Dali, Lijiang & Shangri-La (China): Rain, cold and beautiful landscapes

Yunnan province is one of the most beautiful provinces of China, located in the South-West of the country. Unfortunately, the rainy season was not over yet when I was there with my cousin Maly...

Still landscapes are beautiful. So after visiting Kunming, we took the train to Dali, thinking that it would be more confortable for Maly and the baby but we were wrong... Trains in China are not very comfortable if you are seating for the whole trip.Anyway, here we are in Dali. Very cute old city. With pedestrian areas. Guesthouse was nice, the Bird Bar where the owners were partying every night with their friends (artists, full of tattoos) and smoking marijuana... I thought marijuana was illegal in China.

After Dali, we went to Lijiang. Unfortunately, it was during Chinese national day holidays. That means 1.3 billion people traveling all at the same time. Well, besides the fact that hotels were 2-3times more expensive, there were a lot of people everywhere. Maly and I expected to rest and see some nice quite landscapes but it was not counting on all those Chinese people. But still, the region is beautiful.

For the first time in my life i did a trek, well a mini trek of 5 hours but it was so exciting. To see the Tiger Leaping Gorge (see picture). Legend says that in order to escape from a hunter, a tiger jumped across the river at the narrowest point (still 25 metres wide), hence the name.
Anyway, great experience. Going down the mountain, 5.2km in total, 200 m down. To go up, we had to take a ladder, vertical one, 85 degrees. Scary. My legs still remember that experience.

After the Tiger Leaping Gorge, I decided to go to Lugu Lake, maybe the most beautiful lake I have ever seen so far. 8 hours bus to get there and to stay one night and the next morning 8 hours bus to get back to Lijiang. But the trip was definitely worth the painful trip.
And during the trip, I almost found my future husband. The bus driver, who kept on asking me to go for a beer at night. He was tall, skinny and with no hair BUT definitely not my type. Around 40 years old, dark skin, smoking like hell and already having 5 kids at home. No thanks :o)

Having seen Lijiang, we continued to go North of Yunnan Province, to Shangri-La. Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. In the book, "Shangri-La" is a mystical, harmonious valley. It's also really close to the Tibet border. We attended to a Tibetan show with Tibetan food like real tourists. Show was entertaining but food really not good, except the Yak meat, yummie...





So it was supposed to be great but the weather was so cold that we didn't really enjoy it. Average temperature was 10 degrees with rain all day long... We were so cold that we wore all the clothes we had in our backpack, t-shirt, sweater, rain coat and sometimes even our pyjamas... Hopefully we discovered a nice coffee house where we had a nice cordon bleu and burger to compensate the cold and the rain.
Food, always the biggest and best comfort...

Next stop: Xishuangbanna and Yuanyang, Yunnan Province, China