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
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