A trek was on the cards when we rolled into Lige, the ugly tourist hub of Lugu Lake, but we didn't really know where to go, or how far it was. Some locals said 8 days. Neither did we have any food, pepper spray (those Tibetan Mastiffs aren't encouraging, or really the mojo. On our way out of the area, at the much nicer main town beside the lake we found this in an informative guesthouse. Hope it might help someone in their plans!
Xian is a nice city, the inner part at least, plenty of interesting street food (allowing a lovely progressive dinner tonight as we walked across town), a bustling Islamic market, bright neon lights and interesting older style architecture including a vast square town wall.
Today we visited "the eighth wonder of the world". The Terracotta Army. Catch bus 206 from near the railway station to get there. The Terracotta warriors themselves were only rediscovered in 1974. They stand in giant filled pits some distance from the mausoleum of one of China's Ch'in dynasty Emperors. (Ch'in being the word that China is derived from). The lines of soldiers stand in narrow tiled corriders between thick walls of packed earth. The walls over the centuries have carried the weight of giant timber beams lined with matts then covered with soil. The beams can still be seen where they have sagged and slowly turned to stone.
I couldn't help thinking about the circumstances that may have lost such a treasure from the historical record for so long a time. Were the terracotta warriors covered over when the great Emperor die, or did work continue under some passionate collector until the House of Ch'in fell soon after. As the great unwashed rose to tear down the Empire, how were the terracotta warriors protected or hidden, or why weren't they looted and broken further? What human tragedys were played out in the defense of this, the greatest army of earth? Tomorrow (or today really) we plan to visit Hua Shan, the most deadly 'mountain hiking' route in the world. We will see. Its quite apt really, we have visited one of the holy mountains of Tibetan Buddhism (Kawa Karpo), one of the sacred mountain of Chinese Buddhism (Emei Shan) and now we will visit one of the five mountains of Taoism. One last natural scenic adventure for us in China. (update: we delayed Hua Shan a day to focus on job applications and other organisational tasks, we can't wait for a bit of exercise and scenery!)
We are sitting now in an internet gaming room inthe southern Qinghai town of Yushu, the prospect of a 20 hour sleeper bus ride to the provincial capital of Xining looming. We have had a quiet couple of days in Yushu. Pennys not really sure why we came here, and I don't really know either. It seemed a good idea at the time, and in retrospect may prove to be an interesting experience.
But anyway, straight out of the bus from Serqu and we were quickly found by a random english speaking dude who helped us find the bus station, then a hotel, but then proved hard to dislodge. Nice guy but we were tired and ready for a period of Chineselessness. The hotel he found us was sort of nice at first glance, but its grottiness grew on you like bamboo sprouting on a fertile slope. Nothing like opening the toilet in your room to find the last occupants festering shit.
The next morning we went strolling to find a new place to stay, and to have a little walk. The first highlight was the very impressive statue of King Gessar of Lind. King Gessar is a Tibetan and Central Asian folk hero and he lived somewhere around these parts. He is a sort of Jesus like figure sent by the Gods to address some evils then reascended back to heaven. Although given that he was around about 700AD there is very little evidence of him actually existing as a person. His epic story, the longest in the world at about 60 million words, has being passed down orally to this day, which is quite an impressive feat, although you have to wonder at the Chinese whisper effect! For more on King Gessar, wikipedia isinformative.
I had a thought that maybe King Gezar was an example of Tibetan entymology creeping into english with the word "geezer", but upon investigation, this word, dating back to the 19th century, is apparently from "guise" and further back "wise", although its quite possible I reckon that the Gezar allusion contributed to its adoption...
We then caught the no2 bus (which does a handy L shape from the bus station down to the centre of town that out east past the hostel I will shortly recommend then to the mani wall) out to the famous mani wall, home to a pile of 2 billion stones with prayers engraved in them. Theres a whole lot of hopes, dreams and wishes in this vast collection of rubble. We joined the locals and pilgrims for the now familiar circumambulation.
Catching the bus back into town we spied a Hostelling International sign. Very lucky. The place is cheap (60 yuan) and clean and friendly. (its in a three story pink building on the main road out of town below the monastery). It also boasts a worn copy of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which Penny eagerly devoured. We went to grab our bags and witnessed the "Dead Yak Bus".
