I woke up at about 8:00 in the morning, gobbled several slices of dry bread, packed my bag, and then checked out from the hotel, hoping to catch the earliest bus to Langbapu(浪巴铺). The coach terminal was only a few blocks away. Unfortunately, there are only two departures per day. The earliest one goes at 10:00 AM and returns at 15:00. Without many choices, I had to wandered around the city and killed 1.5 hours until 10:00 o'clock.
Since Yuanmou is known for the "Yuanmou Homo Erectus", I paid a short visit to the Yuanmou Man Museum. It is a three-storey large compound right next to a busy basketball court. However, I did not stay long cause I needed to walk back and catch the bus.
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Ten minutes before departure, damn! I lost my bus ticket. I rushed back to the ticket window and asked the lady if she could print another ticket for me. Luckily, she did!
I read from XHS that there would not be proper food courts, restaurants or stores in the tourist attraction area. I quickly grabbed some water and snacks in the bus terminal then set of my exciting journey to the earth mountain!
Along the winding country roads between the villages, we could already see several scattered earth forests. The unprotected ones were simply exposed under the sun and probably would be washed away slowly by the rain. There were also other splendid earth forests in distance. It seemed to me that a lot of them still need investment for further development.
The narrow country roads made it more difficult for buses or cars to go through, especially when we encountered several trucks that were waiting to load the crops (wheats, tomatoes, patatoes, mandarins, cabbages etc.). We had to stop many times to make way for those huge trucks.
After approximately 50 mins, we arrived at the Langbapu Earth Forest. The entrance ticket costs 50RMB and the sightseeing vehicle costs another 15 or 20. It wasn't far away so I decided to take a walk. As soon as I was half way down the hillside, I could already see the panorama of the whole earth forest. What a spetacular view! I believed this must have been an alien land!
The clay forests were divided into 4 regions and section 4 led to other mountain tops where one could enjoy the unutterable view of the forest. Stairs were built for tourists in certain area, yet mostly the site remained wild and untouched. Before climbing up to the other side, there was a path stretching out to the sand lake, which the sign read: to the beach. I hesitated for a second and of course my sense of curiocity kept driving me forward. I could not afford missing out anything here!
After having walked past the dry thorny bushes, I reached the weird lake which seemed like a careless mixture of water, sand, mud and dirt. A cow was playing in the water. The bell around its neck tinkled as it moved. Slowly and steadily, it sooned crawled up onto the bank and disappeared among the bushes. The wind was a lot stronger by the lake than inside the mountains. I had to hold my cap tight so that it would not be blown away into the water. Viewing the earth forests farther away by the lake, the mountain range seemed much smaller. It looked as if only the edge bit was elaborately crafted or designed by some famous artists. The end of the path by the lakeside was blocked by fences. I had to head back then.
The Yuanmou Earth Forests are totally underrated. One good thing is that I don't like packed tourist sites. Maybe being less well-known can also be a good sign? We got back to town in about 40 mins. The driver was so nice and he helped me catch the last coach to Chuxiong. What a busy schedule! I went back to Dali on the same day!
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