Sooner or later when traveling in China, circumstances smack you around a bit, and you must always keep in mind two things: 1) You will survive. 2) You can usually find a way to salvage the situation and make lemonade out of lemons..... thus our tale as follows....

Kunming-Lijiang is a popular route on the Chinese and foreigner tourist circuit, and there are three ways to get there: direct flight, train, and road. I had ruled out the road trip, as I had just completed a long bus ride from Yuanyang, and didn’t want another one back-to-back. Breaking the road trip up in Dali for a couple of days is the classic and popular way to accomplish this distance in a humane and pleasant fashion, but I didn’t want to go to Dali on this trip. For a couple of weeks out, I had looked daily for decently discounted flights, but alas, nothing materialized. (So much for our conventional FlyerTalk wisdom and advice on booking domestic tickets in China.) This particular city pair is just too popular and all flights remained stubbornly stuck at nearly full fare, at or above RMB 1000 all-in, which was more than I wanted to pay. I had thought that after October, tourist traffic would diminish, leaving a few juicy fares to be plucked, but no-go. That left only the train, and not wanting to spend a throwaway night in Kunming, I booked the overnight Kunming-Lijiang nonstop train leaving at 22:00. There are actually two overnight trains on this route, leaving within an hour of each other. I purchased my hard sleeper ticket on November 3 at the Kunming Rail Station the day before I left for Yuanyang—for travel on the evening of November 7. At that time, a check of the official railway ticket-availability website showed there were over 500 sleeper berths still available on the train for purchase...and even more berths on the second overnight train. So I was hoping for a relatively pleasant and uncrowded experience, as Chinese trains go.

Ha. This time, the joke was on me. Once on the platform, I had a nasty shock. This was an old double-decker train. I’d been on these before but not in a while, and only on shorter-term seater routes, not sleeper. (The seat versions of these were used quite a bit on the Beijing-Tianjin route before bullet service started.). You enter these things from the platform to the middle level and there are a couple of compartments before you get to the stairs going up and down. My compartment was unfortunately down, and claustrophobic it was. In these double decker trains, the hard sleeper compartments are only 4 berths per (2 up, 2 down) rather than the standard 6, but the ceiling is low and the compartment is narrower than a normal Chinese sleeper train compartment. And the berths are even narrower. They should require going through a slim-sizer to make sure you fit, before you purchase a ticket on this train. There is little space for luggage except under one lower berth (happened to be mine, which I could fortunately hog since my compartment-mates mostly had a tiny bag or a briefcase.). Climbing into the upper berths is by those flip down pedals that require being a Cirque du Soleil cast member to ascend. It is a very dated product—and the most apt image I can come up with is that of a military “troop train.” And somehow in the last three days, nearly all berths in all compartments hard and soft sleeper had been sold and were filled up. So though I tried via the conductor, I had nowhere to go to better my situation. The soft sleeper carriages pretty much had similar issues, except the beds were slightly wider. But as with hard sleeper, the compartments are narrower than on a normal Chinese train (even the standard trains such as K, T, Z) and the distance between beds is only about 60 centimeters. Quite awkward if you are sharing with strangers, especially of the opposite gender.

Tip: I strongly recommend avoiding these miserable excuses for trains if you can, and on the overnight Kunming-Lijiang-Kunming services, this is the product dedicated to this route. There is also a day train that stops in Dali but I don’t know if it’s the same product. If you can afford the Kunming-Lijiang flight, do it, even though the airport is quite far away from Lijiang town. If you are on a budget, go by express bus (4-4.5 hours by excellent highway) to Dali and spend a day or so there before continuing on. The bus has the advantage of terminating in Lijiang town, leaving you with only a short and inexpensive taxi ride to your hotel. However, if you do find yourself having to ride this overnight rolling two-story jalopy, try to book yourself on the upper deck, since the lower deck is not only more claustrophobic and with poorer air circulation, but feels the bumps and jolts more. And yes, for a “nonstop” overnight service, this train seemed to stop and then lurch about every half-hour. In hard sleeper carriage, entry/platform level berth stacks are 1-4 (undesireable, too close to door and smokers), lower deck berth stacks 5-22, and upper deck (lesser of the evils) are 23-38. Not sure of soft sleeper carriage numbering but assume higher number is upper deck. On this train, go with soft sleeper if you can get it. Get a lower berth if you are not agile.

At least my ticket was only RMB 153 for a lower berth. I consoled myself with that as I tossed, turned, and once again didn’t sleep. I was starting to feel rather feverish and was probably the only person not under the quilts provided.

