We had booked a ‘soft sleeper’ compartment for the eight hour train journey north-west to Lijiang. This gave the five of us some privacy and space.
The following pictures are from the first few hours of the trip. The last two hours (between Dali and Lijiang) were in the dusk and then the dark. That’s a pity because this section of the line only opened in 2009 and is a major piece of civil engineering – 61 of the 103 miles of the line are either tunnel or bridges.
The scale of the civil engineering projects being undertaken everywhere we went in China is amazing. Wherever we went we saw new high-rise buildings, city quarters, railways, subways and roads. It feels as if the land is being carved up.
My camera wasn’t really up to documenting all we saw. However, I can assure you that there was some amazing stuff out of that window…
Lance Woodman 