Shangri-la was not the kind of place we had expected. It means "home of the dreams" in chinese and its suppose to symbolise an idyllic and perfect place but after the beautiful and tiny town of Litang it turned out to look like any other chinese city. Hence from now on we shall call it by its chinese name Zhongdian. Apparently the scenery around it is beautiful but we had no need to go out of our way for sceneries since the amazing ride through the backdoor had offered us more than enough.

We decided to take on huge step drive straight to Ancient city of Dali skipping Lijang and Tiger Leaping Gorge coz hiked enough and our visas have twelve days left. We didn't want anymore shallow experiences of cities. (We plan on using rest of our time in Dali) The ride was the most boring so far because the roads were wery good. Altough Mat succeeded in crashing once again bringin the score to 1 for me and 5 for Mat. :D

We carry no map with us so every now and then we have to stop to ask for directions "LOCAL" people :) Somewhere along the way  near to the junction of Lijang and Dali I picked it up a notch coz there was a lovely serpentine road ahead and left Mat behind. I got to the junction that Dali was straight ahead and not to the left and I waited for Mat but he never came. At this point he had only fallen for four times so according to statistics he was bound to fall again. :D Ofcourse I was getting worried and all these horror scenarios kept running through my head. So I drove back to the last place I saw him but he wasn't there. "What the hell I guess I'll just carry on alone then."

Ass pig takes the keyboard for his own account 

So there I was. Eating up Mikis dust and watching his dissapearing to the distance. I went past the junction and took a left not noticing that Miki was waiting for me there. I drove for nearly an hour and kept asking people the directions to Dali and everyone said continue this road forvards until at some point some old man said that its the opposite direction. "DAM!" I thought, I should have gone srtaight from the junction as my instincts had told me before. So now I knew that I'm way behind Miki and so I put the pedal to the metal. I went too fast to this one turn and it all happened so fast before I knew it and I was sliding on the tar with Redcat as I named my motorbike. (Mikis bike was named Tash'dele.) I got small bruises on knee and elbow. First thing I thought was "FUCK, not again. the score is 5 to 1 now." and stared laughing. :D All this falling is turning humorous "Huumoritouhua"

Maybe im not in that hurry after all coz I wanna get to Dali in one piece.. After few hours of driving it became dark and with my headlight busted I was in deep shit. :D I had no idea where I was and not knowing wether I had past Dali already but I kept driving this time trusting on my isntincts. I passed a building that seemed like a hotel so I decided to make it a day. Nobody spoke english in the hotel but I managed to get a room for 50Y and some beans to eat. Maybe next day I'll reach Dali I thought. Mainly I think it was hilarious coz altough we are traveling together with Miki im not dependant on him. (I turned out that Miki was thinkin exactly the same thing)  

Next day I woke up, walked outside and looked for and english speaking person. I found one in a hostel that belonged to the International Hostelling chain and they had english speaking employee. "Where am I?" :D I'd never thought that I would ask that question while sober. It appeared that I was 30km from my destination so it was no problem to get here. By chance I found Miki in Four sesason youth hostel dusting off his motorbike. He told me that he had driven the whole way one time and it was about 300km and it took him for 9 hours. Thats rough man. His ass must be sore. :D

(But actually I think he's lying and he did it on purpose to lose me coz he was fed up with me at the moment : DDDDD) Sooooooooo spontanous : )))

So Dali is the hippie paradise in China and two minutes of walking outside a woman came up to us asking " U lika smoka ganja hasa?" By now we've learned that the best way to get rid of them is to ask for cocaine :D

Dali is a beautiful city and we're gonna spend some time in here and within few days Ida and her future husband Martin are coming here.

We'll add pictures once we take them. : )))