HOME | DD

Description
The end of the trail for me today as I reach a large area of construction work in the Cangshan above Dali, preventing me from climbing any higher on this route. These are the cottages of the rock-breaking crew on the slopes of Langfeng.

Day 94 - Tuesday 28 April

Dali

I had a much better sleep last night, the mysterious tightness in my chest having disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived, but there had been a couple of interruptions. The first came at about two o’clock when the Dutch guy came in. The power was back on again by this time, and his entrance caused the Australian girl to complain vociferously, asking him to turn the light off again in no uncertain terms. But he didn’t exactly rush to comply with her request and it must have been fifteen minutes before the lights did go out, during which time the other two occupants of the room, both of whom had colds, started spluttering and sneezing. And it was those two who woke me again at five-thirty when they got up and began to pack as though leaving, once again coughing and sneezing in quite alarming fashion. And then at half past seven the Dutch guy woke up and also started hacking and coughing. There was no way that I could get back to sleep now and I got up myself at eight o’clock. With all these people with colds all around me I felt that it was a certainty that I would catch one. I realised later in the day that I had, and I decided that I would move to a single room. I discovered that this would cost me ¥24, which I thought was reasonable. I handed over my cash and began to transfer my belongings to my new room on the second floor. It was actually a double room with a large and comfortable double bed and a lovely view of the Cangshan, not that I planned to spend much time in the room admiring the view.

That done I went to the Tibetan Café for breakfast before setting off on my day’s hike at ten o’clock. I had decided that I would go first to Heilongtan (Black Dragon Pool), although none of the guide books said how to get there, SWC just vaguely alluding to it on the map of the Er Hai region. I bought a copy of the local map of the area, for the outrageous price of two kuai, which indicated that there was a road all the way up to Heilongtan, passing Wuweisi on the way. It was not easy to tell exactly where this road might be, however, especially once I began trying to reconcile what the maps were telling me with the reality of what my eyes were seeing. After a while of walking northwards on the main road I thought it was about time that I should have come across this mysterious road. I stopped at one dirt track leading off to my left, thinking that I could vaguely see a building on the hillside in the distance that might conceivably be a temple, and a line of red earth that might be a road of some description. I asked one of the Bai women working in the fields if this were the way to Wuweisi and Heilongtan, and although she told me that it was I was not entirely convinced.

I continued along this rocky lane between fields, heading towards a village that I could now see ahead of me. The village, when I reached it, was inhabited entirely by the Bai people and was a really quaint old place of stone houses, cobbled streets and large numbers of old people. The old men sat in the shadows of their stone houses and communal buildings in their blue Mao suits and smoking pipes whilst the old ladies helped their daughters and granddaughters with the washing of vegetables for the midday meal. I asked some of the younger members of the community for the way to Wuweisi. For the most part the responses to my question consisted simply of laughter and the occasional hello, but one of them did confirm that I was on the right track.

I continued on through the village until reaching a marble cutting establishment beside a track that ran through some fields, parallel to the main road below. I could now see that the strips of red earth on the hillsides a little further to the north-west were clearly a path of some kind, maybe even a road. I walked along this track until I reached what could be described either as a very rocky road or the bed of a temporarily dry stream, running between the hills above me and the main road below. I turned left up the hill and stopped at another marble-cutters to ask the way again. The man inside the wooden shack pointed rather aimlessly up the hill, agreeing that this would take me to Wuweisi, but the concept of Heilongtan seemed to be beyond his comprehension.

I walked on up the track, which quickly degenerated into nothing more than rocky, barren land once I had cleared the village. I continued ascending until I found myself looking down on what I could now see was definitely a dry stream bed some thirty feet below me. I paused here for a drink and to try to get my bearings with the aid of my compass and the rather inadequate maps that I had at my disposal, and then resumed my ascent until finding a point at which I could traverse another stream, this time with water in it. From there I tracked up and down across several hills until eventually reaching the red path that I had sighted earlier. After ten minutes of climbing this rather steep path I arrived at a point where I was looking down upon what was quite obviously Wuweisi. From this distance it did not appear to be very impressive excepting that it was in a really lovely setting amongst the sweet smelling pine trees on the hillsides. I sat down for another drink and took a photograph of the temple but decided not to bother going down to inspect it more closely.

