Week 37 - Szechuan Province, China
BIG NEWS: this week is that we have made the decision to turn back from Tibet, with not enough time on our visas, too much money for the permits, and too much general hassle. Plus, we're currently at 14,000ft and feeling a touch of altitude sickness - Tibet rarely drops below 18,000ft. So, instead, we'll be continuing north as far as Chengdu, which we should reach by Christmas. Adam will then fly out to meet some friends in Bulgaria while Erin and I will loop back south to cross the border into Burma. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
It was about a week and a half ago that we left Dali for Lijiang. Both are stunningly beautiful cities, full of the cobblestone alleys and gushing canals that most people assume disappeared from China with the first Coca-Cola sign. To walk around in during the day, wrapped in sweaters, jackets, scarves and beanies, surrounded by cherry blossom trees, they were exceptional.
But they're also complete tourist traps. Lucky we were here in winter: we were told by a couple of people that Lijiang, in particular, gets so crowded during the summer that people are habitually shoved into the canals by the force of the mob. Even in winter, it was a little disconcerting watching the endless groups of Chinese tourists obediently trotting along behind a tour guide armed with a large coloured flag and a megaphone. And nightlife: forget it. Cheap beer in Lijiang ends at sunset, after which you pay a ridiculous $9AU for a small light beer. After a couple of nights we caved in and spent $27 for three; two minutes after finishing we were told to order something else or get out.
We got out. Dali and Lijiang are one-day towns; their appeal is reliant on you not having time to notice the shit between the cracks. So we pushed on north to Tiger Leaping Gorge, where, surrounded by snow-capped peaks of 20,000ft or more, we trekked for two days along the ridge above the gorge. It was spectacular; we were covered in dust and our feet ached from the long climb but reaching the peak of the ridge and staring out into a 16km long gorge framed by those mountains was indescribably beautiful. China gets more and more beautiful at every turn; usually there are enough annoying aspects to match the good things but not here: alone on the track apart from the occasional goat-herder or trader carrying his goods by pony (plus a couple of Swiss backpackers with whom we had a drunken, stumbling night of draining bottles of cheap Chinese liquor), we felt the kind of peace that we had assumed China was incapable of giving.
From there to Shangri-La, at 10,000ft, where Tibetan prayer flags strung from hillsides and temples littered the countryside; where yaks replaced the cows in the paddocks and feral pigs replaced the feral dogs on the street. Crested by a massive monastery filled with dancing monks, people swinging prayer wheels, and lurid hypercolour murals of the gods and spirits, Shangri-La marked a massive difference from the China we'd seen so far. And we had it all to ourselves; even the beautifully-preserved old town was a ghost town with the freezing weather. Unfortunately, we weren't really in the mood to notice it: we were cold, we were tired, we were nauseous and breathless from the altitude. Basically: we were lame. So we stayed indoors, chewing on Tibetan bread ('baba') and tea eggs and rice porridge.
Then we thought: Hey, why don't we go somewhere even higher and colder?
Which is how we ended up here. We set out two days ago on a road infamous as one of the most dangerous in the world, the Szechuan-Tibet highway, little more than a dirt track skirting narrow ridges with sheer drops of a kilometre or more on either side. For ten hours on the first day we tried to act manly and not whimper and cry "OhgodfuckI'mgonnadienopleasefuck" as the bus grunted its way through passes layered heavily with snow, surrounded by mammoth peaks in every direction.
I tried to pass the time solving problems (as in, "How many flimsy-looking pine trees clinging tenuously to the cliff face would it take to stop a 4-ton bus of screaming passengers from rolling down that cliff?", or, "How many times can the bus roll down that hill before one of those giant pieces of heavy jagged metal that they've loaded into the aisle is certain to fly around and decapitate me?"); and eventually made it into the town of Xiangcheng with my dignity intact and my pants comfortingly dry.
Our dignity didn't last long there, however. Xiangcheng is less a town than it is a bunch of people working a vast transport scam. Namely, the woman supposed to be selling bus tickets onto Litang refused (illegally) to sell them to foreigners (we had been told by an expat in Shangri-La that this would be the case; this woman also happens to run a far more expensive - and therefore profitable - taxi service to Litang). We then tried to wake up early in the frigid morning and bribe / blackmail / violently coerce the busdriver into letting us on the bus, but he was having none of it, and when Adam and I tried to kick some ass he quickly subdued us with the "Seven Dragon Fists Beating the Shit Out of Weak Crying White Men" technique. How were we to know that he knew Tai Chi? Our language was no help; Erin and I haven't come far enough in our Mandarin studies and even Adam's skills aren't good enough to say "Holy Fucking Christ why are you doing this to us?".
