The Bread Has Rose Petals. The Train Goes Through Mountains. Our Dali & Kunming

Lijiang gave us a mountain we weren't ready for . A gorge so deep you hear the river before you feel it . A temple built because someone pointed at a cloud . And dozens of brides on a plateau where not so long ago couples came to end their lives rather than be kept apart . That was video three, day nine of 22 . We are heading south, Dali then [music] Kunming . Here's what this leg of the journey gave us . A grandmother stitching a pattern into fabric . The design only appears once [music] the dye is applied and the thread is pulled out . A train station bigger [music] than any airport we've ever stood in . A woman walking through 32° sunshine in a face mask [music] and gloves to the elbow . And it's not what you think . Zarko fails to find shoes in a country of 1.4 billion people . And a stone forest that has been standing for 270 million years . With a story inside it that nobody forgets . That's what's coming. Let's go. . We say goodbye to our guide . Friendly, knowledgeable, and genuinely compassionate . He quickly became much more than someone simply showing us around . As part of our journey with chinatours.com, [music] we couldn't have asked for a better companion to help us understand the places, people, and stories we encountered along the way . [music] And like every highway we have driven in Yunnan, wide, smooth, almost empty . We stop once at a highway rest stop, spotlessly clean . Better than most public restrooms we have come across [music] anywhere in Europe . A highway rest stop China keeps doing this, giving you something better than you expected [music] in a place you weren't looking for it . And then, the mountains show up and the road [music] goes straight into them . 10 tunnels between Lijiang and Dali . Long ones. The kind where [music] you are inside the mountain long enough