From the temple I had been able to see a fairly broad dirt track ascending the hillside, which I now presumed to be the elusive road that I had been looking for, and after another ten minutes of climbing I met up with it. The road scaled the hillsides in very gentle and gradual fashion, and I decided that it would be a lot easier and probably just as quick to stick to the road rather than take to the steep paths that climbed the hillside and which eliminated the sweeping hairpin bends of the road. Although it was by now a very hot day it was a pleasant enough walk up the often very rough road, climbing through the pine forests and the brilliant red wild flowers of these mid-levels. There were splendid views below of the villages, the white towers of Santa, the town of Dali and Er Hai beyond, although the latter was quite hazy. I continued to climb, sure that at any minute I would turn a corner to be greeted by the welcoming sight of Heilongtan. Every so often I heard the loud booming sounds that had been a feature of my sojourn in Dali, and it seemed obvious that the mountains were being systematically dynamited to remove yet more raw materials for the countless marble cutters of the region.

At around one o’clock I reached a significant point in the day’s excursion. It was not, as I had hoped, Heilongtan but what appeared to be the site of a massive quarrying operation. There were lots of trucks parked along the roadside and many stone-built dwellings clinging to the hillsides, presumably to accommodate the workers that I could see all over the hills. Some of those hillsides had huge holes and scars on them where they had been blasted to remove the rock. I carried on climbing along the road until I reached a point where it came to an abrupt end at the foot of a steep valley of loose rock. Towering above me was a ridge of high mountains and, at the very head of the valley, a series of white snow pockets and narrow waterfalls. I asked some of the stone-breakers where I could find Heilongtan and they pointed way above me, to a point somewhere between the very top of the ridge and the top of the steep scree slope at the foot of which they were working. In hindsight they may have even meant that it was beyond the ridge. Feeling somewhat dismayed, having been badly misled by the information that I had available to me, I began to ascend the scree slope, but the rock beneath my feet was so loose that I decided discretion was definitely the better part of valour in this case and abandoned my quest to get to the Black Dragon Pool after about fifteen precarious minutes.

I stopped to rest beside another group of stone-breakers and then set about trying to descend the slippery slope by tracking back and forth across it in order to minimise the gradient as much as possible and thereby reducing the risk of falling. Even that was not easy, however, for I had to walk across a combination of large chunks of marble and much smaller and more slippery dirt and gravel. I was also constantly worried that one of the workers above me was going to empty his wheelbarrow full of stones onto one of the debris-laden slopes and trigger a minor landslide that would either engulf me or carry me down to the road again in a much quicker manner than I cared to think about. In all it must have taken me at least an hour to negotiate my way carefully back to the road where all the trucks were parked. Luckily I managed to escape relatively unscathed, with just a few minor scratches to my hands and a broken fingernail to show for it. I rested there for ten minutes and then set off back down the road again, pausing only to wash my dirty hands in an icy cold mountain stream.

For a while I stuck to the road as I had on the ascent, but then decided to try a few of the short cuts. They were desperately steep and slippery in places and in no time my feet were taking an uncomfortable degree of punishment. I abandoned that idea and remained on the road, the extra pain of the precipitous off-road descents far outweighed by the additional distance that was required by sticking to the road. Upon reaching the turn-off for Wuweisi I continued straight down, either by road or by track, until I arrived at the point where I now realised I could have turned off this morning. From hereon I kept to the road, although the lower it went the less of a road it became. By the time I began reaching the villages and tea plantations, particularly poor looking examples it has to be said after the splendours of the Cameron Highlands, the road had degenerated into an unbelievably rocky trail that was absolute murder on my poor, aching feet.

Finally, at half past four, I made it back to the main road, emerging somewhere between where I had left it this morning and Santa. Under no circumstances would I possibly have imagined that this was the route that I should have taken earlier. The half hour walk from there back to the hotel was completed on something akin to automatic pilot, my feet taking each step without any apparent connection to my brain. Back in Dali I bought two large bottles of fizzy drinks and then flopped down on my comfortable new bed to remove my steaming boots and socks, read, and drink the contents of the first bottle of pop.

By seven o’clock I felt sufficiently recovered to feel like facing the showers. Thankfully the water was hot. I returned, now feeling much better, and wrote my diary until eight-thirty, at which time I went out for dinner at, guess where, the Tibetan Café. So crowded was it inside tonight that I had to sit at a table outside on the pavement with Joe, the American who worked there, and one of his compatriots, Frank from New Mexico. I had a very nice pizza with tomato and cheese topping and a couple of bottles of beer before returning to my room at ten o’clock to complete the day’s diary entry. I had finished by a quarter past eleven and I then read until twelve-thirty before deciding that it was time to bring an extremely tiring day to a close.

