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Tripping through the four seasons

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The spectacular mountain passes between Da Lat and the coast make the ride by motorcycle well worthwhile.


Adventurous travelers from coastal Ninh Thuan Province to Da Lat, in the central mountainous province of Lam Dong, can take the same route as the French explorer, Dr. Alexander Yersin, the first European to discover the area.

 

Yersin, a bacteriologist, who is famous for the development of Nha Trang, envisioned a cool mountainous tourist town on the site that is now Da Lat, when he explored the spectacular mountains in the 1890s.

 

Da Lat was built in 1907.

 

The Krongpha train station and a nearby black iron bridge are vestiges of the French presence in Vietnam.

 

The French intended to build a railway from Da Lat to the coastal city of Phan Rang.

 

The train would have climbed through the most beautiful mountain passes in Vietnam, the Dran Pass and the Krongpha Pass, also known to the French as Bellevue Pass.

 

The Krongpha railway, one of only two cog railways in the world, was unfinished after the French withdrawal.

 

Many traces of it, however, can be still be found close to the road.

 

Today the train still runs from Da Lat to Xuan Truong Commune, carrying tourists and light goods.

 

Midway up the Krongpha Pass temperatures begin to cool.

 

From the lookout on the pass, travelers can see the giant pan-shaped plain of Phan Rang city and the sparkling Ninh Chu Sea.

 

The road over the Dran Pass is shorter but more tortuous.

 

The view from this pass is also breathtaking, especially the beautiful scene of the Da Nhim Reservoir behind the pine trees.

 

The journey is like traveling through the four seasons.

 

The summer song of cicadas followed by the yellow fall, the colorful mountain flowers of spring, and winter in the pine forests and the dark green Da Nhim Lake.

 

There is plenty of local traffic on the road going in both directions.

 

Residents from the hot and windy province of Ninh Thuan long for Lam Dong’s cool weather, roadsides jammed with wild flowers and the misty pine covered hills.

 

While people from the mountains crave the warm sunny days, the white sand dunes and the beautiful beaches in Ninh Thuan Province.


Source ThanhnienNews


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