Dali - Lijiang - and upcoming: Tibet! (China trip part II)

A small update from Lijiang. We arrived here just a few hours ago and basically went straight for an internet cafe. Today we finally booked our trip to Tibet!... and yes, we are very psyched. Since many people told us that booking a trip to tibet would either be very expensive, fully booked, or just almost impossible for foreigners at all due to new regulations, we didn't have too high hopes of getting there. However, in Dali we found our saviour with the name Jack!

Th story goes like this; We arrived in Dali at the 29th of June in the early morning. We had taken a overnight train from Kunming the night before. After arrival we walked around to find a hostel and found one with the name Tibetan lodge (or something). Dali is a very nice looking town, located near a big lake with mountains in de backdrop. When most would think of China, architecture like in Dali would probably come to mind. That morning we had breakfast and walked around to see what's offered. We found one place that offered horse riding tours through the mountains. So we decided to take one of them. One hour later we were taken to the horses and the trip started. And what a trip it was! I have never rode a horse before and it was a cool experience. The trip was really beautiful since the area hosts some nice scenery. Since we were on horses we came at places where no other tourist could be seen, to eventually reach some spots that are selected for tourists to visit. This was nice as well, but the horse trip made the biggest impression for sure! I was impressed by the horses I must say since the climb was real steap and for them to take us down must have been quite a task. But we made it back. The trip in total lasted for around 5 hours. A recommendation for sure!

That evening we had dinner and strolled around the city. In the back of our minds we wanted to find a way to get to Tibet overland. We found a few offers but all were either too expensive or the program didn't really appeal to us. By accident we found a small travel agency and decided to ask there. The guy, who hardly spoke english, presented us one option of a 10 day tour for 500 euros each. This sounded reasonable so we asked about the program. He then called his mate who spoke better English and we tried to get our questions across by means of the phone. Because this was a bit difficult he said we should come over to his office, which suprisingly we overlooked the first time we passed there. The guys name was Jack and he ended up being our hero of the day. His English was still not that great but enough to get the idea across. Because he only had a paper with the program in Chinese he tried to translate it for us. I got the basics and asked if we could take the paper with us. We then proceeded to the restaurant where we ate some hours before. One of the waiters spoke good English and we asked him if he could translate the program for us, while I was making notes. Thanks to him we got a good idea of what the program is. From one other guy we heard in the morning that the road was broken, so we didn't want to book the tour before that was cross checked. The next morning we heard that the road's fine and we decided to go and book the tour. Back at Jack's it took a while because we already booked a mini bus to Lijiang for the same evening. His brother has a office there and he had to make a few phone calls so that it could be settled that we will start the tour from there. After overcoming some minor issues we paid the deposit and went off. We bought the lonely planet of tibet, and rented a bike to make a trip to a little place some 20 km outside Dali. It was a nice day for a bike ride and the scenery was again not one of the worse I've ever seen.

Back at Dali we had dinner again and went to the place where we booked the mini bus. We had to wait for half an hour or so before it came and made our way to Lijiang. Upon our departure, Jack made another appearance, because he had to note down the number of the bus. His brother and a English speaking fellow would await us that evening to guide us to the hostel area and discuss the details about the trip. Jack sure put a lot of effort in it, and made sure that everything was taken care of. He gave us his number in case anything would go wrong. If we would decide not to do it, or something would be troublesome, we could always get our deposit back. This assured us that this was a good deal, and by now we really can't wait to get our asses in the jeep on the way to Tibet!

Right now I am at Lijiang as I mentioned and we will see if we can get a hiking trip across the local mountain area for a couple of days. A lot of travel agencies offer that kind of trip over here and people say it's well worth it, so that is definately a good way to pass the time untill our permits for Tibet are taken care off. Again I was not able to post pictures to illustrate the stories. The old city of Lijiang looks like a fairy tale city at night, I will definately try to make some good nighttime pictures here. Haven't seen it by day yet, but my guess is that it is equally impressive as well. A good place to have a little break from travelling around all the time. I will end this update here since I'm quite tired from everything that happened today. I will try to post within 5 days or so, after we did the hike and before I go to Tibet.

thank you, bye bye!