Saturday, June 26, 2010
Pictures from Litang 3
Image 1 - A monk performing monkly duties
Image 2 - Local Tibetans hanging out and praying
Image 3 - Happy locals kids
Pictures from Litang 2
Image 1 - Looking out over Litang from the roof of one of the temples
Image 2 - Dragons (or elephants?) on the roof
Image 3 - Monks playing huge trumpets on the roof of the temple
June 4-6, 2010 - Litang, Sichuan, China
My time in Litang was certainly to prove more pleasant than the preceeding days. As the grey weather on our arrival morning passed we were greeted by bright blue skies and sun with an intensity that you only get at high elevations. Walking out away from Litang town the rolling grasslands give way to mountain on the left and more grass on the right - a spectacular setting at over 13,000 feet. We walked to a "hot spring" - another indoor, ignoring the amazing view, Chinese-style place - which was closed, messed around with solar water boiling device (which was amazingly effective and boiled a few mL of beer left in my bottle so fast it cracked the bottle - check one out here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cooker#Solar_kettles) and ate dinner at a local Tibetan restaurant. The guidebooks say that Litang is really a wild west Tibetan frontier town. I suppose I agree - it seems pretty authentically Tibetan and not over-touristed, that's for sure and it certainly was a cool place to spend a couple of days. The main town area is a bit of a mess of a place really, but the town's setting and the monastery more than makes up for it. The day after arrival we visisted the monastery/lamasery (I don't know if there's a difference?) which was free to enter and basically deserted. In 3 main halls/temples we saw a couple of huge metal Buddhas and checked out the rooftop decorations on one hall from where we were afforded some spectacular views of the town and surrounding countryside. In one hall we were lucky enough to find workers carving and painting the walls, ceiling and columns of a new room. They let us climb up onto the scaffolding and watch them work for a little while - the process is even more involved that I'd imagined and they even let us paint a little. Apparnently it takes a team of 5-6 painters about 2 months to complete one room - perhaps 5x10m. Looking at the detail I can definitely believe that estimate, perhaps more. Later in the afternon English and I climbed up one of the hills behind the town to an elevation of 4300 or 4400m. The views from up there were nothing short of stunning - the depth of the mountains on the one side - peaks all 4000-5000m or more - is amazing - nowhere have I seen this many mountains in one place - range after range after range, staked as far as the eye can see (and from 4400m on a perfectly clear day you can see a long, long way!). The rolling grasslands to the other side seem equally infinite. Amazing. And cold. After a short time we descended through the old part of the town and played with some of the local kids. The next day was alleged to be a sky burial day...but luck was not on our side.
Image 1 - painting in the temple
Xiangcheng and around
Image 1 - Typical Tibetan farmhouse in old Xiangcheng - firewood is stacked on the walls surrounding the house to dry.
Image 2 - A pretty nice setting for a town
Image 3 - Tibetan rammed earth window detailing up close - this house was right next door to our guesthouse.
June 1-4, 2010 - Deqin to Litang - an Epic journey Part 2
So the death of plans A-D meant the birth of Plan E - to be driven back to Benzilan, to cross the river by barge (there is no bridge) with a couple of calfs and a dozen locals as boatmates and to take the really back back road to Sichuan. After a pleasant but rustic ride across the river we managed to get a ride for 50RMB each to the next town - Derong - with a local guy in his ute/pickup truck/minivan type vehicle. The road was pleasantly free of major landslides (we only had to get out and run across one unstable slope that was actively dropping rocks on the road at 70 or 80km/h which we now considered pretty undramatic) and we made good time to Derong. We were told that there was a daily bus to Xiangcheng and we set out to find the bus station. Just our luck the bus had decided not to bother to come today at all. Great. We spent all the rest of the afternoon trying to hitch a ride without success and resigned ourselves to staying the night. The town was small but it was surprisingly hard to find a cheap and decent place to stay. We ended up settling for just cheap. After a meal and a beer or 2 we were back at the room and lo and behold the Tibetan guy's we'd briefly met at dinner were staying at our hotel/guesthouse. They invited themselves into our room and in true Chinese style decided to plant themselves on my bed. Wonderful. One of the guys was evidently pretty smashed and took it upon himself to drop cigarette ash all over my bedding