Dali (Yunnan Province)

The further south you travel the quieter it becomes and Dali is one of the quietest places I have come across, a little town in the mountains with Chinese minorities. However as soon as you enter the old part of town, it is heaving with western hippy travellers. Hippy Haven.

There are quaint little cobbled streets with huindreds of shops selling heavy baggy cotton clothes, little wooden hippy hostels and lots of cafes serving western and chinese food. An old chinese lady even tried to sell me drugs, her English was impressive as she whispered"you like to smoke ganja?" -under the pretence of selling me some handcrafted beadwork.

My willpower not to buy anything failed me as i was tempted by those colourful huge baggy very heavy and not very practical hippy clothes!!! And i bought my 4th pair of walking boots in the last 2 months in hte hope that this time they will be comfortable and fit properly.

The local food was delicious....I wouldn't eat anything western again, after the deliciuos local food. The local resaurants, away from the western crowds, have an assortment of fresh vegetables displayed outside their grim little 'front rooms'. You can chose whichever you fancy, take a very low stool at a low table, ghet a cup of green tea and within minutes the
vegetable had been fried up with some meat in a lovely spicy sauce. So we
had this 3 times a day. Yummy.....

We spent a day horseriding up the mountains. A local villager took us on a couple of horses up past little villages further up the mountain where women were washing their vegetables in the streams outside their little stone houses, then up through the farms of corn and fruit trees, up through a Chinese graveyard and then into wild pine forests. Aty the top we came to a
beatiful Taoist temple. The local gilrs were singing and dancing their traditional dances to make money and got us to join in. We ate some delicious local snacks while wondering around the temple.

The views from up here of the town down below the lake with islands and the surrounding mountains was stunning.

Spent the next day visiting some old untouched villages around the lake away from tourists and very relaxed. We spent the day with local people who were of the Bai minority and learnt a bit about their way of life and their traditions, clothes and food.