Zhongdian

---

Day 1

Rain Rain Rain. After leaving Lijiang we arrived at Zhongdian and all it did was rain rain rain. We ended up spending most of the time in the hostel just by the fireplace relaxing to local music. We did get to see a bit of the old town but it was limited due to the rain. We did recieve news though that anotehr Gapper would becoming to join us.

Day 2

Rain rain rain. Again all it did was rain but we did see a few temples around the place and a giant prayer wheel. The most awesome thing we found was this little cafe in the middle of the town. It had the best western food we had tasted in ages and the best hot chocolate, which was perfect when we were playing cards next to the fire place all afternoon, listening to Jack Johnson, yes Jack Johnson in China. Although after the 20th time listening to the song banana pancakes we were ready for anything else. We ended up just being indoors for this day aswell.

Day 3

Rain rain rain and Jess left. Jess said goodbye to us as she was going to meet up with some other Gappers in the Guanxi province which was south, the opposite way of our northwards directions. After our goodbye we ended up going to the Zhongdian buddhist monastry, which was amazing! It was huge you could get lost for ages. It was the biggest Buddhist monastry in China except for obviously Lhasa. It wasn't touristy in the slightest. The only annoying thing was that alot of it was getting re-built. But nethertheless it was great! The air was so clean and high up, monks would walk around prayer and we saw children chanting and practising to become monks. Probably the best thing I had seen so far in Yunnan. After spending half the day there we went back to the hostel and had an early night.

Day 4

Rain rain rain. Hannah's time was to go now. She was heading towards Hong Kong so she ended up saying goodbye and catching the bus to Kunming. That left the three of us to brave the rain and we attempted to go to this tourist hot springs. We got there by taxi, hated it and then we got strandrad in the cold and rain for 4 minutes. We eventually hailed down a small taxi and me and Lauren were in the back with no seat and we had to stand up. Later on the locals joined up making the journey really interesting. We had to contend with locals, chickens, umbrellas and rain. When we got back we went straight to the bus station to try and get a ticket to the Sichuan province but they said due to rain it caused land slides so we were stuck in ZHONGDIAN!

Day 5

No rain. But we finally got tickets for the next day to SIchuan. We ended up just spending the day playing cards next to the heater and packing our things to escape from here!

---

Photos

Inside the monastry
Tibetean Monk Art