In any case, we eventually ate a big serving of humble pie (tasting a lot like rice porridge) and shelled out the extra money to share a minivan with a Tibetan man whose breath smelt like all your worst nightmares, a Chinese man who inexplicably whimpered on every third breath for the entire trip, and an irritating German who couldn't tolerate the locals smoking in the van and so opened his window to a -16 degree breeze that cut through us like a knife covered in thick poison which is, itself, covered in rusty steel barbs which are then cursed with infinite misery.
At least the road was paved this time. It wound over endless arid plains, looking more like the scenery you'd expect to see in Iraq or Jordan than here. On each side frozen rivers wound by like white ribbons threading across the boulder-strewn landscape. It was a breathtaking 5-hour journey (in more ways than one), and left us here, wheezing and dizzy in Litang.
If Tibet gets any more Tibetan than this town, I'd be surprised. It's quite rare here to see a Chinese face, or to hear Mandarin spoken (unfortunate, since we know absolutely nothing in the Tibetan language). Yaks wander the streets; the motorbikes are ridiculously pimped out with streamers and flowers and psychedelic mudflaps; walnuts and dried apricots have taken over as the market food item of choice, and we are continually mobbed either by friendly faces shouting "Hello! I love you!" or robed beggars (some with demonic face-masks) chanting something that sounds like the word "Ziggy" over and over again, like "ziggyziggyziggyziggy". The beggars here are the most prominent and persistent since Battambang in Cambodia, which seems odd as the Chinese government now gives welfare and beggars have been thin on the ground elsewhere in the country.
We go to some hot springs today for a bit of blessed relief from the biting cold, then we continue our meandering way down the highway to Chengdu, which with some luck we shall reach by Christmas. Hopefully there will be showers there (showers having disappeared somewhere around Shangri-La). I will hopefully write again by Christmas, but in case I don't: Merry Christmas to each and all of you, hope it brings all the peace and happiness and video game consoles that you just know your parents got for you.
Lachie
ps Episodes 7 and 8 are now up, covering our last few trips around Thailand. We're going to try and push through as much as possible before we split up, so expect an onslaught of Ping Pong Ka-Pow-age over the next week or so. http:\\pingpongkapow.wordpress.com
BIG NEWS: this week is that we have made the decision to turn back from Tibet, with not enough time on our visas, too much money for the permits, and too much general hassle. Plus, we're currently at 14,000ft and feeling a touch of altitude sickness - Tibet rarely drops below 18,000ft. So, instead, we'll be continuing north as far as Chengdu, which we should reach by Christmas. Adam will then fly out to meet some friends in Bulgaria while Erin and I will loop back south to cross the border into Burma. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
It was about a week and a half ago that we left Dali for Lijiang. Both are stunningly beautiful cities, full of the cobblestone alleys and gushing canals that most people assume disappeared from China with the first Coca-Cola sign. To walk around in during the day, wrapped in sweaters, jackets, scarves and beanies, surrounded by cherry blossom trees, they were exceptional.
But they're also complete tourist traps. Lucky we were here in winter: we were told by a couple of people that Lijiang, in particular, gets so crowded during the summer that people are habitually shoved into the canals by the force of the mob. Even in winter, it was a little disconcerting watching the endless groups of Chinese tourists obediently trotting along behind a tour guide armed with a large coloured flag and a megaphone. And nightlife: forget it. Cheap beer in Lijiang ends at sunset, after which you pay a ridiculous $9AU for a small light beer. After a couple of nights we caved in and spent $27 for three; two minutes after finishing we were told to order something else or get out.
We got out. Dali and Lijiang are one-day towns; their appeal is reliant on you not having time to notice the shit between the cracks. So we pushed on north to Tiger Leaping Gorge, where, surrounded by snow-capped peaks of 20,000ft or more, we trekked for two days along the ridge above the gorge. It was spectacular; we were covered in dust and our feet ached from the long climb but reaching the peak of the ridge and staring out into a 16km long gorge framed by those mountains was indescribably beautiful. China gets more and more beautiful at every turn; usually there are enough annoying aspects to match the good things but not here: alone on the track apart from the occasional goat-herder or trader carrying his goods by pony (plus a couple of Swiss backpackers with whom we had a drunken, stumbling night of draining bottles of cheap Chinese liquor), we felt the kind of peace that we had assumed China was incapable of giving.
