Yunnan Day 5 - Dali to Lijiang

In the morning we wandered around Dali Old Town and did some shopping, then we went back to the hotel to wait for the minibus to pick us up to take us to the bus to Lijiang. Just before we were due to leave, a bunch of Oxfam Challenge cyclists from Australia arrived at the hotel. They were all very stoked, I think they had just finished the last cycling leg of their tour around Yunnan, during which they rode more than 400km. They had to each raise $5000 to go on the trip.

The bus ride to Lijiang was interesting, there was a gradual change in soil type and agriculture as we drove higher through the mountains. The train trip from Kunming to Dali had stayed at approximately the same altitude, but the bus went up and down over the mountains. The roads were quite narrow at times and there was not much distance between the wheels and great gulping rivines. However, the driver was actually very good, and seemed to know when it was a good time to do blind passes of slower vehicles (!!##).

We went to a Naxi restaurant for dinner. The Naxi are the local minority here. Fried cheese was again a specialty.