That afternoon we wandered up past the monastery and its styly toilets,
past the transmission towers and prayer flags, to the Yak pastures high up on the hills with a near aerial view of the city. With a full day a nice loop could be had, up this ridge and circling back to town via another. I forgot Pennys family history of cattle death and got her on edge by telling her this yak was looking at us funny.
It was a pleasant spot up there, and oh yeah there were vultures circling and soaring. They are massive graceful birds when you are two far away to see the small head and beady eyes. Dare I say their flight reminded me somewhat of the Royal Albatross on Campbell Island!
The next day we had a sleeper bus bound for Xining booked for 1pm. We finally got out of town at 4pm but still somehow seemed to arrive on time. The bus was a somewhat surreal experience, lying down chatting with each other across the corrider as our window froze over and our bus crept along frozen roads. Around 11 we awoke as the bus stopped and had a big feed of fried vegetable and chilli chicken peanuts at a roadside restaurant in the middle of nowhere. The whole experience was somewhat surreal but the stars were amazing.
We arrived there late, tired from Emei Shan and the Giant Buddha of Leshan. The bus dropped us at a mysterious station in the outskirts. It was raining. There were no official looking taxi's, only motorised rickshaws and a gaggle of men looking for business. Twice we negotiated price only to have the driver show us to a private unmarked car (normally part of our travel survival strategy is to avoid these characters). The second time we gave in. He took us straight to our destination, Sims Cosy Guesthouse.
Sim's is one of the most highly regarded guesthouses in China, but it has changed. They have relocated and upsized, creating a backpacker barn. It suits some people but not us. The prices for a double room are also twice its competitors. We stayed there for a night in a dorm, then quickly relocated to Mix Hostel, which I recommend highly. From here we explored cloudy Chengdu. Skyscrapers loom out at you like gendarmes on a misty ridge while traffic howls past like wind jammed up into the end of a valley. Despite trying, my mountain metaphors will never be as good as Don McGlashans...,
“Oh and he's still climbing, see him try to cross the street, He tests his footing like he's up 10,000 feet, Above the clouds, halfway down Dominion Road”
But we weren't drunk, only slightly out of place, slowly finding our way in a Chinese city. And we certainly weren't above the clouds. In fact we were getting wet. Even Penny beneath her umbrella. We found our way to the old quarter, then the statue of Mao, before finally the Peoples Park. The home to famous Chengdu teahouses. We did eventually find a great cup of tea, well so Penny says, it tasted all right to me but I'm no connosieur.
The weather cleared up slightly the next day and we headed back into town, first goal to buy our bus tickets (the hostels charge a big commision for booking in Chegdu). Mission accomplished we went and sat by the river and watched men fishing and staring into the murk. What were they thinking? Lost in the limpid, turgid waters. The most desired spot was where one particularly nasty looking sewer emptied into the river. It reminded me of a couple of places. Firstly the Mataura meatworks (rumoured to have the biggest eels in NZ) and secondly a small pool down from my primary school at Waitati, where our little gang speared a big eel which had been feasting on a rotten sheep a flood had brought down. We all learnt our lesson when the maggots spewed out of its mouth.
Throughout the city there were regular exercise areas, with abdominisers, treadmills and any other machine you have ever seen on infomercials, plus lots more which looked more like torture instruments, weird devices for the sexually experimental and buzzy bees. Penny posed for a photo, then I had to drag her away.
We looked around a bit more and tried several types of street food , a convenient progressive dinner, but the final highlight came when Penny needed her cuppa. The lady at the tea shop performed a very elaborate tea ritual with us sitting around like she was about to deal cards. Rinsing, washing, rinsing, washing all with tea, or even the particular type of tea we were about to taste, while maintaining a very correct manner and carefully managed facial expressions. We tasted several types of tea and sat there nervously wondering how much it would cost. As it turns out the tasting was free, our only expense being 9yuan for a big bag of Crysanthemum Tea.
And thats it. Thats all my brain pathways reserved for Chengdu...
