Friday morning we got up in Dali, had our breakfast at the hotel, and started on our three-hour drive to Shaxi village. About an hour and a half into our trip we pulled over at a roadside restaurant, had lunch, and met our new tour guide, Evan. After introductions and a hurried round of Oreo-purchasing at the gas station nearby, we set off for another leg of our journey. We had been warned that this part of the car ride might be a bit, well, bothersome if you tend to get motion sickness, but that didn’t end up being a problem for anyone. Instead, we were able to enjoy the view from the windows as the road snaked its way around the sides of the mountain.
When we arrived in the village we got out to begin walking towards the hotel we would be staying at for the next two days, the Shaxi Guesthouse. Because we had arrived on a Friday, the streets were filled with vendors for the day’s market. Every Friday, many people come into the town to buy any number of things, from meat to cream puffs (more on those later) to dresses. Then there was the guesthouse itself, which contained a quiet little courtyard where the family who owned the place lived, a restaurant, and maybe ten or fifteen rooms. The rooms Ms. Lockrow and I got were apparently brand-new, and really quite nice (on the car ride up we had found out that there were four rooms instead of the usual three, so Dareus and Timmy played a round of rock, paper, and scissors for the extra single). We walked around the open-air market a bit, got some dinner, and stumbled across this delicious bakery with cakes and cream puffs alike. Certain members of the group (I won’t name names) became slightly obsessed with the cream puffs.
The next day we got up more or less at eight, and we headed off to have breakfast. Up until this point in the trip, our breakfasts had mostly been western-style breakfasts- toast, eggs, pancakes, etc. The restaurant we went to in Shaxi, however, served noodles or dumplings for breakfast, and they were good, and spicy. From there we headed out to go and see some grottoes about an hour away by car, all the way up in the mountains. They were gorgeous, and some of them were hundreds of years old. Many of the statues of Buddha were Indian style, but most were Chinese-style Buddhas. I do wish we had been able to take pictures of them, though the signs asked us not to, as they are culturally important sites.
After the grottoes we started our trek back down from the mountains, which was long, but absolutely stunning. The path itself was a long stone pathway with stairs placed intermittently (more often than not, actually), and once and a while there was another grotto or a terrace from which you could see into the valley perfectly. The view from those spots was… well, incredible. It was a clear, bluebird day, and you could see the entire valley from our spot, with its 44,000 people, though our particular village had around 800. An hour and forty-five minutes, a few rickety bridges, and a road later, we returned back to the hotel to collect Dareus (who hadn’t been able to do the walk back, his feet were so bad) in time for lunch. We had some quiet time in the hotel after that, and later that evening, went pastry hunting once more. We finished off the day in a kind of perfect way, on top of the roof, overlooking the quiet valley, with, of course, cream puffs.
When we arrived in the village we got out to begin walking towards the hotel we would be staying at for the next two days, the Shaxi Guesthouse. Because we had arrived on a Friday, the streets were filled with vendors for the day’s market. Every Friday, many people come into the town to buy any number of things, from meat to cream puffs (more on those later) to dresses. Then there was the guesthouse itself, which contained a quiet little courtyard where the family who owned the place lived, a restaurant, and maybe ten or fifteen rooms. The rooms Ms. Lockrow and I got were apparently brand-new, and really quite nice (on the car ride up we had found out that there were four rooms instead of the usual three, so Dareus and Timmy played a round of rock, paper, and scissors for the extra single). We walked around the open-air market a bit, got some dinner, and stumbled across this delicious bakery with cakes and cream puffs alike. Certain members of the group (I won’t name names) became slightly obsessed with the cream puffs.
The next day we got up more or less at eight, and we headed off to have breakfast. Up until this point in the trip, our breakfasts had mostly been western-style breakfasts- toast, eggs, pancakes, etc. The restaurant we went to in Shaxi, however, served noodles or dumplings for breakfast, and they were good, and spicy. From there we headed out to go and see some grottoes about an hour away by car, all the way up in the mountains. They were gorgeous, and some of them were hundreds of years old. Many of the statues of Buddha were Indian style, but most were Chinese-style Buddhas. I do wish we had been able to take pictures of them, though the signs asked us not to, as they are culturally important sites.
After the grottoes we started our trek back down from the mountains, which was long, but absolutely stunning. The path itself was a long stone pathway with stairs placed intermittently (more often than not, actually), and once and a while there was another grotto or a terrace from which you could see into the valley perfectly. The view from those spots was… well, incredible. It was a clear, bluebird day, and you could see the entire valley from our spot, with its 44,000 people, though our particular village had around 800. An hour and forty-five minutes, a few rickety bridges, and a road later, we returned back to the hotel to collect Dareus (who hadn’t been able to do the walk back, his feet were so bad) in time for lunch. We had some quiet time in the hotel after that, and later that evening, went pastry hunting once more. We finished off the day in a kind of perfect way, on top of the roof, overlooking the quiet valley, with, of course, cream puffs.
2 comments:
Nice job on the blog post, Caitlin! Everyone else, too.
Keep them coming!
You go girl, bring me some gluten free cream puffs
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