Day 13-14, Dali town

The town was not named after famous Salvador Dali, I'm even quite sure he has never heard of it, but it's a kind of must-see place in Yunnan province (actually there is a cafe called Salvador Dali). Personally I wasn't that much impressed by this town, but we had quite nice time there. The town has a mountain range on one side and a huge lake on the other (Er Hai - Ear lake).

The ancient part of the town is surrounded by a square shaped city wall with 4 fancy gates on each side of an old town.














The town's main sightseeing in considered to be 3 pagodas, standing not far away from each other.














We could have taken a better picture, however to do that we needed to enter a park price entrance to which was I think over exaggerated, so we just took a picture from the distance.
A typical street of the town














In the evening we went for a tee in Tibetan style cafe with free wireless in the old town, and some very friendly cat just came and lay down next to Andrejs.



















Very interesting sight in Dali is a Christian church in China! We've been told that in Dali there are even 2 Christian churches, but we've seen just one. Inside is a big red Christian cross and on the wall of the church hangs a painting of Jesus Christ above the great wall of China, very interesting...


































What do you think it is? First I thought it's a compressed straw, but turned out to be sweet corn!














After watching an old town we decided to do some hiking in the mountains. To get to a cable car we took a ride on that kind of super car!














It was great! When the road is not smooth you jump up on every stone the super car drives over.
The cable car took us to the place where we were supposed to start hiking. Cable car was going really slow, even if it wasn't too far away, in total the ride took around 30 minutes.














The hiking path was 18 km long, and in our guide book it was written that this full 18 km hiking is for very ambitious hikers, but it appeared to be relatively easy, the track was always straight, no uphills or downhills. For those who accomplish this mission in the very end of the track will see a rather isolated Buddhist monastery hidden in the woods.
Some pictures from hiking.
























































Those mountains are on the foothills of Himalayas, and on 2600 m height mountains are not rocky, but rather covered with trees.
Buddhist monastery














In the very end of our hiking we met very friendly Chinese lady owning a cafe next to the cable car, who told us about the hiking we can do in Yunnan province and also shared a recipe of her delicious pancakes with strawberries.