Spring Festival Travels: Travels in Western Sichuan Feb. 14
Hi,
So, last time I wrote I was in Chengdu. Since then I've been traveling in western Sichuan Province, first climbing a sacred Buddhist mountain, and then heading into the mountains towards Tibet.
After our time in Chengdu, Mary and I caught a bus to Emei Shan, a 3100 m sacred Buddhist mountain. We left our big packs at a guesthouse at the base and headed up that afternoon. The mountain is huge, with many kilometers and perhaps 2500 vertical meters of steps. The lower parts of the mountain are lush forest, leading up to high mountain forest with rhodedendrons, and snowy pine forest towards the top. The steps go on and ON. There are monasteries all along the trails, and snack shops dotted along the way. The first and last night we spent at a very pleasant little hotel run by very friendly women. It is on a slope above a clear blue lake, below a monastery perched between two mountain streams. The night in between we spent in a room in a monastery high on the mountain, in the fog and snow. It was cold, but an interesting experience. The last stretch to the top was snow-covered stairs (climbed in sneakers!) and then beautiful walking through snowy forest that reminded me of places I've cross-country skied. We didn't spend too much time at the top, where there's a huge golden elephant/goddess statue and a lot of restaurants and hotels for tourists (there are buses and cable cars most of the way to the top). We took a different route down the mountain, which led us down a stunning succession of drops, following a valley down to where we'd stayed the first night. This was the kind of terrain you see in Chinese paintings, with monasteries tucked in below rocky crags and trees and mist (and also pollution haze unfortunately). The vertical drop on these steps was amazing - I was glad we hadn't come up that way, though we must have walked up just as many steps!) Wild monkeys also made this walk exciting. They barred their teeth at us and reached out for food. One jumped on Mary's bag and clung there trying to rip it off her - pretty scary. We walked the rest of the way down with big rocks and a stick to club them with, but didn't run into any more problems. By the end of the day my knees/shins were hurting pretty badly, but we made it back to the place we'd stayed and liked. The following morning we walked back to the base of the mountains through some beautiful sunny forest and collected our packs.
We decided we wanted to go down the road towards Tibet, we first caught a bus to Leshan, and nearby city at the confluence of two rivers with a huge Buddha we didn't see. We did have a very nice walk along a river to our hotel, and then a really enjoyable evening strolling around the streets and eating hotpot (our best yet ... with lettuce, nian gao (pounded rice flour cut in slices), meat balls, mushrooms, etc. dipped in a boiling spicy soup to cook) at an outdoor restaurant with a famous local tofu dish delivered from the restaurant across the street. The next morning we caught a bus to Kangding.
Kangding is the gateway city to the roads west into Tibet from Sichuan Province. From the Chengdu/Leshan area you climb a long river valley, switch-backing on narrow roads over a rushing stream, then go through a tunnel that pops you out in a whole different landscape. The western side is high above a wide valley with views west over many mountains. You switch-back down to a river valley, staring down at the greenish river and alluvial fans covered in light green farm plots. We followed the base of that valley north and west to Kangding, and town in a tight valley between mountains. Kangding is a mixture of Chinese and Tibetan culture. There is a river running the length of town, with Chinese-style shops and apartment buildings on either side. But there are also Tibetan people and shops and restaurants. It was a great place to spend a little time before heading further into the mountains.
When we arrived at the Kangding bus station we ran into a New Zealand woman Glennis we'd helped arrange lodging for at a monastery on Emei Shan, and a man from Bilbao, Spain, Josu. We four decided to walk together to a guesthouse,and shared a dorm room, with a balcony overlooking the river and main streets. Then we had a Tibetan meal with beef/yak, momo's (dumpling-like), and yak-butter tea. The next morning we went out looking for breakfast, and Mary, Josu, and I climbed one of the hills flanking the town, with a few Tibetan temples on it, and later went inside a VERY colorful Tibetan temple at the west end of town.
