambodia and ending in Thailand.

There will be new adventures, new sights and smells, new foods, languages, and surely more of those smiling faces we see so often. The adventure continues. Stay with us.

Smiles

Shangri-la Backroads

Misty Morning in Shangri-la (Claire)

We took the recommendation of Bill Weir and Alice and Andoni, cyclists we’d met way back in Almaty in 2005, and took a back road rather than Highway 214 to Tiger Leaping Gorge. We had at least one climb each day, one day we had three climbs totaling about 18 kilometers. The road is now paved except for washouts and we had very light traffic and beautiful views. Villages along the way were full of hard-working but friendly people eager to say “Hello!”. Coming the backway into Tiger Leaping Gorge was more fun because we didn’t feel so much a part of the tourist hordes. The big rock slide blocked vehicle traffic so we had the gorge to ourselves for most of the morning.

Shangri-la Vista

Clothsline in Shangri-la

Plowing with Oxen

Fall Colors in the Mountains of Shangri-la

Nearing Another Pass With Moss Covered Trees

Travertine Pools of Bai Shui Tai

The main reason we went the longer, back way to Lijiang was that I (Claire) wanted to see the travertine terraces at Bai Shui Tai. Unlike at Havasupai, these terraces are perched on a hillside, rather than in a canyon.