Description
The end of the trail for me today as I reach a large area of construction work in the Cangshan above Dali, preventing me from climbing any higher on this route. These are the cottages of the rock-breaking crew on the slopes of Langfeng.

Day 94 - Tuesday 28 April

Dali

I had a much better sleep last night, the mysterious tightness in my chest having disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived, but there had been a couple of interruptions. The first came at about two o’clock when the Dutch guy came in. The power was back on again by this time, and his entrance caused the Australian girl to complain vociferously, asking him to turn the light off again in no uncertain terms. But he didn’t exactly rush to comply with her request and it must have been fifteen minutes before the lights did go out, during which time the other two occupants of the room, both of whom had colds, started spluttering and sneezing. And it was those two who woke me again at five-thirty when they got up and began to pack as though leaving, once again coughing and sneezing in quite alarming fashion. And then at half past seven the Dutch guy woke up and also started hacking and coughing. There was no way that I could get back to sleep now and I got up myself at eight o’clock. With all these people with colds all around me I felt that it was a certainty that I would catch one. I realised later in the day that I had, and I decided that I would move to a single room. I discovered that this would cost me ¥24, which I thought was reasonable. I handed over my cash and began to transfer my belongings to my new room on the second floor. It was actually a double room with a large and comfortable double bed and a lovely view of the Cangshan, not that I planned to spend much time in the room admiring the view.

That done I went to the Tibetan Café for breakfast before setting off on my day’s hike at ten o’clock. I had decided that I would go first to Heilongtan (Black Dragon Pool), although none of the guide books said how to get there, SWC just vaguely alluding to it on the map of the Er Hai region. I bought a copy of the local map of the area, for the outrageous price of two kuai, which indicated that there was a road all the way up to Heilongtan, passing Wuweisi on the way. It was not easy to tell exactly where this road might be, however, especially once I began trying to reconcile what the maps were telling me with the reality of what my eyes were seeing. After a while of walking northwards on the main road I thought it was about time that I should have come across this mysterious road. I stopped at one dirt track leading off to my left, thinking that I could vaguely see a building on the hillside in the distance that might conceivably be a temple, and a line of red earth that might be a road of some description. I asked one of the Bai women working in the fields if this were the way to Wuweisi and Heilongtan, and although she told me that it was I was not entirely convinced.

I continued along this rocky lane between fields, heading towards a village that I could now see ahead of me. The village, when I reached it, was inhabited entirely by the Bai people and was a really quaint old place of stone houses, cobbled streets and large numbers of old people. The old men sat in the shadows of their stone houses and communal buildings in their blue Mao suits and smoking pipes whilst the old ladies helped their daughters and granddaughters with the washing of vegetables for the midday meal. I asked some of the younger members of the community for the way to Wuweisi. For the most part the responses to my question consisted simply of laughter and the occasional hello, but one of them did confirm that I was on the right track.

I continued on through the village until reaching a marble cutting establishment beside a track that ran through some fields, parallel to the main road below. I could now see that the strips of red earth on the hillsides a little further to the north-west were clearly a path of some kind, maybe even a road. I walked along this track until I reached what could be described either as a very rocky road or the bed of a temporarily dry stream, running between the hills above me and the main road below. I turned left up the hill and stopped at another marble-cutters to ask the way again. The man inside the wooden shack pointed rather aimlessly up the hill, agreeing that this would take me to Wuweisi, but the concept of Heilongtan seemed to be beyond his comprehension.

I walked on up the track, which quickly degenerated into nothing more than rocky, barren land once I had cleared the village. I continued ascending until I found myself looking down on what I could now see was definitely a dry stream bed some thirty feet below me. I paused here for a drink and to try to get my bearings with the aid of my compass and the rather inadequate maps that I had at my disposal, and then resumed my ascent until finding a point at which I could traverse another stream, this time with water in it. From there I tracked up and down across several hills until eventually reaching the red path that I had sighted earlier. After ten minutes of climbing this rather steep path I arrived at a point where I was looking down upon what was quite obviously Wuweisi. From this distance it did not appear to be very impressive excepting that it was in a really lovely setting amongst the sweet smelling pine trees on the hillsides. I sat down for another drink and took a photograph of the temple but decided not to bother going down to inspect it more closely.

