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Published: August 6th 2007
The Beginnings of Adventure
It was a chilly evening. The music was slightly muted, soft and relaxing, the Migratory Bird Cafe was almost empty. I noted that unlike what normally passed for music in Deqin (constantly playing "Message in a Bottle" was ok at first but fast grew to be annoying) the strains of a passable 60's Jazz number were to be heard. After the pretty sunset I had moved into the cafe to escape the cold, as being from northern Australia has not prepared me for the weather here, and I was awaiting my overpriced and most likely barely-palatable dinner. In front of me lay the Chinese edition of National Geographic, opened to an article about Sicilian Olives or something equally riveting; in front of me was nothing but a wall of notes left by other guests. Another dinner alone.
I'd been thinking a lot about motivations; why the hell am I traveling to these remote and mostly unheard of places, what am I looking for? I seem to have gotten into the habit of running off to ludicrous places just to get away from other tourists only to feel lonely when I get there; running away from
everyone in the hope that I'll find someone perfect out there in the wilderness. Things just didn't seem right, I needed to do something different, to spice things up a little. Running through my mind again and again were a few incidents from the previous days. I'd met a nice couple from Holland who had decided to get out of their rut by selling all and traveling for the rest of their lives, something enviable in some respects, but it was their attitude that struck me. They were just enjoying things now, not thinking of futures or plans. They didn't spend their holidays behind the camera lens or chasing after that elusive "perfect location". I had also heard of two other guys traveling in the area who always wore Tuxedos as a gimmick (they are fundraising and they use the funds to help people that they meet en-route) and all of a sudden I realised that I had gotten far too serious about things. Here I was in a wondrous part of the world, worrying about things. To fix this terrible problem I hatched a plan, and what should one do when he has an unpractical and likely unrealisable idea?
Why, go through with it of course!
Lonely Planet talks of a "backdoor" to Chengdu whereby you head north from Zhongdian to Litang through some difficult areas before heading east to Chengdu. I thought this was a bit blasé as just about everyone is doing it now, so I had planned to do the backdoor to the backdoor by heading slightly further west into Tibet. Unfortunately this wasn't possible at the time due to the political situation so I had to come up with something better, something outrageous and individual. I decided to solve one of the age-old questions, something which has been bothering philosophers for generations: Can a rubber ducky successfully navigate the entire length of the Mekong?
With my motivations behind me (including Kawa Karpo, the toilets in my hotel which are flushed on a monthly rotation basis, and the magnificent sunrise at Feilai Si) I set out to cover the story as it were. The subsequent fourteen days of my life marked the adventure which follows.
Every Adventure Must Start Somewhere
This one starts in Deqin, but you already knew that. Unfortunately that was about all I knew as well, I didn't
Fishing Boy
On the shore of the Mekong.even know where the Mekong began let alone how to get there. A quick check of the guidebook’s map (with all its endless quality and precision) told me that the Mekong started somewhere north of Deqin. Actually quite a long way north, sort of in the Qinghai province area but possibly the north pole for all I knew. Ok, in all honesty I knew it had to start somewhere high up, which means the Himalayas. Thus, I decided to head north as quickly as I could, via the dreaded backdoor from Zhongdian.
After returning from my shenanigans on the Mingyong glacier, John, Els (my Dutch friends) and I returned to Deqin proper because there was a rumor going around that there was water to be had there. It also made things easier in terms of getting buses, but a shower was at the forefront of my mind (I shudder to think of going a day without a shower!) However, when we got to the hotel that we had heard of we ran into a serious problem: there wasn't anyone running the place. It was open and all, we had a good look around at the rooms and showers (yes,
Adventure Map
I drew this while drunk one night in Serxu. It was the best map I had at the time. hot water) but there was no boss to be found. We asked around at the shops next door who diligently called the boss so that we could pay for the room, but then he disappeared never to be seen again. I seriously think we could have slept there without him ever noticing. Damn me and my morals!
