Shangri La and the rest of China

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Snow in Shangri-La

So when i last blogged we hadn't yet left Dali, finally managing to drag ourselves away from the lovely lilly pad where the staff gave us free scarfs at the end and actually thought of us more as friends than guests, nicolas's words when we left.
Anyway so travelling the 7 or so hours to Shangri-La was an experience, we where stuck at the front of the bus and no exageration the bus driver must have used his horn about 150 times during the journey, a lot of the time for no disernable good reason.
Arriving at Shangri-La we were a little shocked to see snow everywhere as apparently only a few days earlier it had been shorts and t shirt weather, instead i am sitting here in almost all the clothes i have with me stappy tops (2), long sleeved tshirt, jumpers (2) a waterproof jacket, leggings trousers two pairs of socks and i'm still cold!! Briefly ventured out to find people dancing in the local square which was lovely but didn't stay long to watch. Never mind at least the beds have heated blankets and everyone seems to be drinking the cold away...
Tried to have a shower the next day but no hot water so had to settle with washing my hair and that was painful enough. Met up with some people we'd met in Kunming, and some from Dali (apparently, i couldn't remember so just played along) they were going to the first bend of the yangtzee river so we tagged along deciding to leave the monastery for the next day, it was a long minibus ride but the views on the way were spectacular and 2 and a half hours later we arrived,( see pictures) at a lovely viewing point, apperently we are now in the foothills of the himalaya's. We stopped for a lovely meal on the way back, thankfully having a chinese girl with us to order, and then started back for Shangri-La with the sun setting over the mountains.
When we got back in the evening we stocked up on alcohol before heading back to the hostel to play drinking games with a bunch of Israel's including stone and etai who we'd been traveling with that day, a german guy and girl, some portugese people including the one from Kunming who was lovely if a little miffed that we didn't remember him and an american called Andrew and his chinese girlfriend who had also come along to the Yangtzee.
Learnt some new drinking games, drunk some chinese brandy, only 8%!?(MISSING)! and some strawberry wine and by the end of the evening it had been reduced to charades where people couldn't even guess a giraffee.
The next morning i was reluctant to get out of the warm bed, not that i had a hangover, the alcohol wasn't strong enough, just that it was freezing. We did eventually manage to get out and head to the monastery which wasn't all that impressive so we headed back and caught the last bus to Lijjiang at 2.30 only too eager to get somewhere with a warmer climate.
Now i'm in Lijiang and after making the mistake of not getting someone to write down directions in Chinese for us at the last place we were forced to stay in a chinese establishment in the main town where no-one could understand us. We made it to the old town today though, did a lot of shopping and are of to tiger leaping gorge tomorrow!

Why did annie climb over the rubble strewn road? Because there was

no other way to get to the other side!
I ended up going to Tiger Leaping gorge alone as Kiwi wasn't up for it but there were another 4 people from the hostel going anyway. Needless to say I am not a hardened treker and i definately underestimated the gorge, it was hard work and although i'd planned to only do one day and then make my way back to see Kiwi it was far more difficult to get back than i had thought so i kept plodding on, 7-8 hours climbing the mountain and getting to the halfway house the first day and a couple of hours getting down the second day before making the harrowing trip back to the little village at the start. I should state now that although i knew there were some roadworks going on i had no idea that the whole place was officially closed, (should have guessed from the fact the government weren't charging a fortune to get in though).
After getting a little burnt the first day i arrived at Tina's guesthouse very stiff at around 10 rareing to get back in order to catch the last bus to some place in the middle of nowhere where we could get a train to Chengdu, needless to say there was a bit of time pressure. We piled into a small minibus driven by a boy who was only around 18, if that, and headed off. We first stopped confronted by JCB'S working on the road and waited whilst a couple of truckloads of rubble were dumped in front of us and sort of pushed around a little by the JCB, the young guy up front impatient decided to mount the rubble and sped past the JCB, by this point we were all holding onto the seats for dear life. It got worse! There were places along the road which the workers had been dynamiting, as a result huge rocks covered the road, even our overenthusiaitic driver couldn't hope to do those, so out we got. Climbing over the rubble i cut my hands one of the english girls ripped her trousers, everyone ended covered in dust and Lil almost fell of the cliff when the part she had been edging round gaveway, luckily she'd had someone holding both hands and they were able to pull her up. After that incident everyone was a little shaken but there really wasn't another option so on we battled, laughed at by little men in red hardhats.

Panda's

We did arrive safely and i even caught the last bus to Panchiwa so managed to make it to Chengdu, we arrived at Chengdu after 22 hours of bus and train journeys with only 24 hours before our flight. As we haven't managed to get in anything 'typically' chinese this trip and by that i mean the terracota warriors or the great wall we were determined to make it to see the Panda's. The next morning we headed off with the tour and got to see the Panda's feeding, sooo cute! I got a little snap happy so there are a lot of pictures of this bit and then after a couple of hours the panda's went back to lounging and not doing a lot so we sped off to the airport, and by sped i mean crawled along at around 40 miles an hour on open motorways 😊

Last port of call

Shanghai
Yes so any of you who have looked at a map will realise that this route does not make sense! Well thats the price we pay for having booked both the flights without organising what goes on in the middle.
Shanghai itself is really quite a nice city, i think we were staying in the slumish area but it didn't really matter, we only really had one day and we ended up shopping for most of it, oops! Ended up buying a large bag two pairs of shoes a pair of fake uggs really very nicely done, and getting a new pair of glasses, the guy even did a proper sight test for me and everything.
To make sure we did a little more than just shopping we went to the 88th floor of the Jin mao observation tower, and from the height of 420m the view of the city was lovely, next onwards to vietnam!!

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Photos

Shanggri-La and Snow
Cold but beautiful

Little old man
It's amazing how hard the old people work out here, this man looked after the road side toilet, was amazingly friendly if a little strange

Daunting
I was a little worried when we came across this

I made it to the other side
Obvious though this may be, as i'm writing the blog!

And they think it's all over
We were overly hopeful this was part of the road on the way back that the little men in red hats were working on. I almost lost my camera and the girl in front almost fell of the cliff when the bit she was climbing round on gave way.

Aw
They just got cuter

The oriental pearl
Have to admit in the daytime the building lacked elegance but at night with the light on it really was impressive.

Snow topped moutains
This didn't get boring even after the 3 hour drive

Lake
Really Beautiful

Tiger leaping gorge the start
Actually this was about an hour in seeing as it's taken from a fair height and we started at ground level :)

Goats
They were definately doing a better job than me, in the background are a dutch couple that i treked with the first day.

I made it
Look a little too proud of myself here little did i realise we still had hours to go.

View from halfway house
This is what we started treking to, inspiring enough to get me moving despite the aches and pains from the day before.