March 18, 2008

Dali (CHINA)

Hiking the Jade Green Mountains Surrounding Dali

After having gone three consecutive nights without a proper bed to sleep in, I was out like a log last night and had some of my best sleep in a long time. By the time I finally got out the door, with Neil and David dragging behind and in obvious need of a caffeine jolt, it was 11:00 am, we hurriedly caught a taxi to the park entrance for the Jade Green Mountains. I wasn't sure where exactly we would head once inside the park, but I knew that some fresh mountain air and strenuous climbing would do us all a world of good.

Before taking the gondola deeper in the mountains, we stopped to have a bowl of noodles for breakfast at a small shop. The owners were an elderly Chinese man and woman who were all smiles once they realized I could speak Mandarin with them, and spared us the standard tourist prices on all the food. Plus, I bought half a kilogram of fresh grapes from a fruit stall, and washed them off with a bottle of water. This probably wasn't the cheapest way to go about it - the bottle of water cost nearly half the price of the grapes - but even seeded grapes are too tasty to pass up.

Soon, we were climbing into a gondola for the 15 minute ride to the start of the trail. I couldn't resist sharing the knowledge that, until three months ago, this gondola was closed down after a fatal accident. I could not remember if it was because a rope snapped, or if a gondola fell, but knowing people died as a result is what really mattered. I rocked from side to side trying to get Neil and David's heart's racing, but after the wind took over my job I started having regrets. (Obviously, there was a 99.9999% certainty that we weren't going to die, but when you are riding a chairlift in a remote part of China those kind of statistics do not mean as much.)

There was a strange assortment of Chinese Chess pieces laid out on a human-size playing board near the gondola station. Normally, I would scratch my head wondering why anyone would choose to build something like that up on a remote mountain, but where China is concerned many things are not worth thinking about.

Anyway, after alighting from the gondola we took followed the main trail into a small canyon that is full of waterfalls in the rainy season. Sadly, during the dry season the waterfalls are just that: dry. In retrospect, it may have worked out better this way because we were the only tourists for the day, and we had the entire mountain to ourselves. Plus, the views were nothing to complain about.

We had to stop for a break every 20-30 minutes because the altitude was getting to us, and the climb itself was no easy thing. Eventually, I decided to break off the trail so we could climb boulders along a ravine, and we ended up blazing this new trail for well over an hour.

Pulling each other up rocks while navigating massive boulders turned out the be the highlight of the day as there were times when we were scaling 15 meter rock faces. Most people have an innate desire to relive their childhood days of climbing trees and racing across jetties, and for several hours today I felt free to do just that. As much as I love the developed world, where rules reign supreme and childish tendencies are often kept locked up, today reminded me just how great it feels to run wild, so to speak.

Eventually we reached the mid-way point of the mountains, where continuing would mean climbing downhill on the other side of the mountain range, so we savored the view before beginning to retrace our steps backward. Going down the rocks turned into a lot more dangerous activity than going up because there were so many places where one could slip and cause serious injury. Obviously, none of us had a mobile phone and help would have taken some time to arrive, but we went slowly and everything worked out fine.

When we reached the main trail we decided to follow it for a while, which made for a pleasant finish to the day because it was built along the side of the mountain - providing great scenic views of over Dali and Erhai Lake.

Some of the photos from the mountain are shown below, and the colored leaves (shown to the left, when the sun was out) are indicative of the pleasant weather in early Spring.

At around 5:00 pm, just before the park closed, we caught a ride back to Dali for 20 rmb and searched out a restaurant for dinner. We were all famished as noodles and grapes were all we had eaten for the day, so we decided to forgo Chinese food for the night and splurge on Western food. We found a restaurant boasting a wood-fired oven, and with pizza, nachos, homemade cookies, and Tsingtao Beer in our sights, the decision was easy.

Below is video from the upper floor of the restaurant (which we had to ourselves). I couldn't help myself with the "dancing"...