This is the worst we have encountered so far. The ugliness of the entrance to Luoji Shan. Half mentioned in the Lonely Planet as a lovely place to explore. It has now been found. We didn't make it much past the gate. The mana of the place has been spiked. The Joni Mitchell song springs to mind "Big Yellow Taxi", you know the one that goes, "They paved paradise and put up a parkin' lot, With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot". Its more than "a dollar and a half to see them" though, in China you get stung on average about 80 yuan ($20 dollars at the moment) for every natural feature you want to cast eyes on. We wouldn't mind if the money went to environmental protection.
Out of curiousity I followed my train of thought to investigate what motivated Joni Mitchell to write these lyrics. I didn't have to go far. Wikipedia quotes her,
I wrote 'Big Yellow Taxi' on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart... this blight on paradise. That's when I sat down and wrote the song.
Hawaii as I have encountered in other reading (Song of the Dodo is recommended) is the extinction capital of earth, half of its 140 historically recorded bird species are extinct. Theres still plenty of trees in Hawaii though. It gets back to my point about New Zealand, things look nice on the outside, but there is no equilibrium, bird populations are getting smaller and more isolated and vulnerable to disease. If Avian influenza, hits us like it hit Hawaii with its vulnerable species, we can say good bye to a few more species. But I digress Penny and I are on holiday...
From Xichang we took a night train sitting up (rather than lying down) to Emei Shan. Tourist attraction supreme. This is the place where all those Chinese painting of enchanted looking landscapes (like the photos we took below at the Sichuan Art Gallery are from). I especially like the one with the train, as it shows the composers eye for reality!
Our reality was cloudy. We got off the train at 3am and accepted a touts inflated taxi to the Teddy Bear Hotel, famous and very comfortable backpacker hang-out. You can't bargain on prices at 3am in the morning. We didn't even try. We weren't in any hurry that morning our only deadline was checkout. Emei Shan was a late addition to our plans, we didn't really know anything about it. We packed a light pack expecting an easy stroll for an afternoon up a bit of a hill and ended up walking for 12 hours up 3000 metres up an increasingly dark train and staying in an old monastery, complete with nightman with flashlight and limp, under huge eiderdowns.
It was a fantastic day though. We checked out the museum at the bottom, which is worth visiting , if only for satirical value, before strolling up the windy and rolling concrete path through a succession of small monasteries. Regular sprite sellers plied us successfully with sprite. The paths were quite apart from at the Pure Sound Pavillion where an instantaneous infusion of Chinese tourists injected themselves to hear the rushing waters of the gorge and to visit the valley of the monkeys (Tibetan Macaques)and its crazy little fluffballs.
We escaped the madness by heading up, and of the thousands, there were only a handful that joined us. We ate a lovely dinner in the forest at the hard wok cafe just below the Venerable Trees terrace. The path was going seriously up by here, steps, thousands of them. All these vegetables are carried in. Hard work!
We pushed on past the Magic Peak Monastery and the Elephant Bathing Pool. The latter was where one of the legendary figures landed his flying elepant for a wash. The Lonely Planet seems obsessed with the small size of the pool, but I'm thinking that it would be a perfect size for washing your flying elephant as after all your flying elephant would probably be quite small wouldn't it? And its certainly a nice pool, in an improbable place. (the photo is taken on the way back down).
In the dark we got to the last road end and pushed on past the empty hawker stalls (pondering the shelter and warmth they would give us if we were forced to camp out in our shared thin sleeping bag) to the next monastery, this one. Penny liked it, I didn't, I thought it was creepy and I was looking forward to roughing it for a night and sitting dishevelled and dazed on the summit in the morning feeling like I had just done an adventure race.
Instead next morning we extricated ourselves out of bed at an early hour (in the dark) and slogged for an hour up the hill to narrowly lose the race to the first massive group coming out of the cable car. Theres actually two cable cars they must have decided the first wasn't big enough. The summit was sort of surreal. Pretty, but.
