I’ve just returned from an amazing trip which took me on part of the ancient Tea and Horse Caravan Trail where merchants of old brought tea and horses on mules from southern Yunnan across the border to Tibet and India.
In those days, it took them years to reach their destination. These days, where time has become a more precious commodity than tea or horses, you could probably do it in less than a week with the way roads are being built in China.
Uttara Sarkar Crees, my friend who runs Gyalthang Eco-Travel, had put together a 10-day itinerary from Dali to Gyalthang (Zhongdian/Shangri-La) which I cut into seven days much to her chagrin.
This is the lot of the tour operator in intrepid places these days – few modern-day travellers have the time to take long journeys. Ditto with travel stories – few readers have the time to read long journals these days, hence I am going to do this series in parts.
Day 1 + 2: Starting off in Dali, with a side trip to Weishan
I arrive in Dali (left) to a clear blue sky, thankfully. There’d been floods in Kunming and Uttara tells me there’s been lots of rain in the area where she lives. She and our driver Pangan had driven from Shangri-La to pick me up – it takes about eight hours now but a new road will soon reduce this to approximately three hours.
Shangri-La is becoming more and more accessible – where’s the fun in that? But for now, we had six days to get there and we intended to take in the rural charms of Yunnan and its ancient towns along the way.
To me, Dali is certainly more charming than Lijiang (even though Lijiang is a UNESCO World Heritage site and Dali is not) – it is less commercial, being a living town, where residents still live, work and play within it. Nevertheless, the streets are crowded – it is school holiday season and Chinese tourists are out in droves.
The valley of Dali, the historic home of the Bai people, stands at 1,900m and is dominated by 19 peaks of the Cangshan mountains which rise to 4000m. You can understand why it was the last of the Chinese strongholds to withstand the Mongols until it finally capitulated in 1252 when it became part of the Yuan Dynasty. At its most glorious point in history – it was the capital of the Nangzhao kingdom during the 8th and 9th centuries, it conquered much of Burma, parts of Vietnam and parts of Sichuan and Guizhou provinces.
Today, Dali is known for its fierce streak of independence, strong horses, fertile lands, marble and embroidery and thus, fairly wealthy traders and merchants. 
We stay at the Landscape Hotel which is an old merchant house converted into lodging – charming with a central courtyard and lots of nice little corners with landscaped gardens and tables. You can imagine sipping tea and painting the willow trees if you have time.
We do take our time exploring the old town though – lots of restaurants, shops, cafes, galleries, trading houses. I try the cheese roll on a stick – think satay but with cheese. Tricky eating it while walking, it keeps dripping, but everyone’s doing it so hey, when in Dali … I also tried a cactus fruit for the first time – very succulent.
Every first-time traveller to Yunnan has to try “Crossing The Bridge” Noodles (below, right). I think the story is more interesting than the dish actually. So it goes – a male scholar is cramming for his Imperial Exam and his wife cannot cook hot noodles to save her life and he’s upset because he can’t study without hot food. So she goes to a teacher for advice and he teaches her a trick and says, “even if you have to cross the bridge to get to him, the noodles will still be hot”. The trick apparently – they add a thin layer of chicken fat onto the soup so that it stays really hot. So be careful eating it.
There is a huge Muslim population in Dali, thus halal restaurants are everywhere.
If you love Chinese vegetables, then Yunnan is your garden of paradise. I’ve never seen such a huge variety of vegetables, mushrooms, peppers – all displayed street side in glorious colours, shades and hues (left).
We stop off for tea at Bakery 88, run by a German woman who moved with her husband to the region after falling in love with Yunnan. (There are plenty of stories like these – people who visit the place, fall in love and return to build new lives for themselves – and I was to meet several along the trail.)
Karine Duffell has found a good niche – her bakery’s packed with travellers looking for fresh bread and cakes – and she tells us she now finds Dali so busy that she’s moved to Shaxi, a town we will visit the next day, and commutes to her bakery every other day.
It’s time to head for Weishan, an old Bonnan tea trading town. Roadworks make it a slow start but eventually we get out of the city into rural farmland. It’s a two-hour drive through lovely countryside.
Being in Weishan (left) is like stepping back in time, it’s like a movie set straight out of a kung fu movie. The town is well preserved and residents go about their daily lives, indifferent to the tourists. There are still many family-run shops – basket weavers, tofu and noodle makers, cobblers.
In hairdressing salons, young men get their hair colour done. Blonde is the new black in China. Men sit in their tea rooms, playing chequers, and women play mahjong on the sidewalks. I ended up playing mahjong with the women (below) who ran the little restaurant we ate at – it’s a different game from what my father taught me and I didn’t quite understand what I was doing, but the women were friendly and encouraging enough.
In the antique shops, you see paraphernalia of the tea and horse trade – saddles, tea baskets, weights.
We step into a 200-year-old horse, which has been restored to tell the story of how the rich merchants and traders of yore used to live.
We return to Dali for the night. It’s Monday but it feels like rush hour in Hong Kong. The streets are packed with tourists, despite the rain. Walk past “Barbeque Street” (left) and you fairly choke on the smoke, yet people are merrily feasting away on anything you can grill.
Everywhere too I see people snapping away with their devices. The ownership of smartphones is staggering – you expect to see this in cities like Beijing and Shanghai – but in Dali? – and really, every town I visited on this trip. This proves how fast China is changing as people have more money to spend.
In front of a bookstore, I spot a black-and-white poster of the man who's not only changed the way we communicate but the way we travel. Steve Jobs' book is a best-seller in this store that stocks an eclectic collection of literature from names like Jack Kerouac to vinyls from Leonard Cohen and CDs from Mongolian group, Haya.
Tonight, we decide to eat in a Muslim restaurant – lots of stir-fried vegetables and cold chicken.
Suddenly, across the street, we hear a loud commotion – a group of customers are shouting at a restaurant owner for being slow to bring their food. It feels there could be a fight breaking out but locals seem to take it in their stride, shrugging it off. Probably a nightly affair.
Bars are packed with youths drinking – I see a group of young girls knocking back tequila shooters while the boys cheer them on.
And the words from Keruoac's “On The Road” comes to mind. “And as I sat there listening to that sound of the night which bop has come to represent all of us, I thought of my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were all really in the same vast backyard doing something so frantic and rushing about.”
Yes, the setting may be different, but human behaviour is universal.
Next stop: Xizhou, on the way to Shaxi