Saturday 17th July 2010

Lyn and I did the market shopping whilst the others refuelled.

Most chickens are sold live in the markets so it was not on the menu. Just to difficult  to do all that cleaning, and I did not want live chickens running around in the truck!

Medicine seller, selling bones, shells plus lots of very odd things.

We are on good roads and still climbing, once again cross the Mekong River.

The country is beautifully green. Once we cross the range the country changes to a much dryer environment.

We are in Weisan Country the poorest in this area.

On Weibaoshan Mountain  10kms outside Weishan is the birth place of Taoism and some really old and beautiful temples built around 800AD. There are many but we visited only four.

This lady was one of the caretakers

Finally arrived in Dali, the new town, very busy WallMart and all.

Continued another 18kms to the old walled city and conveniently found a great camp site in a newly constructed but yet unopened bus car park.

The old city is VERY touristy but quaint in its own way.

We will spend tomorrow exploring the old city and the three pagodas.

Camp 45:  Dali Bus Park Camp    Height 2,000 Meters

N25* 41.387 E100* 10.062

Distance Today: 211 Kms

Total Distance: 7966 Kms

Sunday 18th July 2010

Raining today, heavily, maybe the wet season has started.

Organised our laundry this morning. Normally we do as we go, in a screw top wash up tub that fits in the back storage areas and everything washes as we bounce along, but the bigger items sheets etc it is nice to have them cleaned in a machine.

Caught the local bus to the 3 pagodas, the oldest standing structures in south western China and the symbol of the area.

Andy is very helpful in many ways. There is a black market operating whereby you can buy the tickets for 90Yuan instead of the 120Y. They will even allow you to enter the complex before you pay so that you feel comfortable that they work.

Impressive is the more recently constructed series of 8 or 9 modern pagodas that are reached progressively by a series of steps.

Back dropped by the misty mountains each on contains a different representation of Budda.

One contains the most ornate golden covered bronze Budda in China.

The complex is a very popular tourist destination for Chinese tourists and amongst the thousands are a few scattered westerners.

Our chinese meals were generally great and this was one of the better ones.

We expected it difficult to find ‘camping’ areas for the vehicles and expected hundreds of visitors, surprisingly this has not been the case.

As we head into town I am constantly looking for quiet spots and GPS plot then. We then find a guest house for Andy normally 60Y (US$10) and return to the best selected camp spot. 

Visitors are few, but they do come over to say hello occasionally, normally the young ones like to practice their English. Actually all very easy.

Camp 45:  Dali Bus Park Camp  Height 2,000 Meters

N25* 41.387 E100* 10.062

Distance Today: 0 Kms

Total Distance: 7966 Kms

Monday 19th July 2010

Very wet – picked up an equally wet Andy.

Out of Dali we travel the express way for 15kms (Toll 10Y each), then turn onto cobble stoned country roads towards our destination, Yunlong. The road is again part of the national country road construction program, and where they have not torn it up and we are dodging machinery, it is narrow and windy. The 84kms takes us 6 ½ hours. It is great driving though; we wind up and down mountains and steep valleys, the mountain passes range from 2,500 to 3,000 meters.

Lady in native dress in Yunlong

7 kms by single lane road outside of Youlong, I discovered from Lonely Planet this 1000 year old town and wanted to visit it.

Nuodeng is a quaint town nestled into the side of a steep hill at the headwaters of the Bi River.

This quaint town owes its existence to salt, and they have been mining it since the Ming Dynasty.

It is still mined and dried using the same methods today. Since those early times the salt has been traded using mule trains as far away as Burma and India.

We parked our vehicles and climbed the hundreds of river stone steps higher and higher past a labyrinth of ancient mid brick buildings.

We are invited into the home/guesthouse/restaurant of the Huang Family. Her family have been living in this house for 23 generations since the Ming Dynasty. (14thC)

She then asked her son to guide us to the Confucian Temple on top of the hill.

On the way we called into the family museum of Mr Huang. His family were one of the first to settle here and were salt miners. His grandfather was a gifted artist, stone carver, who did the carvings in the Temple.  Mr Huang corrected us, he was not gifted, just hard working. An earlier relative produced these wood printing press blocks.

Inside Mr Huang home is the typical seating foyer where friends and family sit and talk. The two chairs at the rear are always reserved for the two oldest members of the family.

The gate to the Temple is one of the oldest wooden such structures in China.

In the ancient temple the caretaker played the Die Pipe for us.

Our dinner back at Mrs Huang’s house was both delicious and interesting. For dinner we chose fried Azalea flowers, cooked Bracken Ferns, ham that had been salted and hanging for 2 years, and a couple of pork and vegetable dishes. (Y120 for the 9 of us including 2 beers, US$17)

Today had been one of the highlights of our visit to China.

We camped at the base of the village.

Camp 47: 1000 Year Old Nuodeng Village Camp -1700 meters 

N25* 55.001 E99* 22.625

Max Height Today- 3000 meters

Distance Today: 217 Kms

Total Distance: 8394 Kms