After Deqin I returned to Zhongdian where I planned to prepare for the journey; a difficult task when you don't know anything about the journey, but I knew that I was lacking one rubber ducky at the very least. The other crucial requirement for the trip was chocolate, and Oreos in particular, as no bus journey is complete without them. After perusing the supermarket I found the closest substitute available in remote China: Ords. As a warning to all, never but Ords they are an incredibly poor substitute. One would think that in the dog eat dog business of double-biscuit-with-filling making the order of the ingredients would be a well known scientific fact. But no, Ords more often than not will have two fillings on either side of a biscuit, and this is not an improvement! They also seem to have failed
Guesthouse in Xiangcheng
Authentic Tibetan house. to tell the difference in taste between chocolate and sponges (the ones you use for cleaning, not the tasty cake ones). I also enjoyed a Hawaiian pizza and a brownie the size of an average Chinese woman in Zhongdian, just because I'm a bloated westerner. However, Zhongdian was totally lacking in the rubber ducky department, the toy department had rubber swans but they simply wouldn’t do! Despite this setback I decided to push onwards, there had to be a duck somewhere in China didn’t there?
I was ready to go, I had a bus ticket with the nigh-on-unthinkable time of 7am written on it and I had chocolate. I choose to start the adventure, now.
Xiangcheng, Diamond Among the Rough
North of Zhongdian lies two hundred kilometers of poor quality roads through the low-lying mountains of southwest Sichuan. The region is primarily populated by Tibetans and as we drove along it was clear that we were no longer in a Chinese land. The houses looked different, they were tall whitewashed buildings made of wood and clay with flat roofs; the ground looked different, it wasn't covered with litter; the hills looked different, but that probably was
more to do with climate than the locals; everything even looked a little more primitively practical, a good example being the way every river was tapped and used for irrigation, electricity generation and even for decoration (one river was split in two with the man-made fork traversing the hillside for several kilometers, slowly rising high above its counterpart, only to be coursed directly off the edge of a cliff as a beautiful waterfall. Initially the scenery was nothing to write home about (then why am I?), then almost as if a line were drawn in the Earth everything changed into densely forested slopes with huge limestone pillars sticking out of their tops. Chunks of stone the size of Tasmania (Ie. insignificant unless you live there, but actually quite large in reality) just sort of stuck out at odd angles and looked at you. As we drove further into Sichuan the mountains became grander, the valleys deeper, the peaks became snow-capped and if possible the trees even became greener. If I thought that was all that was on offer I was mistaken, for the scenery continued to change, sometimes nigh-on instantaneously, with barren hillsides appearing above deep-cut river gorges immediately around
Luncheon Conversation
Restaurant in Xiangcheng. the corner from thick forests.
When we stopped for lunch I realised that I wasn't the only foreigner on the bus, there was a group of five Koreans with me who were gracious enough to shout me lunch. This was of course after they insisted that the lunch was included in the price of the ticket, silly fools. Nothing is free in China or anywhere else, except T-shirts.
The bus was slowly climbing towards Xiangcheng and when I arrived I almost wanted to turn around and go back. I also wanted to continue on the bus as it went on to Dongcheng, a couple of hours further along the road. Fortunately though I did get off the bus and ask around, otherwise I would have missed the best place in the world. I found out that a bus was leaving the following morning, thus I had a way out but it was at 6am (urghh, enough of the terrible times), and there was a guesthouse right next to the station. And by station I mean area of roadworks designated as close enough to the station to be acceptable. I said my goodbyes and set off to explore this
Xiangcheng
Viewed from the monastery. small, random town in the middle of nowhere.
A few things come to mind when I think back on Xiangcheng. First off, it is Fedora central. If you want to buy a cool Eastern European hat at discount prices then this is your place, practically every store sold them and pretty much everyone wore them. The only catch was that they didn't have any that were even close to covering my massive ego, I mean head. Secondly, I had the best guesthouse in the world: it was a Tibetan house with a ten bed dorm decked out just like a Tibetan house (wow, what an original idea), that is, wooden pillars were everywhere, every inch of the place was painted in bright colours with Buddhist themes, and little Buddhist trinkets lay around. To boot, I had the whole room to myself, it really was paradise until an annoying Italian guy (not sure if it was a guy to be honest) came in at 9:30 while I was trying to get my beauty sleep.
After the bus ride I was incredibly hungry, what with the substandard biscuits and all (and I still had two more packets of them with
You are Welcomes to Tibet
This is not China, this is Tibet. Over there is China, here is Tibet. This is not China. You are welcomes to Tibet. me), so I searched the town for a restaurant. Xiangcheng is essentially a one street town (it does have a second but there is nothing on it) with mostly Han Chinese buildings. The areas around the street, such as down the valley towards the river and above the town on the hill, are essentially 100% Tibetan but I was too hungry to search out authentic cuisine so I just struck out for the closest thing I could find. As if by a twist of fate, sandwiched between two Fedora shops, along the way I came across a toy shop that not only sold rubber duckys, it sold packages with four ducks each! I couldn’t believe my eyes, neither could the owner when I asked him to take a photo of me with my newly acquired bath time friends (he clearly thought I was a mad westerner). That was the first big problem solved, next problem: where was I going to?
