OK, last night I wrote an awesome post about my time in Dao Cheng and Shangri-la... Well if my phone didn't update google chrome during my final touches of writing, it would be here. Half an hour of typing on my phone down the drain. So I have a bad case of Sisyphus right now because this is the third time I'm writing and now the quality will be low.
To summarize, DaoCheng was a modernized base town for going to the YaDing nature reserve. Well we didn't go because we wanted to go to Shangri-la. But because there is only one bus at 6am for and 11 hour journey, we didn't get 5 tickets until two more days. At least I got to buy Sichuan peppers (huajiao- flower pepper ). They taste and smell like perfume but zing the shit out of your tongue. Justin, these are for you.
I'm in Shangri-la now but it is no paradise inside a mountain like the ledgends and it is nothing like Uncharted. However it is very clean, modern, and has quite a lit of English signage and minority people. I've also eaten so much western food here it was a good break. Burger, pizza, scrambled eggs and hash browns, ice cream.... The yak burger at my hostel (N's kitchen and lodge) is delicious!
We're going to the tiger leaping gorge today for two more days. Than I'm headed to Lijiang without my group. I like being with everyone so it will be a bit of a jump going solo again. Now I have less than a month to travel and I'm not sure if I will see everything I wanted to. But by being with Tiia, Fabian, Aoffe, and Santiago, I have seen much more than what I would have by going into western Sichuan.
I have some anecdotes from the last few days that I want to add. I'm DaoCheng I saw a faceless stray cat. He looked really ratty but came up to people even though I'm really sure his eyes were burnt out. I couldn't believe someone could do that to a cat and that this cat was still strong enough to survive. But I was so upset that I couldn't do anything for him. That I couldn't take him in even with his disfigured face or take him to be put down. But later that day I met someone who had taken in a stray puppy and this puppy was the highlight of my day. It balanced out, even though the puppy still wanted to eat from the garbage.
Next, our bus driver hit a rabbit on the way to Shangri-la. The rabbit was still alive, in shock and thankfully not screaming. I think it had a broken hip but there was no blood. It could still twitch its legs so it was not paralyzed. Well I like how the driver actually brought the rabbit onto the bus because I can't blame him for wanting fresh rabbit(much to the dismay of a Chinese woman who had the whiniest whine ever in the history of whinny women). However I did not want the rabbit to be that uncomfortable on the bus so I took my scarf off and tied it around the rabbit's eyes so it would calm down. I had to redo it a few times on the trip as the mountain road was very bumpy. But after my caring work the driver ended up putting the rabbit in the hills a few hours later. I don't know why.
I know I can't help every creature I see on my trip but I will at least remember all of them. Especially the faceless cat.
In other news, Mexicans know how to dance and I like how the male dancing partner is the one that knows all the moves and the girl just follows. We had lots of fun jamming and dancing!