Arrived in Lijiang on schedule at about 07:30, pitch black and raining hard. Completely depressing. This particular station is a little far from the town center. Perhaps it was due to the fact that the station has just been rebuilt and reopened and therefore bugs haven’t been worked out...but there didn’t seem to be a regular taxi queue, just some kind of driveway with small blue minivans (serving as taxis) chaotically parked everywhere.. Tip: if you are arriving at this station via the overnight service, it really would be best to prearrange with your hotel, transportation and a meet-and-greet at the terminal exit. I got through the crowd and out into the rain where a local woman asked where I was going, told me to hop in the adjacent minivan for RMB 20. Which I did, joining a young Chinese couple, and off we went. They were dropped off first and then to my horror, I found I had broken one of my own “jiejie rules”---I didn’t have the hotel’s phone number! Time for another self-administered Duh! Head Slap for Stupidity. Had the street but driver couldn’t find it. I did spot one of my preselected backup hotels which was well above my target budget, so I had the frustrated driver drop me there and paid him off. Went in and told the staff my problem, they didn’t know the hotel I’d booked either, but called information to get phone and better address, and called another taxi for me. Very very nice people. This taxi driver knew where the place was and off we went. Discovered that the first driver had not gone far enough out of town. Right road, wrong direction.

If you’ve ever pulled up in front of a place and known you’ve made a mistake, well that’s the feeling I had. A few days beforehand, I had made an online reservation at this hotel via sinohotel based on guess, gut feel, and tripadvisor comments (mostly in Chinese). Bad location, creepy and dark, deserted atmosphere inside, though the sole staff member—the receptionist—was very nice. Checked in and was shown to my room which was a duplex apartment-like affair with a spiral stair up to the bedroom part. Clearly meant to accommodate family groups and the like. Very eerie and quiet, possibly because it was low season. And no promised internet. Clearly sinohotel had got the description of this one wrong. Although I wanted to be in New Lijiang (not the Old Town), this was just so far out as to have no food or shops around, and no easy taxis. Didn’t even bother to unpack, just took my stuff back to lobby and said this hotel wasn’t going to work for me, “unchecked out” and got my money back—receptionist was at least sweet about it. Left this Chinese version of “The Shining” hotel and went outside to try to find a taxi on an empty road. Fortunately it had stopped raining, sort of. Finally got a cab, went back to my backup hotel where the staff had been so nice. Was way more upscale and 50% over my budget, but the GM, front desk staff, bellboys, and everybody were top notch on hospitality, showed me a nice room and I got settled in. Just as it started to pour down rain again. At least this hotel, which seemed to have a number of Chinese tour groups, was well-equipped and had signs of life going on. And importantly, had reliable heat.

So by about 09:30, two hours after arrival on the troop train, I was able to settle in to my second Lijiang hotel. By now I was feeling really bad and knew that I was coming down with what was likely to be a bad cold and sinus infection. Hopefully not the flu. It was pouring rain again outside so I decided a hot shower and 2-3 hours’ sleep were the best idea. When traveling, you hate to waste precious sightseeing time but sometimes you have to decide to back off. After my rest, I felt even worse and decided the next week was going to need reworking.
Original plan for the balance of the trip dates. It was now Nov. 8th about midday.
--8th/9th Lijiang
--10th bus to Qiaotou, classic hike on upper trail Tiger Leaping Gorge (part way)
--11th finish TLG upper trail hike, back to Qiaotou then bus to Zhongdian (Shangrila)
--12th Zhongdian
--13th through 17th Yunnan-Sichuan highway via Daocheng, Litang, Kangding to Chengdu
--18th fly Chengdu-Beijing

With my deteriorating state, it was pretty apparent that the fairly strenuous Tiger Leaping Gorge hike on the upper trail was off the menu. I’d be hard-pressed to do this even when at my best, so better to abandon it now. Also, the long, arduous though fascinating overland route back to Chengdu via the high Tibetan areas of Yunnan and Sichuan was discarded due to not wanting to be sick in such a rough and remote area that passed through high altitude >4000 meters, as well as advice that it was getting too late in the year and the risk of snow and ice up there was too high. This routing also abandoned.

This is where not overplanning a China trip with too many locked-in reservations, and allowing for some flexibility, really is a blessing. Having no post-Lijiang onward hotel or plane reservations at this point, at least I didn’t have to cancel a bunch of prearrangements. An hour or two of thinking plus a little online checking, and I’d come up with a new plan that I thought I could manage.
--8th/9th/10th Lijiang.... I was only going to be able to sightsee at half-speed then rest each day back at the hotel.
--11th/12th Health permitting, a quick overnight to Shaxi and Shibaoshan then return to Lijiang Plan B: Health not permitting, explore greater Lijiang area some more.
--13th Daytrip from Lijiang to Tiger Leaping Gorge, only mild hiking if I felt like it at the time. Plan B: sit at a guesthouse overlooking the gorge and chat with the locals and the backpackers.
--14th Bus Lijiang to Zhongdian w/Zhongdian in afternoon
--15th Zhongdian and evening flight to Chengdu. Definitely no road trip back to Sichuan.
--16th bus Chengdu to Langzhong old town and overnight there
--17th Langzhong to Chongqing
--18th fly Chongqing-Beijing

The new plan required a bunch of backtracking in and out of Lijiang, as Shaxi is south towards Dali, TLG and Zhongdian are north. But distances aren’t horribly long and not having to pack up and move every night or so—which is tiring in and of itself—sounded better than trying to wring maximum efficiency out of an itinerary.