As I continued down the street I started to notice something different, something new for China; people were openly looking at me and smiling, they weren’t disinterested like usual, they were truly happy to see me and to say
Tibetan House
In Xiangcheng near the river. hello. I have since found that all Tibetans are like this, everywhere I go people fall to pieces with joy when I so much as smile at them. If I say “Tahsi Delek” (Tibetan for hello) they end up somewhere beyond the moon! It makes for a very enjoyable experience when you walk down the street, being a small-time celebrity and all, but eventually your cheeks get very sore. Eventually I escaped the street into a small restaurant only to find a similar response there: once I was served my meal the entire staff came and sat around staring at me (they particularly loved my two-piece traveler’s chopsticks). I struck up a basic conversation with them and we had a grand time while I was there, despite the fact that our conversation rarely moved away from chapter one of “Chinese for Dummies”.
After lunch I explored Xiangcheng as best I could, that is, I walked up to the monastery (known as the Baz Luhrmann Temple. Ok, after fact checking I have found that it is actually called something entirely different which is both unpronounceable and impossible to remember, but at the time it sounded a lot like Baz Luhrmann)
Mr Zheng's Map
Totally incomprehensible and factually incorrect, but it looks good on a wall. on top of the hill and then down to the river. The whole walk was through the Tibetan sections of town and I found it terribly beautiful, yet the most endearing memories are of the locals I saw along the way. Not one of them didn’t say hello, wave or offer me something. Whether they wanted me to sit down in the shade with them (so they could giggle at me and touch my hairy white arms) or just to say “hello” and “good morning” over and over again, they were without exception the most friendly people in the world. Workers would stop working to wave and say hello, parents would get their children to run over and say hello, even a baby pig came out and looked at me funny (I guess piglet would be the right word but it just sounds so corny). In honor of the friendly people of Xiangcheng I decided to name the hero of this adventure after their monastery: may I introduce to you Baz and his buddies.
The one thing Xiangcheng doesn’t have going for it is a good nightlife. After dinner and a snack (alright, I stuffed my face with cake,
Chorten
In Litang. get over it) the only thing I could find to do was to play pool with some of the local kids. Unfortunately they don’t know the rules of pool, especially the ones about balls falling into pockets and staying there. Somehow I managed to beat them at their own game, don’t ask me how, because they really seemed to be making up the rules as they went along. Pool isn’t enjoyable when you don’t know the rules and neither do your opponents, but it was nice to mingle with the kids. They were all so excited to see me that they had little fights in between games to see who would be up next. If Xiangcheng isn’t the friendliest place on Earth then . . . oh wait, I do know somewhere friendlier.
Higher Mountains, More Tibet, Crazier Tourists
Despite its beauty I wasn’t going to stick around in Xiangcheng, the Mekong was waiting after all (practically speaking I think the river would still have been there a day later but I’m on a mission, I can’t be fooling around here, anyone up for fooling around though is welcome to email me) so I headed for Litang.
Kangding by Day
Note dodgy weather. Litang is a Tibetan town on the Tibetan plateau, the first time I had ever been up on the plateau in fact, which is famous for its annual horse festival and its Tibetans. Litang happens to be one of the most easily accessible Tibetan towns so it gets more than its fair share of tourists and thus has more than its fair share of trashy tourism hang-ons. Most notable among these being the beggars who dress as monks and walk around saying mantras, this really gets me angry as it makes the authentic monks (who happen to be more hospitable than you could imagine) look bad. I was expecting the bus to Litang to take a whole day so I was quite shocked when I was told to get off after only three hours. Nevertheless, in those three hours the scenery had changed from fertile river valleys and forests into treeless plains and grasslands.
I visited the monastery behind the town and was lucky enough to see the monks praying in the courtyard, but to be honest I didn’t feel like sticking around for very long. I did get shown around the inside of the main hall by one
Snack on Yak!