From there to Shangri-La, at 10,000ft, where Tibetan prayer flags strung from hillsides and temples littered the countryside; where yaks replaced the cows in the paddocks and feral pigs replaced the feral dogs on the street. Crested by a massive monastery filled with dancing monks, people swinging prayer wheels, and lurid hypercolour murals of the gods and spirits, Shangri-La marked a massive difference from the China we'd seen so far. And we had it all to ourselves; even the beautifully-preserved old town was a ghost town with the freezing weather. Unfortunately, we weren't really in the mood to notice it: we were cold, we were tired, we were nauseous and breathless from the altitude. Basically: we were lame. So we stayed indoors, chewing on Tibetan bread ('baba') and tea eggs and rice porridge.
Then we thought: Hey, why don't we go somewhere even higher and colder?
Which is how we ended up here. We set out two days ago on a road infamous as one of the most dangerous in the world, the Szechuan-Tibet highway, little more than a dirt track skirting narrow ridges with sheer drops of a kilometre or more on either side. For ten hours on the first day we tried to act manly and not whimper and cry "OhgodfuckI'mgonnadienopleasefuck" as the bus grunted its way through passes layered heavily with snow, surrounded by mammoth peaks in every direction.
I tried to pass the time solving problems (as in, "How many flimsy-looking pine trees clinging tenuously to the cliff face would it take to stop a 4-ton bus of screaming passengers from rolling down that cliff?", or, "How many times can the bus roll down that hill before one of those giant pieces of heavy jagged metal that they've loaded into the aisle is certain to fly around and decapitate me?"); and eventually made it into the town of Xiangcheng with my dignity intact and my pants comfortingly dry.
Our dignity didn't last long there, however. Xiangcheng is less a town than it is a bunch of people working a vast transport scam. Namely, the woman supposed to be selling bus tickets onto Litang refused (illegally) to sell them to foreigners (we had been told by an expat in Shangri-La that this would be the case; this woman also happens to run a far more expensive - and therefore profitable - taxi service to Litang). We then tried to wake up early in the frigid morning and bribe / blackmail / violently coerce the busdriver into letting us on the bus, but he was having none of it, and when Adam and I tried to kick some ass he quickly subdued us with the "Seven Dragon Fists Beating the Shit Out of Weak Crying White Men" technique. How were we to know that he knew Tai Chi? Our language was no help; Erin and I haven't come far enough in our Mandarin studies and even Adam's skills aren't good enough to say "Holy Fucking Christ why are you doing this to us?".
In any case, we eventually ate a big serving of humble pie (tasting a lot like rice porridge) and shelled out the extra money to share a minivan with a Tibetan man whose breath smelt like all your worst nightmares, a Chinese man who inexplicably whimpered on every third breath for the entire trip, and an irritating German who couldn't tolerate the locals smoking in the van and so opened his window to a -16 degree breeze that cut through us like a knife covered in thick poison which is, itself, covered in rusty steel barbs which are then cursed with infinite misery.
At least the road was paved this time. It wound over endless arid plains, looking more like the scenery you'd expect to see in Iraq or Jordan than here. On each side frozen rivers wound by like white ribbons threading across the boulder-strewn landscape. It was a breathtaking 5-hour journey (in more ways than one), and left us here, wheezing and dizzy in Litang.
If Tibet gets any more Tibetan than this town, I'd be surprised. It's quite rare here to see a Chinese face, or to hear Mandarin spoken (unfortunate, since we know absolutely nothing in the Tibetan language). Yaks wander the streets; the motorbikes are ridiculously pimped out with streamers and flowers and psychedelic mudflaps; walnuts and dried apricots have taken over as the market food item of choice, and we are continually mobbed either by friendly faces shouting "Hello! I love you!" or robed beggars (some with demonic face-masks) chanting something that sounds like the word "Ziggy" over and over again, like "ziggyziggyziggyziggy". The beggars here are the most prominent and persistent since Battambang in Cambodia, which seems odd as the Chinese government now gives welfare and beggars have been thin on the ground elsewhere in the country.
We go to some hot springs today for a bit of blessed relief from the biting cold, then we continue our meandering way down the highway to Chengdu, which with some luck we shall reach by Christmas. Hopefully there will be showers there (showers having disappeared somewhere around Shangri-La). I will hopefully write again by Christmas, but in case I don't: Merry Christmas to each and all of you, hope it brings all the peace and happiness and video game consoles that you just know your parents got for you.
Lachie
ps Episodes 7 and 8 are now up, covering our last few trips around Thailand. We're going to try and push through as much as possible before we split up, so expect an onslaught of Ping Pong Ka-Pow-age over the next week or so. http:\\pingpongkapow.wordpress.com