Josu is a 30-something native of Bilbao who works as a postman for part of the year, but travels the world during his one month paid vacation and an additional three months vacation he takes every winter, when it's cold and gray in Bilbao. I admire him becuase he's realized that he cares more about enjoying life than developing his career, and therefore works this post office job that leaves him free to pursue his life interests, both day to day when in Biblao, and when traveling (he's been to Nepal, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Peru, Chile, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, etc). He's also pretty inspring for having mastered English so well, mostly on his own initiative, through reading English books and magazines and looking up words (and I got to speak Spanish with him some). His vocabulary is incredible for a non-native speaker. It was great fun to discuss Spain, Spanish, Spanish and American politics, world affairs, etc. with him (he's an avid reader of the Economist). He also taught us a great deal about how to travel light, and do laundry! He's traveling byhimself for these three months in China, and joined up with us for the next few days.
The next morning we boarded a bus early for an incredible 9 hour ride over the mountains to the Tibetan town Litang on the southern road to Tibet. This road took us over three passes, some of which might have said 4600 m or so on the signs. We started before dawn and climbed up a snowy pass as it grew light (I've got great pictures out the front window of the bus), went down a valley past many Tibetan houses, stopped for lunch in a town clinging to the cliffs above a big river, and climbed a dusty valley which led us into the high barren hills near Kangding. The small bus was full of Tibetans heading home for the New Year, and our driver was great with a fur hat and sunglasses, complaining about all the foreigners on the bus.
Litang itself is at 4000 m on the north side of a wide plain bordered by hills on one side and snowy peaks on the other. It's a real Tibetan town, though the Chinese have built a wide main street with Chinese-style shop fronts. The sidewalks and side streets of the center part of town are full of Tibetans in the afternoons, striding around in colorful clothing, full of character. A typical sight was a man with a skirt of sorts, a thick coat wrapped over one shoulder and under the other arm, with long thick hair, a fur hat of sorts, and sunglasses on his dark sun, wind, and cold-weathered face ... riding a motorcycle covered in colored streamers other decorations, with a colorful patterned rug on the seat. Women walked around with jackets over skirts with colorful cloth attached at the belt on the front. The town felt like the American west, only Tibetan-style. They are really friendly, upbeat people, and it made for a great atmosphere in the town.
We stayed at a guesthouse where there were also other interesting people passing through, some Germans, a Japanese anthropologist, and Minnesota native we'd had dinner with in Kangding. The place had no running water, because it's so cold the pipes would freeze (water in buckets in the bathroom was frozen when we got up the first morning), but it was great fun to stay there. The first day Mary, Josu, and I decided to hike across the plain. It was a beautiful setting under a sunny sky, surrounded by mountains. We never made it to the other side because we hit a confusing bunch of streams meandering the valley floor that were too deep to cross, but we walked a long way out there. We then spent time wandering the streets and market in the late afternoon as the sun went down. The next day we walked up to the Litang monastery, and climbed a hill behind it, and then visited two Tibetan households on dusty streets that local youths led us to. They live in really sturdy, cosy homes with rock walls and wood beams and nice Tibetan decorations. At the first house we ate cookies, and watched a whole extended family make more, and at the second house we ate thick Tibetan bread and drank yak-butter tea while we talked with a boy who's very excited about learning English, having begun only 7 months ago with a great teacher apparently. It was very interesting being in a Tibetan area given the history of Chinese invasion and their continuing oppression of the Tibetans. Unfortunately I have still read very little about their history and culture, but I'd like to. I did get to see a Tibetan being arrested by the Chinese police while a crowd of Tibetans pressed passively in around the police jeep. I need to learn more about Tibet.
