period of time to get some more of this blog update...unfortunatley
I'm more than a month behind now so I'm going to have to try to make
this brief.
The Nu river valley is in the far west of Yunnan and access is rather
slow. I had my first experience of a Chinese sleeper bus on the way
there (which was actually quite pleasant). The first night I slept in
the small town of Fugong, which is set in a very narrow river valley.
Moving on from there I made it (via a couple of buses and a pretty
dodgy road - see the pic of the "river corssing") to the town of
Bingzhongluo. The friendly local government finds it convenient to
take 100RMB from all foreigners entering the town - it's a shame they
don't spend it on building a sewage or trash management system
(everything goes in the river or is burnt. Nice). The scenery around
BZL is pretty cool - a steep gorge widening around the town for some
agricultural land then tightening up even more as the gorge runs north
toward Tibet. I took a guided hike up one of the local peaks which
was fun although not what I'd expected. I did get to see some amazing
virgin forest with moss and huge trees and a trail that was
near-vertical in places but the guide turned out to be pretty much
useless and apparently didn't know the area. They'd told me I was
going to 4200m - and then all of a sudden they wanted to stop at
3000m!! I dragged the guide on for a couple more hours through the
neat forest I just mentioned and then was generally grumpy with him
for the fact that they wanted to take 250RMB from me for a crappy
service. I was slightly happier after we stopped for a snack and a
chat at the house of a local guy. One of the only places I have
visited in China without electricity (lines seem to run to every town,
village and farmhouse) this house was old-fashioned to the extreme.
The sole occupant lived, cooked and slept in the same room, half of
which had only a dirt floor and a fire pit on the floor. We played
with his traditional crossbow (and handmade arrows - we were careful
not to touch the poisoned ones) and ate some baby potatoes he'd
offered, and moved on.
The next couple of days I took an extended walk up the river valley
toward the Tibetan border and passing several small towns on the river
banks. I stayed overnight in the hamlet of Qiuanatong in a small
guesthouse. The next day we walked as far north as we had time - we
reached the town that the LP mentions as the official border of Tibet,
but the checkpoint isn't until the next town 50km away, so we couldn't
be sure and we disappointed not to be able to pose for photos in front
of a "Welcome to Tibet" sign, or at least pose with the border police
;) Oh well. Upon returning to BZL I met an American guy with the
easy-to-remember (if unlikely) name of England with whom I ended up
travelling for about 2 weeks. As my inital plans to do a guided trek
from Dimaluo (near Bingzhongluo) over the mountains to Deqin
disintegrated (the organising guy, who'd been my "guide" a few days
earlier got all pissed off with me over a mis-understanding, and
anyway his prices were ridiculous), England and I hatched a plan
(complete with some incredibly sketchy maps) to attempt the route
alone. We mailed our extra things onward to a hostel in Chengdu
(duplicate cookers, tent etc) and set out to Dimaluo. On the way the
abysmal state of the road gave us our first taste of
landslide-scrambling, a skill that would come in quite handy during
the rest of our time in Yunnan. Mid afternoon we stopped to eat at
Aluo's Guesthouse in Dimaluo where they seemed to want us to dance and
drink local booze with them than actually serve us late lunch.
Eventually we ate and headed up the gorge. The dirt road was
variously intact and washed out making for some interesting skirting
of the river. We spend our first night in a slightly leaky but
otherwise very cool stone and wood hut. I assume this shelter is
normally used by herders but no-one challenged us. Day 2 saw us
continue to follow the gorge, through a very picturesque village or 2
(all with a major rubbish disposal problem) and to (shockingly for
China) leave mobile phone coverage behind. By luck more than by skill
we managed to find the meadow we were supposed to cross to begin our
climb to the 3700m pass. In the meadow we were treated to butter tea
and cheese and provided with hot water for our instant noodles in the
hosue of a local couple. Again the home was incredibly simple but our
hosts were very kind. The climb to the pass was a big challenge made
tougher by the fact that we strayed from the path for a a couple of
hours and had to guess a cross-country route back to the main trail.
Snow cover began in patches around 3600m or so and everything was
completely white near pass. We had a little difficulty in finding the
correct valley in which to descend but a little compass work soon set
us right (luckily). The area near the pass was certainly very
interesting with remains of loggers (or herders?) cottages scattered
about, very clear eveidence of large-scale logging (even at this
elevation) and far more snow cover than I would have expected in late
May. Descending on the Eastern side of the mountains the snow cover
continued far longer than it had on the western side. When we finally
reached the first real meadows on the floor of the valley and set up
camp I was completely exhausted - to the point of feeling quite sick.
Some food and water improved my situation a little but sleep was what
I needed. I still felt weak and crappy the following day but downhill
was certainly easier than up! We continued to descent alll day and in
the afternoon reached the village of Yongzhi where we found a
guesthouse and for the first time in a few days ate and slept
properly. The following day was to be an adventure of walking,
scrambling and crazy minivan driving to finally reach Deqin.
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