Doug pours me my first taste of Yak Butter Tea. friendly monk however where I saw some fantastic Tibetan art. I had previously been unaware of the incredibly detailed sexual nature of some Tibetan art, their religious works quite often show deities in the midst of passion with levels of detail which are still illegal in a lot of countries. I was later informed that these images are all to do with Tantric Buddhism, but still, can you imagine being a monk, having to be celibate and yet being constantly surrounded by pictures of sex? It was almost too much for me to be in there for ten minutes!
Thanks to an English speaking chef named Mr Zheng (his food is ok, but don’t eat the Chicken with Cashews) I had a map of Litang - which for some reason had south facing upwards - so I set out to explore the town by foot. This entailed getting completely lost and being unable to find the 7th Dalai Lama’s house, climbing a hill so as to set a new altitude record (Litang is 4000m up to begin with and I didn’t realise how hard it is to climb a 200m hill at that altitude) and ending up at a
Doug, Tosky and I
After failing to find a fun club to party at in Kangding. hot springs which was reminiscent of that second bathroom in your house which you never bother cleaning because no-one ever uses it. All afternoon though I was once again amidst friendly people smiling, waving and saying hello. I was really starting to love Tibetans.
Being a more touristed town there were other westies at my guesthouse, quite a few of them actually, and we all decided to go out to dinner. For once on my trip I had actually run into a bunch of Aussies, three of them (Doug, Paul and Michelle), plus there was an odd Japanese girl that wore nothing but Thai hilltribe clothing, gave most of her drinks away to random strangers, was called Mario, and had shaved her head at a monastery that afternoon. She was an artist though so I guess that explains it. We were feeling game so we ordered a dish described as “pork in special sauce” which turned out to be great and completely not as funny looking as its name deserved. The reason that I mention this (I’m not completely rambling) is that Doug and I traveled on to Kangding the following day as we both didn’t feel the need
Monks in Ganzi
Young monks posing for the camera. to stick around.
I had originally wanted to go due north to Ganzi but the buses didn’t go that way so a detour east to Kangding was necessary. Along the way we passed a military outpost right at the top of a 4500m pass with a terribly complicated looking radar system, I couldn’t help but wonder who it was defending against, Yunnan perhaps? Kangding sits in a deep and narrow valley between some very high mountains. One of these is supposedly 7500m tall or something, but Doug and I never saw it thanks to the clouds. Really, how can you not see a seven kilometer tall mountain? Our first thoughts of Kangding were simultaneously “this is a really windy city” and “why does the map in Lonely Planet not even come close to resembling reality?” The first thought was understandable, we were practically in a canyon (the town is perhaps 500m across and many kilometers long), but the second really caused us troubles, however, we eventually found a nice place to stay that had the added advantages of a staff that would do anything for us (one of my odd demands was a collection of 250 blank business cards
that had been cut in two, which they managed to find for me) and yak butter tea on demand. In case you don’t know, Yak butter tea can be really quite tasty, particularly when it’s a freezing cold day at a monastery.
Unfortunately the weather stayed bad while we were in Kangding so none of the big sights were worth visiting, instead Doug and I spent a day bumming around; shopping, drinking coffee, getting lunch, watching Tibetan buskers (some of the most entertaining buskers), drinking tea, getting dinner and the like. It was in Kangding that I finally figured out where I was going on this adventure, thanks to a Chinese atlas. Unfortunately it is written entirely in Chinese which makes reading it a slow task, but it told me quite clearly that there were only two possible destinations: Zatou and Nangcheng, both of which are in Qinghai province. One of them, Nangcheng, would be easy to get to as it was on the main road south from Qinghai’s capital, the other was a good 200km further up the Mekong but possibly impossible to get to by legitimate means. Of course I decided to go to Zatou, it is
Life is Good
Monks in Ganzi have it good. after all within 150km of the very source of the Mekong. From Zatou the river flows south into Tibet to a town called Chamdo where it is joined by two other rivers, thus forming the Mekong proper which subsequently flows southeast to Deqin where I last saw it.
Doug turned out to be a really great lad, he is a touch over 50 which could easily make him my father, but we got on like a house on fire. Just mucking around, talking about food and drink mostly, but occasionally about more enlightening concepts (like trying to reason why Kangding’s only club never seemed to have anyone in it, or trying to explain the concept of “breaking the seal” to a Japanese friend that we had met and were in the process of getting sloshed with - after his second toilet stop he got the idea). Doug also carried a guitar with him which made for good entertainment, particularly the song he wrote about his old Kingswood.
