March 18, 2007
To Dali: first views of high mountains with snow
We carry our gear down the three story winding stairway into the large open lobby downstairs. A little later a guy shows up to unlock the garage where our bikes are stored. We head back to the main road and start climbing almost immediately to cross the 2400 meter pass between us and the Lake Erhai valley.
The road first winds up a valley, then onto a ridge with nice views back in the valley we came from. The air is fresh and clean this morning. We can see the Mountain Range to the West of Dali and for the first time this trip we see snow covering the highest packs. We are meaning some real mountains! Later, Rachel will write to Laura that Dan Fox (his ashes) is back in the mountains. (Dan was a friend in Missoula MT, died young with lung cancer thought to be from second hand smoke because he was a healthy mountain climber) Road crews are working on building stone retaining walls along the road, Patrick thinks in preparation of a future widening of the road.
They start with huge boulders that they break up and then shape into square blocks of a uniform size. All this by lots of guys with hammers and chisels. Labor must be cheap in China.
The downhill takes us straight into Xiaguan (new Dali) a large city on the South shore of Lake Erhai. Just before the town we come across a minor traffic accident under an overpass on a curve. A blue Chinese truck has clipped the left corner of an oncoming car. The vehicles are left as is after the accident, a series of other traffic users have filled up all spaces around them like a jigsaw puzzle.... from a large flatbed truck to a rickshaw, they all work together to create an "almost" watertight traffic jam. Almost, because a bicycle can still worm itself through, the rest are left to blowing their horns in an effort to solve the gridlock...
We find our way through the city with the use of our lonely planet map, then get on route 214 to Old Dali. It's a wide six lane boulevard that climbs more than we like this afternoon, but we get there. We see a sign to Jim's Tibetan Hotel, just outside the South gate of the Old city. It's praising write up in the LP must have affected its pricing, 240 per night is way over our budget. Next door we find a very nice Chinese Hotel without a Western name for only 60 yuan per night.
We clean up, head to the old town and find a backpacker's café with Shepard's pie and mediocre lasagna. Afterwards we wander the pretty streets of Dali, take pictures of people and buildings and get ready for a couple of rest days.
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Today's ride: 46 km (29 miles)
Total: 6,957 km (4,320 miles)
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