and then stub his cigarette out on the floor of our room (of course he was smoking in our room - as an uninvited guest how could that be a problem?!). Needless to say I was fairly agitated at their uncultured but English came to the rescue. Feeling like a night on the town he dragged them off to play pool and drink beers and left me in peace. The morning of the next day we managed to get a decent price with another Chinese girl to go to Xiangcheng. The trip was without incident and we passed through some very remote and rugger country on the way. Stopping for lunch in a small village English felt compelled to purchase a couple of the famed local "caterpillar fungus". At 15RMB each these tiny stick-like things were expensive, but allegedly great for whatever's wrong with you. At first we thought they were in fact roots or something but closer inspection revealed features like eyes and legs - these things were definitely not plants! As it turns out they're kind of both (Google it) and apparently taste of very little. I didn't partake. We arrived in Xiangcheng in time to find rooms in a very cool, traditionally decorated Tibetan guesthouse and to check out the town - again, a very Tibetan place and completely without tourists. Some of the local houses are probably the best examples of traditional Tibetan homes I've seen and best reveal the way of life these people live wich hasn't changed too much even with all the modernisation in China. I think the photos say it all. The final stage in the epic was getting from Xiangcheng to Litang - a journey that should cost around 60-70RMB and take about 5 hours by bus. Not to be. After trying 3 times the afternoon before to buy tickets for the next morning's bus we were unsuccessful and arrived at the station before it opened - around 5AM to secure tickets. After opening her window the ticket-selling lady (the worst I have encountered in China) informs me that we could not have tickets to Litang. No questions. No explanation. NEXT. Confused and alarmed - to go by bus is the only way out - I approached the bus drivers for help. Me: "Does this bus go to Litang". Driver: "Show me your ticket" Me: "I don't have one but I need you to tell me, does this bus got to Litang?" Driver: Talks to the next person and ignores me. Me (under my breath, or maybe directly to him) "Asshole" Repeat above with the next driver (2 buses). Finally I resort to mild force - Me: (angry, grabbing driver by the arm) "I ASKED you, does this bus GO TO LITANG" Driver (finally): "Yes, but you can't go" Me: "Why?" Driver: some explanation in Chinese that I can't understand that amounts to "F&*k off foreigner" Talks to next person. Now we have a problem. Going back to the ticket lady who by now is a little less hurried but no more helpful I ask (in a surprisingly conciliatory tone) if I can't buy a ticket to Litang, can I buy one to Kangding (the next stop, 10 hours further along the line). It turns out I can. Inexplicably we were forced to pay 147.50RMB for a ticket to a destination 15 hours away as the only feasible way to get a seat on a "full" (full my ass) bus to the destination we needed only 5 hours away. Never have I come across such insanity as this, but it's not like I had any choice. Making the departing bus a minute before it left we set off over the hills to Litang, fuming. The road passed over 4700m on the way to Litang and since we'd had rain the night before at lower elevation the road and hills were covered in fresh snow - pretty unexpected (for me anyway) in June. The driver plowed on regardless of the slippery surface, seemingly ignoring the snow. The snow cover only dropped to 4300 or 4400m so the dangerous section was pretty short and fortunately we didn't die. We arrived in Litang at 4014m one of the highest towns in the world to a chilly morning and grey skies. But we'd arrived!! It had taken 4 days to cover only a few hundred km of some of the craziest roads I've seen, but we'd arrived in one piece and in good sprirts considering.
Image 1 - the crowd waiting for the barge across the river (only one of the 2 calves is in this shot, sorry)
Image 2 - caterpillar fungus anyone?
Image 3 - Typical decoration in the Tibetan guesthouse in Xiangcheng - amazing hand-painted artwork covers every wall and ceiling in almost every room. I have no idea how much time or cost it must involve to execute the detailed painting of an entire house interior but I'm certain it's a massive project.
June 1-4, 2010 - Deqin to Litang - an Epic journey Part 1
north into Sichuan province by the back roads. Local road closures
seemed to conspire against us to make this plan a whole lot harder
than it should have been. The official word was - the main road to
Shangrila and north is closed, to re-open in 9 days for a day.The road
to the south is closed, to re-open after 5 days for a day (to go south
was a very round-about way to get to our destination, but an option).
