Sunday 15th July: Dali- Lijiang
We are staying in the Old Town of Shuhe, a few kilometres
outside of Lijiang and though charming, it is very touristic; the concept of
mixing modern and old, beautiful old structures (or redone to look old) with
commercial needs is extremely popular in China and attracts millions of tourists.
The 4-hour bus journey that took us from Dali to LIjiang
deserves a mention, however. The drive through the mountains afforded us spectacular
sceneries of the valleys, waterfalls, rice terraces, all lush and green. That
side of the afternoon bus journey was very pleasant indeed. What was less
pleasant was the way they all drove on the narrow snake-like mountainous road. We should be
used to it by now, after 5 years, but somehow driving recklessly in a city
doesn’t seem as dangerous as driving recklessly on a mountain road where the
ravine is winking at you. It was clear that our driver through doing this route
everyday has become immune to the potential dangers and as any person driving
in China, what matters is to get there and not stay behind another vehicle.
This unspoken way of driving led to overtaking at the top of a hill at the
beginning of a curve with zero visibility, overtaking a truck that was already
overtaking another truck, driving on the motorway against traffic (that was a
first for us!)… we could have been killed a dozen times. Augustin took pictures
of every instance, they should be quite surprising and shocking, of course.
Fact
It is quite cool here and unexpectedly so, though we should
have been wiser knowing we were coming to the mountains. It is summertime and as we
left the north of China where it was hot and humid, we arrived in the south
where it is cool and rainy! Lijiang is 2400m high in altitude and Dali 2500m. It explains this unexpected weather (unexpected for us).
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