China Day 5: Dali to Shangri-La

Wake up in the morning for an 8:00 Tai Chi lesson on the North Gate. The juxtaposition of James against our instructor is hilarious; James is a guy of about 6" from Wales and our instructor barely makes 5". It would have made a great photo, too bad I was in my "I take too many pictures and feel too much like a tourist" phase. Our lesson lasted a full two hours and we learned a sequence of movements, stopping for many and learning how they are used for self-defense. The movements themselves are very fluid and slow moving, but they are to be done with resistance to strengthen and train the muscles in the proper way to move when defending oneself. In the actual defense situation, the moves are to be executed with force, of course.

10:00 rolls around and the UK boys show up for their Kung Fu lesson. James and I head back to the hostel to pick up our backpacks and make a quick run to the bus stop which leaves at 11:00 I think. Hop on the bus and enjoy a lengthy bus ride to Shangri-La, passing the Tiger Leaping Gorge on the way and myself thinking if I really want to be missing out on such a great thing.

We arrive in Shangri-La and have absolutely no idea where we are or what we are doing. We have no clue where Kawa Karpo is, how far it takes us to get there, or even what bus to take. We don't even know where the center of Shangri-La is, or where the travelers hang out, or what there is to do there. After about five minutes all I know is that there are a ton of little green cars that only have three wheels.

A man who seems very nice and sincere says he's got a place for us to stay, and seeing as we really don't know where else to go, or how to ask anyone since nobody speaks English, we follow him to a nice little hotel about 30 seconds from the bus station. Our room has a great view. We take a walk around the city to find a place to use the internet, and all the while I'm wondering if we are actually in the right place. I thought Shangri-La was supposed to be this magical place described in James Hilton's novel The Lost Horizon? I thought it was considered the "Entrance to Tibet?" This doesn't seem magical at all, and I don't see any sign of Tibet anywhere except for shop signs that are in Tibetan (and very poorly translated English). It's just a big city, albeit one with pool tables in every other shop and people playing on the sidewalks.

As we walk we discuss renting a motorbike and just hitting the road to Kawa Karpo on our own. Sounds like tons of fun, but we don't know where we are going, plus there's no motorbike rental anywhere. We find a place that looks promising for internet, though. Its got rows and rows of fancy computers with huge flatscreen monitors and shiny red tabletops that are all sparkly. There are headsets at every computer. A man walks up to us and pours James a beer and gives me a glass of water. And then I realize... this is a gaming place. Oh boy. But internet is internet and for once we have nice computers with a fast connection. So we gather all the information we can on the trek, which isn't much, and then head back to the hotel and make a stop at the bus staion to get tickets for the first bus in the morning. We luck out and meet a Chinese woman who speaks pretty good English who just did the trek and tells us how to get there. We buy two bus tickets to DeQin, which we are told is about four hours away, and Kawa Karpo is another two on top of that. We expect to get started on our trek by 1:00 and make it halfway before dark, then finish up the following day and make it back to Lijiang that night and have quite a bit of time at the Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Back to the hotel and watch our favorite Scottish weathergirl on CCTV before hitting the lights for the night.