Rather than sitting around for 5 days we tried to come up with a plan
B. After waiting for half a day for seats in a van to Shangrila the
promised seats were sold out from underneath us to Chinese with no
scruples and a proper grasp of the Chinese language. Man, the Chinese
can be bastards at times. Plan B became Plan C. Walk. We took a cab
from town to the point of the road closure and after a brief
discussion with the cops guarding the closure we were allowed to
proceed on foot. I'm sure the cops were like "Are those crazy
foreigners seriously planning on walking 100km with those big bags of
theirs? What the hell, let's let them try!". We were planning on
walking 100km - we had no choice. We figured we could hitch at least
some of the way on trucks and other work vehicles allowed into the
closed area. Soon plan C became plan D - pay for a ride in a minivan
on the "closed" road; after maybe 20 minutes of walking, a large group
of private vehicles with a 3-car police escort started passing us on
the road. We succeeded in flagging down a minivan and acepted his
offer of 150RMB each to take us to Shangrila. How letting 20 or 30
vehicles with a police escort through on a road that's allegedly
closed for 9 days counts as it being closed, I have no idea - "This is
China" is the only explanation that comes to mind. But we had a
ride...and what a ride it would turn out to be. Construction on the
first sections of the road were minor and didn't impede our progress
much. Passing over 4400m and some amazing mountain scenery we reached
a small, filthy town where we had to spend a couple of hours for some
unexplained reason and finally proceeded toward Benzilan - the midway
point toward Shangrila. Before reaching Benzilan and by this time
around 8pm (we'd been on the road 6 or 7 hours) we came to a very
definite road closure - a huge landslide had anhilated about 100m of
the road! Soon 3 heavy machines began clearing the road - throwing
buckets of rocks down into the river valley that dropped maybe 200m
below them. Some of the rocks the moved were huge and boomed as they
bounced/rolled to the river below. We watched in some awe as they
worked as fast as possible. As the sun went down they turned on their
lights and by around 10:30 they'd crafted a crude but passable road
for us. Maybe an hour later, just beyond Benzilan we came to a final
small landslide. No machines were on hand to help although we were
assured all would be sorted by 7AM the next day. The van driver
kindly put us up in a very reasonable guesthouse for free (his
friend's place, I think) and I drank beers with them and chatted about
how hard done by the Tibetans are in modern China. Come 8AM the next
morning after breakfast on the run there's not a sign of activity on
the landslide. Plenty of idle machines just begging to be used, but
not an operator in sight. We're told they "might" have the slip
cleared this evening. Might?! I'm not sure that helps us too much -
we're already on day 2 of a supposedly 8 hour drive to Shangrila.
Time for plan E perhaps?
Image 1 - Some amazing mountains along the way. The highest point of
the road was 4300 or 4400m
Image 2 - The massive landslide with 2 of 3 diggers working (I wish
this pic was in better focue)
Image 3 - The road along the way was under repair, but mostly
passable. A surprising number of cars for the road being closed I
think
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Pictures from Yubeng 2
house. The day in between was a rest day which we spent not doing
much other than checking the place out and relaxing. The hike back to
the hot springs and the main road was infinitely easier since we
followed a real trail! We managed to hitch a free ride all the way
from the park gates back to Deqin - actually for free, which was a
nice bonus!
Image 1 - Is this normal for chickens to do?
Image 2 - The interior of the old family house next to the guest house
- the real deal, complete with perperually smoky interior.
Image 3 - One of the grandkids by the door of the old house. As an
interesting side note, the host of the guesthouse, a young Tibetan guy
who'd studied English in India is one of the sons of the family. The
interesting part is that he has 2 fathers - 2 brothers are married to
one woman, and this is apparently quite normal in Tibetan culture.
Pictures from Yubeng 1
Image 2 - Lower Yubeng
Image 3 - Green green fields
May 29-30, 2010 - From the Mekong to Yubeng valley
Image 2 - Thousands of prayer flags on the pass over to Yubeng - Meili
Snow mountain or one of the nearby peaks in the background
Image 3 - The mountains behind Yubeng
Pictures from the Lancang (Mekong) River Valley 2
construction roads around the city seemed very tame. Using Deqin as a
base we set out to explore the local area a little. The Felaisi
temple was a complete waste of time so we moved on to hike to the
Yubeng area from the river. After successfully dodging the entrance
fee by climbing around a cliff we walked the road to the very scenic
village of Xidang and took the long way to climb up to the hot
springs. I am now beginning to realise that "hot springs" in China
has a very different meaning than in NZ or the US. No outdoor hot
pools in which to soak up the hot water, the view and a beer, just
little chalets (almost collapsing from neglect) for 100RMB a night (in
any other place they would be 40, tops). At least the hot water was
reliable - fed direct into the bathroom from the spring. Oh well.
The next day, in the spirit of continuing to evade the
ticket-checkers, we set off on an epic 9 hour cross-country trek of
our own (faulty) design through some very interesting terrain to
eventually arrive at Yubeng village....and to be forced to pay the
80RMB entrance fee anyway!
Image 1 - Xidang
Image 2 - Dense forest during the long hike from the hot springs to Yubeng
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Pictures from the Lancang (Mekong) River Valley 1
These guys do this everyday - a 100m fall to the river is nothing to them
Dry Mekong valley with irrigated spots - very different from the lush
and wet Nu river valley only 25km away
May 27, 2010 - The Lancang (Mekong) River Valley
Looking back down one of the landslide we had to climb over with full packs.
Pictures from the Nu River Valley 3
The constant drizzle was annoying but had waterfalls flowing everywhere
Not much of a welcome to Tibet - the supposed border town
Pictures from the Nu River Valley 2
cute to resist.
The town of Wuli
Our hosts for part of the afternoon in Wuli - roasting barley (I
think) in a huge wok to make some kind of alcoholic drink
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