Sep 16th 22:48 Derong Taiyanggu Hotel
Its been a very long day – we drove for about 13 hours. Met up at 6am (it was still very dark and completely quiet), had hot breakfast at the only place that opens in the entire town and left Ya Jiang at 6:25am. We were almost the only vehicle on the road and it was quite easy to drive. We had to drive over a big mountain (Jian Zi Mountain) in order to get to Li Tang. Took us about three and half hours. Li Tang is at an altitude of over 4000 meter which would make it difficult to stay overnight. A beautiful river Na Qu was following us the whole way till Xiang Cheng, however, we were really sad to see the constructions along the river – they are building several hydro stations all the way till Xiang Cheng, which means all this breathtaking scenery will be gone in 1-2 years.
This is not just happening here, but all over China: because of the economic development and financial benefits, more and more nature is being destroyed – Three-Gorge is the best example. However, what can we do? Economic development and environmental protection seem to be always contradictory, even in Europe now, a lot of things are being changed after the financial crisis in order to cut cost. We all feel so sad, but what we can do is so limited. All we can do at the moment is to take a lot of pictures hoping to keep the beauty in our memory…
We were very pleasantly surprised to see Xiang Cheng: it is a lot bigger and a lot more beautiful than we expected – situated in the middle of the valley, back to the mountain and facing the river. Unfortunately a lot will change after the dams are built.
We stopped at Sang Dui, a little Tibetan village for lunch, where we had delicious egg noodle. The hostess was very friendly and spoke great Mandarin. Gao and Jie again really enjoyed the butter tea and also took some with them.
Although we drove a lot today, the road condition was mostly very good, especially comparing with yesterday, so we could drive at about 40-50KM/hr, and the scenery was so amazingly beautiful – we always felt that we were inside a picture. Because this path is not common at all among tourists, most villages along the way are really original which is hard to find nowadays. We passed by many small Tibetan villages and people were mostly friendly: Gao said this would be quite rare in Tibet since local people there have changed so much in the past 15 years since he went there for the first time in 1994.
From Xiang Cheng to De Rong is especially beautiful, no, beautiful cannot even describe it anymore: I truly believe this is the region of Shangri-la because it is just so pure, so untouched, we want to come back again…hopefully it wont change that much…
De Rong is a small town and there is only one hotel. Because all rooms were occupied by a Lama group, we had to share a suite which turned out to be perfect: with two bathrooms and two rooms, it was actually cheaper than individual rooms:)
Dinner was again at a very small place by the main street in old town, but so delicious: there is not menu, we just go inside the kitchen and pick what to cook. It was like a meal made at home. People were extremely friendly too. What a perfect day!
Tomorrow we are going to Zhong Dian – Shangrila. Its going to be great…