Days 13-15
Our last village stay was with the Naxi people, who have many cultural similarities with the Tibetan people based on their close geographical and trading relations. While we were visiting, some locals gave us a tutorial in Naxi pictograph writing, which is the only hieroglyphic language still in use. It's over 1,000 years old and is made up of about 13,000 elaborate pictographs. We learned about 20, including how to write our names.
We spent the late afternoon wandering around the village, which actually seemed pretty deserted, save for all the wild pigs and dogs running around. In the evening we participated in one final community gathering. The locals danced, sung, and one guy demonstrated his impressive musical talent by playing a leaf. The local Naxi shaman, called the Dongba, also performed a ritual. His clothes were extremely elaborate and included a headress of long feathers, and after his performance, when he walked around and talked with people in the crowd, anyone who was in his vicinity would get a face full of feathers as he turned around. It was quite comical to watch. I slept in an attic-like room that night with eight other girls, and it felt like a sleepover as we all huddled together on the floor, albeit a very cold and uncomfortable sleepover.
The next morning we ate breakfast and took the bus up to Yulong Snow Mountain. When the path got too narrow for our buses, we hiked the rest of the way along the road to get to a village house where we gathered inside to eat lunch. Right as we were leaving, it started to snow, and we hiked back to the buses as it flurried. Even though it was cold, it was really beautiful.
After fourteen days of traveling non-stop, everyone was pretty exhausted and ready to go back to their own beds. We had about five more hours on the bus, after which we stopped back in Dali to grab dinner and kill time before we had to be at the train station. We took an overnight train from there back to Kunming, where we hopped right on a plane and made it to our beloved UIBE campus by the following afternoon. I don't think I have ever appreciated a shower, bed, and washing machine more than I did on that first day back!
And so that was the Yunnan trip. An incredible, eye-opening two weeks packed with crazy experiences, and one that certainly made me appreciate what I had to come back to in Beijing! It was challenging, especially with all the unusual sleeping, eating, bathroom, and laundry scenarios we went through, but I'm definitely grateful to have had the opportunity to see and do so much, wild pigs and all!
(P.S. Sorry for no pictures, by this part of the trip my camera was completely dead!)