We had noodles and quickly headed down. 2000 metres of steps is many. The pain comes about a day later to the calfs, and stays for at least two days (we still have it). We went down the short way past some more monastery and tuck shops and lovely forests, back to the numbers and the toots and the beauty of the valleys. In Tibetan areas it was music drifting up the valleys here it is traffic noise (note to Chinese censors, ban tooting an Emei Shan, its a sacred mountain for goodness sake!!).
Next up for the day was Leshan and its Giant Buddha. It was big, 71 metres they say. And ancient, construction started around 700AD. I can imagine the awe of observors over the ages, but as discussed against the massiveness that is project China, you sort of expect it. My highlight for the day was the poetry of Dong Po...something along the lines of,
"Good to be the governor of Leshan Better to sit on Leshan's hill and drink tea".
Lonely Planet describes arriving in Lige as "arriving at the ends of the earth". We arrived in a convoy of tourist buses and spent 20 minutes trapped, 10 minutes from the village by roadworks. As soon as the digger cleared out of the way both lanes of traffic zoomed in causing a traffic jam. Comical. The signs here are classic, "watch your fiery safety" and careful "anxious torturous path". The town is made up almost entirely of two story wooden guesthouses, backing onto deforested hills. You can't swim in the lake. Indeed a sign on the waters edge warns you of a slippery bank!! (and we think NZ is PC).
Dinner here consists of either a splurge or a bbq. We go for the bbq, self cook on a little table with chopsticks. We avoid the roast piglet and go for chilli, zucchini, mushrooms and corn, great fun and warm too.
The decision is made we are off to Xichang, skipping out Yading this time, mainly because I have had enough tramping and want to see some of the real China and get off this tourist trail that we have been largely stuck on for the last week. Really looking forward to seeing some big cities, ie Chongching with 30million people. Used Skype with video this morning to chat to Aaron and Karin over in rainy Gothenburg. Awesome!
"The pleasure that one took particularly in Tiger Leaping Gorge, by virtue of its peace, its isolation and its beauty will now soon have gone forever. By tarmac and pollution and crowding, it will have been utterly and comprehensively ruined. The village of Walnut Grove will, in a way, have lost its soul. Somewhere special will have become merely commonplace, and worse."
Tiger Leaping Gorge is now merely commonplace. And soon they will probably drown some more in another lake and kill the rumble of the river. Anyway our day out...
The path was scraggled with dead and dying worms. We tried to hypothesise what their story was, were they shat out by all the horses? No I think they were too big. Were they enticed onto the track by the piles of dung in the rain then stood on, or then stranded when the track quickly dries? Whoknows. The strange things you think about when you are walking.
Apart from the amazing rock walls of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain rising across the gorge and the continuous rumbling and occasional sighting of the whitewater of the Yangtze (both which you soon forget about) the track is highlighted by the continual advertising for guesthouses. The Naxi family guesthouse is first, red paint on rocks. There are Nashi pears at the Naxi house. The track steepens after here shortly, the infamous “28 bends”, a good hill for an old man with a stick carrying a basket of potatoes. Tea Horse Trading Inn was next, the yellow brand on the rocks. We stopped here for a relaxing lunch, what a view!!
Halfway House (someone has a sense of humour) was probably the most obtrusive of the lot. Their graffitti was constant. We rebelled by not even sticking our heads in for a beer, but stopped for a photo.
The track now followed a water-race around a steep face, akin to the lower Yubeng but less spectacular, before rolling down to the road at Tina's guesthouse. Thats it? The famous Tiger Leaping Gorge trek is a pleasant romantic stroll and would have its purpose as a pub crawl.
Before wandering the 40minutes back down the road to (the lovely) Seans Guesthouse in Walnut Garden, we stopped at the Bridge Cafe for an orange juice.
Sitting in the cafe reading a book on the minorities of the Yunnan, we saw many interesting photos of the places we have been and discovered the proper names for a couple of objects, the fuzzy purple flower and the crazy easels and chairs for the gods. Any guesses?
The bus was supposed to leave at 9.10, it was 9.00. The ticket lady said sales were closed, the lady at the gate said the bus had left. Out in the middle of the three lane street a suspicious looking bus was waiting at lights, "Baishutai?", the door is ripped open and we're in. Our good fortune amuses everyone and gives us a good buzz for the day. The ride to Baishutai, a silica pool sort of tourist attraction, is about 4 hours. The road rises and curves over more of China's endless hills, Penny sits biting her lips!