Another Bus Ride: A Mind Left to Wander
. . . too early, 6am should be banned. What? It snowed last night, great, it’s cold up here, why is
this pass so high, can’t it stop snowing. At least the mountains are pretty, like a black and white photo, no colour, except for the brown stream flowing straight through the middle of frame, that rock has an icicle on it. My air-con is throwing snow on me, that yak is half buried in snow, is it dead? Sleepy . . .
. . . where am I? More yaks, must be high still, can see colour. Yaks are definitely alive, I think it moved, maybe, it’s still covered in snow though, no, it’s not moving. 100m long prayer flags from one hill to another, this pass is high, Tibetan plateau on the other side, snowy mountains all around, green plains next to me, my depth perception is not working, am I broken? Cannot contrast the colours, darks turn to black, colours turn to white, sky is pure white like snow, only the road and the grass around me has colour, who has stolen my colours? Winding road, where are the trees? There must be trees, this is the wilderness, why only bushes, I feel cheated, hmm, just look back at book, ignore the world. Read two words, look
back at mountains, it’d be rude not to. . .
Back to Reality
I came out of my trance, a combination of lack of sleep and my surrealistic surroundings had taken away most of my coherent thoughts that day, thankfully I had kept the few notes that I just wrote down. The location of my awakening was Ganzi, a Tibetan trading town in the northwest of Sichuan. Ganzi is a big market town for Tibetans, and despite the fact that it’s been in Chinese hands for more than a century it remains authentically Tibetan at heart. Once you go beyond the buildings, which are admittedly somewhat Han Chinese, Ganzi is so Tibetan it almost hurts. Huge Tibetan men and women roam the streets (quite a few are taller than I and almost all are bigger, even the girls) and Tibetan goods are for sale in every shop and on every corner. Tibetan monks and nuns are everywhere, particularly if you wander north into the older Tibetan part of town (which is entirely wood and clay houses of Tibetan style) which climbs a hillside towards a gigantic monastery.
Being a market town, a lot of the people
roaming the streets are from further afield, having come to town to buy and sell what they need. These people are truly rough (snotty as a friend of mine described them), they live off the land as their ancestors have for generations, and it shows in their faces, their clothes and everything else about them. When you see a Khampa man (Khampa is one of the three ethnic groups which make up Tibetans) you’ll know what I mean. Put it this way, if I were a twelve year old kid picking a football team, right after I picked David Beckham I’d pick a Khampa. The idea being that when things broke down into the inevitable team fight I’d be on the side with the six foot tall scary man wielding a knife which would happily be found in a B-grade horror film. These guys are mean looking! Tibetans are an odd sort to look at because they are so varied, one might have pale white skin, as white as I am, and the one next to them could be as dark as anyone you’ve ever seen, purely because of the way they live. Plus, with the way they dress (thick
Friends in the Monastery
These were the guys giving me lots of Yak Butter Tea and bread. clothes with double length sleeves, yak skins, big leather boots, and lots of jewellery/braiding for the girls) you could mistake them for the Chinese equivalent of a biker. Actually, most of them ride beefed up Chinese bikes complete with bullbars. Did I mention the knives? Everyone seems to carry them, men, women, children, and not just butter knives either, we’re talking Crocodile Dundee meets Jack the Ripper. Also, Tibetans are also capable of doing one thing that I hadn’t seen in a long time: they can grow beards. Long, thick, bushy ones, and they have hair to match. I’ve seen Tibetans that look like bad-guys out of old spaghetti westerns; with long, unclean locks covered by a cowboy hat. I’ve seen monks with beards, monks with aviator glasses riding big motorbikes, monks with mobile phones. The monks and nuns around here are not at all like what I was expecting, I’ve seen them shopping and running around town just like I do, I’ve seen them running errands and hanging out with their mates. They go out for dinner at restaurants, they stay in my guesthouses, they even go on holidays.
Despite being one of the toughest groups of people
Old Master
This guy tried to teach me Tibetan, it was too hard for me. in the world I found the people in Ganzi to be even more friendly than those in Xiangcheng. Truthfully, my cheeks got sore whenever I walked down the street as everybody, I mean everybody either smiled, said hello or waved at me. I spent so much time just wandering around enjoying the atmosphere; I loved it. This place really is Tibet, it’s not China in the slightest.