Yesterday morning Mary and I parted ways with Josu, who was heading north to Ganzi, and caught the bus back to Kangding. This time the bus was full of Han Chinese heading back to their hometowns for the New Year. This time we were on a bigger bus, but seeing as we chose the seats in the very back we were bouncing out of our seats the whole way. I hit my head on the ceiling once and we had some good laughs with the Chinese guys next to us ... we spent most of the ride with our hands on the ceiling to prevent any more head banging. The ride was just as incredible in the other direction ... the landscape and the Tibetan houses were endlessly interesting. We spent another evening in Kangding in the same guesthouse (a great place to meet interesting foreigners traveling through the area). A policeman called some kids out of an apartment building to show me where an internet cafe was, and it was snowing lightly as I walked around the town. This morning we caught another early bus, to Chongqing. The ride out the valley on the east side of the pass was great, with picturesque mist floating amid rocky crags and snowy forest. It felt pretty strange driving down an American-like expressway to from Chengdu to Chongqing. At a rest area people looked just like Americans climbing out of their cars. The small villages and fields of rural China line the highway, though, so it was an interesting ride. As we drove into Chongqing I saw how HUGE a city it is ... we'd only been in a small part before. It is a dirty, gray, congested, intriguing, and alluring place. Right now I'm in an internet cafe in the ultra-modern city center ... many people here are so westernized they don't even look Chinese. I'm looking forward to a full day of walking around the city tomorrow before we fly out Friday morning for Shanghai.
We'll spend the Chinese New Year in a rural area near Shanghai with our friend from the university in Dinghai, Xiao Shen, and his family. Then Mary will leave to visit Dan in Thailand and I'll take off again for another twelve days of traveling. I've been unsure about what I wanted to do. I've thought seriously about taking the train to Lhasa in Tibet proper (where we were was cultural Tibet, but technically western Sichuan) because I'd liked their culture and landscapes so much. Unfortunately it looks like the timing wouldn't work well and there are complications around getting a permit to go there, and I'd rather go with enough time to trek in the backcountry. Right now I'm thinking I might take a train to Lanzhou in Gansu Province, and explore that area of desert, mountians, and grasslands some. There's apparently a mix of Tibetan, Muslim, and Chinese culture there, where the Silk Road began in China. I still have to read more about it and look into logistics, though.
I'll keep you posted!
Tyler
p.s. The pictures are of me eating hotpot in Leshan and Mary and Josu on the road to Litang.
So, last time I wrote I was in Chengdu. Since then I've been traveling in western Sichuan Province, first climbing a sacred Buddhist mountain, and then heading into the mountains towards Tibet.
After our time in Chengdu, Mary and I caught a bus to Emei Shan, a 3100 m sacred Buddhist mountain. We left our big packs at a guesthouse at the base and headed up that afternoon. The mountain is huge, with many kilometers and perhaps 2500 vertical meters of steps. The lower parts of the mountain are lush forest, leading up to high mountain forest with rhodedendrons, and snowy pine forest towards the top. The steps go on and ON. There are monasteries all along the trails, and snack shops dotted along the way. The first and last night we spent at a very pleasant little hotel run by very friendly women. It is on a slope above a clear blue lake, below a monastery perched between two mountain streams. The night in between we spent in a room in a monastery high on the mountain, in the fog and snow. It was cold, but an interesting experience. The last stretch to the top was snow-covered stairs (climbed in sneakers!) and then beautiful walking through snowy forest that reminded me of places I've cross-country skied. We didn't spend too much time at the top, where there's a huge golden elephant/goddess statue and a lot of restaurants and hotels for tourists (there are buses and cable cars most of the way to the top). We took a different route down the mountain, which led us down a stunning succession of drops, following a valley down to where we'd stayed the first night. This was the kind of terrain you see in Chinese paintings, with monasteries tucked in below rocky crags and trees and mist (and also pollution haze unfortunately). The vertical drop on these steps was amazing - I was glad we hadn't come up that way, though we must have walked up just as many steps!) Wild monkeys also made this walk exciting. They barred their teeth at us and reached out for food. One jumped on Mary's bag and clung there trying to rip it off her - pretty scary. We walked the rest of the way down with big rocks and a stick to club them with, but didn't run into any more problems. By the end of the day my knees/shins were hurting pretty badly, but we made it back to the place we'd stayed and liked. The following morning we walked back to the base of the mountains through some beautiful sunny forest and collected our packs.