Arriving in Baishutai we prepare to be underwhelmed. For the first time in China touts ruin the experience, there are not enough tourists here. The attraction is pleasant but its management is shoddy. Water from a nearby stream is water-raced in to spill-over the silica and then halfway down the formation is whisked away to irrigate drops, leaving the bottom half dry and weedy. The tourist infrastructure; giant boardwalks and handrails, is broken down. People walk where they want, all over the formation. They say it is an important part of Naxi Dongba culture...so where is the respect? That said there are parts of it you can take pretty photos of.
We got out of there as quick as we could, which took us about 2 hours in a cafe eating yummy instant noodles and 2 hours sitting on the side of the road getting sold walnuts by insistent old ladies. Eventually when a van came it took us 20km down the road to the little village of Haba where we were surprised and happy to find a very nice little guesthouse called Haba Snow Mountain Inn with photos of trekking and mountaineering in the local area all over the walls. The hostess took us down to Naxi dancing that night at the village square. The big circular group dance with a verry happy feel. We had seen the dance at Shangri-La but this convinced us that it wasn't just a tourist set-up. Awesome thing to watch and see these people celebrating their lives and community
We arranged to join up with a German family that was there to hire a guide for the next day to show us up the hill. They would then all go back leaving us to explore and try and climb the mountain (they also hire ice axes and crampons...we took advantage of the former). It worked a charm. The climb up the next day with the guide and Germans took us from Haba at 2500odd to an amazingly beautiful little lake at 4100 and took us above the bushline.
On the way up one of the highlights was going past a small log cabin where a man was milking his cows, we took the opportunity to check out his pad and some of his tools.
Freed of the larger group we took off up the mountain, rising first then sidling when we could see the obvious route up a vast grey slab. We dumped Pennys pack at a group of rough and wrecked shelters which we presumed was basecamp, only to find just over a minor ridge a new basecamp with a newly completed guesthouse! Wilderness experience blown we made a bid for the top in what would be record time.
It was quick up the slab but things started to slow down when we hit ice, we were running out of time fast. The view kept beckoning out north. All the way back to Meili Snow Mountain we could see, the ridges then dropped as we panned around to the east until the sacred peaks of the Yading raised their snowy heads and the mighty 8000m Gonga Shan thrust itself into the distant skyline.
We gave up just below the big snow dome, nothing more than a plod to the summit, but it would have taken us 90minutes to the top, and broke into the bag of ginger we had saved for a special occasion since Thailand.
We then got the hell out of there, one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.
Camp that night after we had rejected the advances of the new guesthouse owners was near the ruined huts of the ghost town.
Next day was porridge for breakfast at sunrise.
We had skipped past some of the scenic highlights of the area the previous day, so decided to go back a similar way, checking out a few viewpoints and saddles and of course the gorgeous lake before descending again to Haba Snow Mountain Inn for lunch.
The ladies didn't quite know what to think when we told them we planned on walking to Tiger Leaping Gorge that day (we were either very strong or naive or both as it turned out). I was convinced we got on the right track, it was sidling around Haba Snow Mountain just where I would make it if I was making a track to sidle Haba Snow Mountain into Tiger Leaping Gorge. Then the damn thing stopped, we tried 3 dead ends having to walk numerous times past a vicious looking dog on a small fragile looking leash, which gave Penny the heebie jeebies. Daylight running out again we bolted for the road, 45 minutes down the hill and from a distance we hadn't seen a car all afternoon. 5 minutes later we were safely enconsed with some wealthy Chinese out on a tiki tour who couriered us all the way to our accomodation. Pennys chinese was impressive, there was at least a 10 line exchange, which given our lack of language learning motivation was awesome.
We completed the day by having a nice long yarn to a young couple Matt and Mary, biking from England to Australia, to begin a new life there and build their own dream backpackers on a small piece of coastal land there. And Chinese beer, particularly Dali, continues to impress with its tasty, refreshing and alcoholic qualities.
