China: Day 4 - The Cangshang mountains - On Elements of Nature

“If you’ve seen one redwood tree, you’ve seen them all.” – Ronald Reagan

I was never too keen to go up the mountains. I have an aversion to watching nature in strange lands. Strange lands are strange only because of the strange people who occupy them and their strange cultures. Nature often ends up uniting, rather than dividing. A common denominator that is often shared between multiple nations and cultures.

Case in point - ALL mountains are colder than the plains. Everyone of them. Without exception. Throw in a couple of trees, some waterfalls, a lot of tourists with cameras, and you got yourself how most mountains in most countries look. And here it wasn't any different.

But P insisted on seeing the Cangshang mountains, from her deeply entrenched desire to not have any regrets in her life. So we went up the mountains. Dali was cold and we assumed the mountains were colder. In our zest to trek to obscure locations on the mountain, we bundled ourselves up in multiple layers of clothing.

Five is the magic number. It is the maximum layers you can wear without feeling uncomfortable and still be warm in single digit temperatures. It is the number of layers that can make scrawny little me actually looked rather muscular. It is also the number of layers which make trekking impossible. The weight pulls you down, and when the sun comes out late morning, you wish you were somewhere else. The cold ice-capped peaks of the mountains seem inviting.

So we didn't really trek. We watched the Chinese tourists and the enthusiasm with which they pose for the cameras. And then we attempted to mimic them. We could never pull it off, the Chinese enthusiasm far exceeding even the Gujarati tourists we see in India.

Many of the Chinese were fascinated by us Indians. The ones who spoke English ventured to take photographs with us, and we graciously agreed. Our photographs probably lie on some Chinese's albums with the tag 'Strange Indu People'.

We came back early, tired and a little bored, buying a cheap wooden Bai sword on the way back for AG. The back-story for this purchase went some thing like the following -

Me : So would you like something from China?
AG : A Samurai sword
Me : That's ****ing Japanese
AG : Then get me a cheap Chinese knock-off

And so it was.

We head out to the Erhai lake across the city the afternoon. We stood there, pretending to be in deep contemplation, as we watched the clear waters and the many ducks.  The lake is supposed to lie next to many historical places. But we didn't really care for that. P stared into the distance with a look of profundity, while I took photographs of ducks. The highlight of this lake, which we never took because we were too lazy to care but hope others will, was a boat ride to a Bai village.

We head back to Dali Old Town for the rest of the evening. Here we were finally cheated by a taxi driver who left us at the 'Cultural Building' when we wanted to go the 'Wuhua Building'. We couldn't complain. It didn't really matter. This building looks as gorgeous as any other building.

We arrived back and walked through the local streets, stared at goth Chinese girls, and 'sign language''d our way through the market place. Here we sat amongst the locals, and clumsily ate spicy, oily cup noodles with chopsticks. Then overpriced fried rice. Then skewers. Then fried bananas and grass.

Post-binging on street food, we retired early. Sat back in the hotel room drinking Dali beer and watching melodramatic Chinese films and documentaries without subtitles.

And so ended our last night in Dali. I do miss the place. *Sigh*.