The End of Days

Sometime after Christine and I had slinked off to bed, maybe an hour later, Jill, Lauren, Sarah, and Ariel left to get going for their plane back to Shanghai. They never did pay for that room, the tightwads! (Just teasing)

So when the rest of us woke up, it was decidedly more mellow. There was only four of us to worry about anymore, which meant that at any given point in time we would still only need a maximum of one taxi. Soon enough, we wouldn’t even be four, as one of the first things we had to do was take Jing to the train station so she could start going back home to her town of Shenzhen (I say town, but it has something like 15 million people living there).

Back at Cloudland, or, Resolution (no pictures, and short)

Our last morning in Dali was a short, simple and sweet one.

Dallying in Dali

So we woke up to another day, another dollar in Dali. Group B, the group leaving this day, were going to try to go to Erhai Lake to see cormorant fishing, or something like that. To do so, they were getting up pretty early, the rest of us were getting a milder start to our day so that we could further enjoy the rest of the day.

Dali Days (no pictures)

So we got up in the morning, after sleeping hard in the wake of the Gorge. We weren’t really in a rush to get going, so some people did a bit of last minute shopping in the Lijiang area, getting scarves and such. I looked around for one that I thought my mom would like, but the shopkeepers would only give me foreigner prices, and wouldn’t bargain down at all, so I gave it up, though I was able to find one cheap scarf that I thought would look good for myself. Aside from some Tibetan prayer flags I had bought at the marketplace in Shangri-la, these were the only souvenirs I had purchased so far.

Running the Tiger Leaping Gauntlet

We had another early start to the day.  I think we got up at about 6am or so, and we were going to get a van at 6:30 that had been arranged by Mama Naxi to get to the Gorge.  It would take about 2 hours to get to the North tip of the Gorge, so this would let us get a start by 8:30, 9am at the latest, which should give us plenty of time to get through before sundown.

Getting everyone out of bed was easier said than done, but it didn’t take too long to rouse the troops to get gathered up.  Mama Naxi was actually awake this time, which I was a bit worried about, since she had failed to do the same just the previous morning.  This time, though, there was money in it for her, so naturally she was up and at ‘em.  She was gloriously dressed in her PJs, and had no idea where her driver was.

Lijiang at Your Leisure

Surprisingly, even though the events of the previous night/morning had left me with a scant amount of sleep, I felt good and ready to go this morning.  Maybe it was that shower that was the first in almost a week? In any event, we got everyone up relatively early, and most of us kinda wended our ways for the day.

On the Road Again, Just Can't Wait to Get On the Road Again..

The bus ride from Shangri-la to Lijiang was kind of enlightening.  It was a bit strange, knowing we had passed all of this scenery once before, but having been asleep prior, so seeing it anew for the second time.

There weren’t a lot of memories from the ride itself, I tried to doze off through as much of it as possible, using Christine’s shoulder and the window beside me alternatively as headrests, and mostly failing. The first memory I have, distinct, after getting on the bus, is getting off it at a terrible rest stop.

As was usually the case, this meant ice cream for me.  For once, it mean ice cream for people other than me, too, and a good amount of stretching for everyone.

Soul Searching in Shangri-La pt. III

Sorry, two weeks of shoddy internet activity plus sharing my computer with some friends while they worked on their finals prevented me from being able to keep tearing through this stuff.  Now, though, almost everyone I know in Shanghai has returned, more or less, to the United States, and I therefore have far too much time on my hands.

So, we woke up on Sunday.  I guess the shocking events of the previous night wiped me out, as I actually did manage to get enough sleep such that when I woke up, it was all systems go.