We decided we wanted to go down the road towards Tibet, we first caught a bus to Leshan, and nearby city at the confluence of two rivers with a huge Buddha we didn't see. We did have a very nice walk along a river to our hotel, and then a really enjoyable evening strolling around the streets and eating hotpot (our best yet ... with lettuce, nian gao (pounded rice flour cut in slices), meat balls, mushrooms, etc. dipped in a boiling spicy soup to cook) at an outdoor restaurant with a famous local tofu dish delivered from the restaurant across the street. The next morning we caught a bus to Kangding.
Kangding is the gateway city to the roads west into Tibet from Sichuan Province. From the Chengdu/Leshan area you climb a long river valley, switch-backing on narrow roads over a rushing stream, then go through a tunnel that pops you out in a whole different landscape. The western side is high above a wide valley with views west over many mountains. You switch-back down to a river valley, staring down at the greenish river and alluvial fans covered in light green farm plots. We followed the base of that valley north and west to Kangding, and town in a tight valley between mountains. Kangding is a mixture of Chinese and Tibetan culture. There is a river running the length of town, with Chinese-style shops and apartment buildings on either side. But there are also Tibetan people and shops and restaurants. It was a great place to spend a little time before heading further into the mountains.
When we arrived at the Kangding bus station we ran into a New Zealand woman Glennis we'd helped arrange lodging for at a monastery on Emei Shan, and a man from Bilbao, Spain, Josu. We four decided to walk together to a guesthouse,and shared a dorm room, with a balcony overlooking the river and main streets. Then we had a Tibetan meal with beef/yak, momo's (dumpling-like), and yak-butter tea. The next morning we went out looking for breakfast, and Mary, Josu, and I climbed one of the hills flanking the town, with a few Tibetan temples on it, and later went inside a VERY colorful Tibetan temple at the west end of town.
Josu is a 30-something native of Bilbao who works as a postman for part of the year, but travels the world during his one month paid vacation and an additional three months vacation he takes every winter, when it's cold and gray in Bilbao. I admire him becuase he's realized that he cares more about enjoying life than developing his career, and therefore works this post office job that leaves him free to pursue his life interests, both day to day when in Biblao, and when traveling (he's been to Nepal, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Peru, Chile, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, etc). He's also pretty inspring for having mastered English so well, mostly on his own initiative, through reading English books and magazines and looking up words (and I got to speak Spanish with him some). His vocabulary is incredible for a non-native speaker. It was great fun to discuss Spain, Spanish, Spanish and American politics, world affairs, etc. with him (he's an avid reader of the Economist). He also taught us a great deal about how to travel light, and do laundry! He's traveling byhimself for these three months in China, and joined up with us for the next few days.
The next morning we boarded a bus early for an incredible 9 hour ride over the mountains to the Tibetan town Litang on the southern road to Tibet. This road took us over three passes, some of which might have said 4600 m or so on the signs. We started before dawn and climbed up a snowy pass as it grew light (I've got great pictures out the front window of the bus), went down a valley past many Tibetan houses, stopped for lunch in a town clinging to the cliffs above a big river, and climbed a dusty valley which led us into the high barren hills near Kangding. The small bus was full of Tibetans heading home for the New Year, and our driver was great with a fur hat and sunglasses, complaining about all the foreigners on the bus.
Litang itself is at 4000 m on the north side of a wide plain bordered by hills on one side and snowy peaks on the other. It's a real Tibetan town, though the Chinese have built a wide main street with Chinese-style shop fronts. The sidewalks and side streets of the center part of town are full of Tibetans in the afternoons, striding around in colorful clothing, full of character. A typical sight was a man with a skirt of sorts, a thick coat wrapped over one shoulder and under the other arm, with long thick hair, a fur hat of sorts, and sunglasses on his dark sun, wind, and cold-weathered face ... riding a motorcycle covered in colored streamers other decorations, with a colorful patterned rug on the seat. Women walked around with jackets over skirts with colorful cloth attached at the belt on the front. The town felt like the American west, only Tibetan-style. They are really friendly, upbeat people, and it made for a great atmosphere in the town.