From the temple I had been able to see a fairly broad dirt track ascending the hillside, which I now presumed to be the elusive road that I had been looking for, and after another ten minutes of climbing I met up with it. The road scaled the hillsides in very gentle and gradual fashion, and I decided that it would be a lot easier and probably just as quick to stick to the road rather than take to the steep paths that climbed the hillside and which eliminated the sweeping hairpin bends of the road. Although it was by now a very hot day it was a pleasant enough walk up the often very rough road, climbing through the pine forests and the brilliant red wild flowers of these mid-levels. There were splendid views below of the villages, the white towers of Santa, the town of Dali and Er Hai beyond, although the latter was quite hazy. I continued to climb, sure that at any minute I would turn a corner to be greeted by the welcoming sight of Heilongtan. Every so often I heard the loud booming sounds that had been a feature of my sojourn in Dali, and it seemed obvious that the mountains were being systematically dynamited to remove yet more raw materials for the countless marble cutters of the region.

At around one o’clock I reached a significant point in the day’s excursion. It was not, as I had hoped, Heilongtan but what appeared to be the site of a massive quarrying operation. There were lots of trucks parked along the roadside and many stone-built dwellings clinging to the hillsides, presumably to accommodate the workers that I could see all over the hills. Some of those hillsides had huge holes and scars on them where they had been blasted to remove the rock. I carried on climbing along the road until I reached a point where it came to an abrupt end at the foot of a steep valley of loose rock. Towering above me was a ridge of high mountains and, at the very head of the valley, a series of white snow pockets and narrow waterfalls. I asked some of the stone-breakers where I could find Heilongtan and they pointed way above me, to a point somewhere between the very top of the ridge and the top of the steep scree slope at the foot of which they were working. In hindsight they may have even meant that it was beyond the ridge. Feeling somewhat dismayed, having been badly misled by the information that I had available to me, I began to ascend the scree slope, but the rock beneath my feet was so loose that I decided discretion was definitely the better part of valour in this case and abandoned my quest to get to the Black Dragon Pool after about fifteen precarious minutes.

I stopped to rest beside another group of stone-breakers and then set about trying to descend the slippery slope by tracking back and forth across it in order to minimise the gradient as much as possible and thereby reducing the risk of falling. Even that was not easy, however, for I had to walk across a combination of large chunks of marble and much smaller and more slippery dirt and gravel. I was also constantly worried that one of the workers above me was going to empty his wheelbarrow full of stones onto one of the debris-laden slopes and trigger a minor landslide that would either engulf me or carry me down to the road again in a much quicker manner than I cared to think about. In all it must have taken me at least an hour to negotiate my way carefully back to the road where all the trucks were parked. Luckily I managed to escape relatively unscathed, with just a few minor scratches to my hands and a broken fingernail to show for it. I rested there for ten minutes and then set off back down the road again, pausing only to wash my dirty hands in an icy cold mountain stream.

For a while I stuck to the road as I had on the ascent, but then decided to try a few of the short cuts. They were desperately steep and slippery in places and in no time my feet were taking an uncomfortable degree of punishment. I abandoned that idea and remained on the road, the extra pain of the precipitous off-road descents far outweighed by the additional distance that was required by sticking to the road. Upon reaching the turn-off for Wuweisi I continued straight down, either by road or by track, until I arrived at the point where I now realised I could have turned off this morning. From hereon I kept to the road, although the lower it went the less of a road it became. By the time I began reaching the villages and tea plantations, particularly poor looking examples it has to be said after the splendours of the Cameron Highlands, the road had degenerated into an unbelievably rocky trail that was absolute murder on my poor, aching feet.

Finally, at half past four, I made it back to the main road, emerging somewhere between where I had left it this morning and Santa. Under no circumstances would I possibly have imagined that this was the route that I should have taken earlier. The half hour walk from there back to the hotel was completed on something akin to automatic pilot, my feet taking each step without any apparent connection to my brain. Back in Dali I bought two large bottles of fizzy drinks and then flopped down on my comfortable new bed to remove my steaming boots and socks, read, and drink the contents of the first bottle of pop.

By seven o’clock I felt sufficiently recovered to feel like facing the showers. Thankfully the water was hot. I returned, now feeling much better, and wrote my diary until eight-thirty, at which time I went out for dinner at, guess where, the Tibetan Café. So crowded was it inside tonight that I had to sit at a table outside on the pavement with Joe, the American who worked there, and one of his compatriots, Frank from New Mexico. I had a very nice pizza with tomato and cheese topping and a couple of bottles of beer before returning to my room at ten o’clock to complete the day’s diary entry. I had finished by a quarter past eleven and I then read until twelve-thirty before deciding that it was time to bring an extremely tiring day to a close.