One thing which occurs in Ganzi, that I hadn’t seen before, is the trade of “caterpillar fungus”. At the time I didn’t quite know what was going on, but groups of men collect on the street around one man with a bag of “brown things”. It all seems like a black-market trade, and it almost certainly is, but why on Earth they want fungus, I simply didn’t know. All I could tell was that they all made quite a lot of fuss over the things, they must be worth a fair chunk of money.
During my time in Ganzi I also did some regular sightseeing and I must tell you that that area is blessed. The landscapes match the people in beauty, and that is a tough ask. That day, I
first visited the monastery there, which itself is quite beautiful (the hall of 1000 images was a definite highlight, there weren’t quite 1000 of them, but there were hundreds of individually carved images piled three stories high), where I met the nicest group of monks. They invited me into their room where I spent an hour or two drinking copious amounts of Yak butter tea with dry bread while we talked. The younger monks actually spent most of the time playing with my camera (taking photos of their teachers and posing themselves) while the old monk tried to teach me Tibetan (a vastly futile task). After I broke away from the monks I headed back down the hill where I ran into a group of locals building a wall. They all happily posed for a photo, but when I went to leave they started asking me questions in Chinese, which I of course, didn’t understand. Being used to people asking for money to take their photo I pulled out 10 kuai, which they promptly refused. What they wanted was for me to send them copies of the photos, these people really were sincerely friendly. I fell in love with them
even more.
In the afternoon I walked out of Ganzi town, into the river valley beyond, where I found a series of Tibetan villages strewn about the place. A small group of girls (my six Tibetan girlfriends as I like to call them, despite the fact that they were 10 or younger) showed me around their villages and temples which was a really nice treat. In one temple I was lucky enough to catch the apprentice monks (little Lamas) at a writing exercise: they take black painted wooden boards and cover them with grey dust, they then use strings to draw red lines across the boards, and they use small bits of bamboo cut to a point to scratch off the dust, thus leaving behind black writing. I sat with them for a while as they wrote out lines from old Tibetan books before getting them checked by their teacher; it was just like an Australian school except everything was Tibetan and low-tech. To finish the day I climbed a mountain behind the villages and looked out across the valley. After such a fun day among such friendly people, sitting atop the mountain (where they do sky burials at
other times) was blissfully peaceful. I put on “Dark Side of the Moon”, walked back to town, and was as happy as I’ve ever been.
As a juxtaposition of sorts to the wonderful Tibetan experience I was having, I met a Belgian smuggler in Ganzi. He spends most of his year overseas collecting antiques and local arts and crafts that he then carries back home to sell. As far as an interesting character goes I couldn’t have found anyone better. I am now well versed in methods of beating airport security measures, getting good prices on buying local crafts, how to get to sacred Tibetan temples which are off-limits to foreigners (at the behest of the Chinese of course, Tibetan monks are more than happy to invite you inside their temples. They even show you pictures of the Dalai Lama or Daramsala whenever they get a chance), and where to find the best Hui Tea in China.
Pass The Oxygen on the Left-hand Side
As much as I loved Ganzi, I had to head further north. We must not forget the mission, it is important. This didn’t get off to a flying start though, I couldn’t
Sweep the Floor!
Turn the patty over!
Don't forget the cheese! get on the bus out of Ganzi. Thankfully though, the friendliness of Ganzi came through once again as the owner of my guesthouse practically chartered a bus just so that I could leave, I don’t think it was going until he asked about it. I got to sit in the front seat with the driver and all! The weather was against me as well that day, it was dreary, rainy and cold. Snow capped peaks were everywhere and once again the landscape did that cool thing where it splits into two: the mountains and the sky in their totally black and white contrast, with the brown/green plains in the foreground. I really do love the scenery in this part of the world. Also, there are Tibetan temples everywhere. As the bus drove along I don’t believe that there was a single moment when I couldn’t see a monastery, a temple, a chorten or a mountainside full of prayer flags.
My destination was Maningango, a stop off point for those heading into Tibet via the northern Sichuan-Tibet highway. The town itself is a nothing, a single dirty street with a handful of shops and two hotels (one has a toilet,
one doesn’t, neither have running water, one did have the biggest TV in Sichuan though). There was literally nothing to do in the town itself except eat and sleep, two things that I enjoyed very much considering how cold it was. I was so freezing one night that I went to sleep at 8pm, who’s a grandpa now? However, this didn’t concern me as I was only there for one reason: to visit Dege.
