China, Yunnan province, 150 kilometres Northwest of Dali.
Nuodeng
Yunlong 云龙 and Taijitu 太极图: Having arrived safely in Yunlong after a long and somewhat eventful journey from Xiaguan (Dali City), we set about visiting the sights and exploring the town, which to be honest doesn’t take very long, as there is precious little to see or do.
Yunlong 云龙 and Taijitu 太极图
It’s not an unpleasant place, but definitely a little dull. There’s a nice area by the river for strolling and people watching, but entertainment options and restaurants are conspicuous by their absence.
An Eventful Trip: Landslides, mudslides, traffic accidents, then more landslides, rock falls and even more traffic accidents. Every journey we made this summer in Yunnan seemed to involve at least one of those mishaps and sometimes several of them.
From landslides to floods, earthquakes to collapsing bridges
Watching the news in China during the rainy and typhoon season can be like watching a disaster movie that never ends. From landslides to floods, earthquakes to collapsing bridges, the whole country seems immersed in an ongoing state of calamities that sometimes verge on biblical proportions. Yet, until this year, we had always been lucky. We were either somewhere completely different, we had already been and gone, or we were about to go, but we were never actually there, on the spot. We were quite used to watching all those disasters from the comfort of our hotel room. Yet, this year it was all different.
Rescue Workers Puladi
The worst incident was the massive mudslide in Puladi near Gongshan along the Nujiang River, where a whole village was wiped off the face of the earth. Many people were killed and lots of homes were buried. We were trapped for 3 days in the nearby village of Bingzhongluo before the PLA could open the road and get us out.