We stayed at a guesthouse where there were also other interesting people passing through, some Germans, a Japanese anthropologist, and Minnesota native we'd had dinner with in Kangding. The place had no running water, because it's so cold the pipes would freeze (water in buckets in the bathroom was frozen when we got up the first morning), but it was great fun to stay there. The first day Mary, Josu, and I decided to hike across the plain. It was a beautiful setting under a sunny sky, surrounded by mountains. We never made it to the other side because we hit a confusing bunch of streams meandering the valley floor that were too deep to cross, but we walked a long way out there. We then spent time wandering the streets and market in the late afternoon as the sun went down. The next day we walked up to the Litang monastery, and climbed a hill behind it, and then visited two Tibetan households on dusty streets that local youths led us to. They live in really sturdy, cosy homes with rock walls and wood beams and nice Tibetan decorations. At the first house we ate cookies, and watched a whole extended family make more, and at the second house we ate thick Tibetan bread and drank yak-butter tea while we talked with a boy who's very excited about learning English, having begun only 7 months ago with a great teacher apparently. It was very interesting being in a Tibetan area given the history of Chinese invasion and their continuing oppression of the Tibetans. Unfortunately I have still read very little about their history and culture, but I'd like to. I did get to see a Tibetan being arrested by the Chinese police while a crowd of Tibetans pressed passively in around the police jeep. I need to learn more about Tibet.
Yesterday morning Mary and I parted ways with Josu, who was heading north to Ganzi, and caught the bus back to Kangding. This time the bus was full of Han Chinese heading back to their hometowns for the New Year. This time we were on a bigger bus, but seeing as we chose the seats in the very back we were bouncing out of our seats the whole way. I hit my head on the ceiling once and we had some good laughs with the Chinese guys next to us ... we spent most of the ride with our hands on the ceiling to prevent any more head banging. The ride was just as incredible in the other direction ... the landscape and the Tibetan houses were endlessly interesting. We spent another evening in Kangding in the same guesthouse (a great place to meet interesting foreigners traveling through the area). A policeman called some kids out of an apartment building to show me where an internet cafe was, and it was snowing lightly as I walked around the town. This morning we caught another early bus, to Chongqing. The ride out the valley on the east side of the pass was great, with picturesque mist floating amid rocky crags and snowy forest. It felt pretty strange driving down an American-like expressway to from Chengdu to Chongqing. At a rest area people looked just like Americans climbing out of their cars. The small villages and fields of rural China line the highway, though, so it was an interesting ride. As we drove into Chongqing I saw how HUGE a city it is ... we'd only been in a small part before. It is a dirty, gray, congested, intriguing, and alluring place. Right now I'm in an internet cafe in the ultra-modern city center ... many people here are so westernized they don't even look Chinese. I'm looking forward to a full day of walking around the city tomorrow before we fly out Friday morning for Shanghai.
We'll spend the Chinese New Year in a rural area near Shanghai with our friend from the university in Dinghai, Xiao Shen, and his family. Then Mary will leave to visit Dan in Thailand and I'll take off again for another twelve days of traveling. I've been unsure about what I wanted to do. I've thought seriously about taking the train to Lhasa in Tibet proper (where we were was cultural Tibet, but technically western Sichuan) because I'd liked their culture and landscapes so much. Unfortunately it looks like the timing wouldn't work well and there are complications around getting a permit to go there, and I'd rather go with enough time to trek in the backcountry. Right now I'm thinking I might take a train to Lanzhou in Gansu Province, and explore that area of desert, mountians, and grasslands some. There's apparently a mix of Tibetan, Muslim, and Chinese culture there, where the Silk Road began in China. I still have to read more about it and look into logistics, though.
I'll keep you posted!
Tyler
p.s. The pictures are of me eating hotpot in Leshan and Mary and Josu on the road to Litang.
posted by Tyler C-R at 8:05 PM
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