Dege is a small Tibetan town just across the border from Tibet proper. It is known for two reasons: it’s ancient printing Lamasery which has the most extensive collection of Tibetan literature in the world (some 70% of all Tibetan literature is held there), and the 5050m pass that one has to traverse in order to get there. Thanks to the weather the pass was cold and misty, ice was falling from the sky. As we climbed higher I started to really notice that one Chinese habit which I hate the most, smoking. It seemed that the higher we went and the colder it was outside (hence the less likely I was to open a window) the more the Chinese men wanted to smoke. It
Building a Wall
Tibetans at work. was starting to get ridiculous when something marvelous happened, their lighters stopped working above 4800m. Damn, he brought matches. I usually don’t mind the altitude, but the combination of height and smoke gave me a real headache, I wasn’t a happy chappy when we peaked, but then I saw the view.
We couldn’t see the highest mountains, or much at all to be true, but the slopes around us, so covered in snow, were really great to look at. However, it wasn’t until we were lower down, where the snow started to thin and rocks came through, that I even thought about the snow. Higher up where it was just one white blanket things didn’t make sense, underneath the snow could be anything. Bernard Jaffe could have been right when he said that the Eiffel Tower or a hamburger were under there, you’d never know, but down where you can see what’s hidden, just, that’s where it all makes sense and I could comprehend what I was seeing. Further down the mountain, towards Dege, the scene changed even more so as the mountains became sheer limestone pinnacles like those in Laos or Thailand.
The Lamasery was as entertaining,
if not more so, than the pass as I got to see Tibetan books being created. The workers move at a frenetic pace, throwing wooden blocks and paper around with startling dexterity. Whole books are created, four copies at a time, in less time than it will take you to read this journal (significantly less when I consider how much junk I’ve written today). One of the workers (presumably a monk, but I’m not positive) saw me looking over his shoulder and offered me a page from the book he was printing. I feel sorry for whoever gets that book, they may never know how it ends.
On the bus back to Maningango things were worse (once we got a bus that is, we managed to get told three totally different bus departure times). Not only was it cold, colder than before, but it had snowed the night before so the road was covered in ice. Our minivan driver had a death wish and hadn’t learnt that brakes should be applied before the corners and we were again surrounded by high-altitude extreme smokers. Because of the ice we got stuck in traffic on the pass (the trucks were putting
chains on) about 100m from the top, so there we sat for half an hour at 5000m in a smoke filled cabin while it snowed outside. Thankfully Noam, my Israeli friend, was carrying with him an oxygen bag so we decided to use it (again I wasn’t fairing terribly well), however, we had one problem. Unlike my idea of an oxygen bag, a bag filled with oxygen, we found that all we had was an inflatable bag with a nose attachment. Totally useless. You are supposed to fill the bag at low altitude and then breath it at the pass, but how were we to know that? We can’t read Chinese? Anyhow, I did survive long enough to get to Manigango so that I could nearly freeze to death overnight.
There is one other sight near Manigango worth visiting: Xinluhai. This is a lake at the foot of a glacier just west of town which supposedly has loads of wildlife which can’t be found elsewhere. Unfortunately for me though, whenever I saw an animal it was inevitably scampering/flying away from me. No matter how much I pretended to be Steve Irwin I could never catch more than a glimpse
of anything. On the buses further north I also saw a lot of the same animals, Himalayan Marmots mostly, and from weight of statistical evidence I can confidently saw that these animals spend their entire lives running away from buses. Despite the lack of animal sightings, the lake itself was stunning. The colour just wasn’t right, as if the paint tins were running low when it came time to colour it in. In fact, the colours all around western Sichuan seem wrong to me: the sky is a different blue; the grass is a subtler green; rivers aren’t even close to what they should be, never a brown or a murky green, only brilliant blues, the occasional crystal clear stream, one was even phosphorescent aqua. Even the dogs have eyes that defy imagination with their brightness. Perhaps everything just seems to be more brilliant in contrast to the dreary, sparse landscapes, but I don’t think so.
I walked around the lake shore, bewildered that the turquoise waters could exist while wondering quite exactly where I was as I strolled along a sandy beach 4000m above the oceans. At the far end I ran into a herd of Yaks, real
Yaks, not those half Yak, half Cow mixes that are farmed everywhere but real, full-size Yaks. Earlier in the day I had actually see a Yak nearly get hit by a four wheel drive which would have been terribly messy for the car, these beasts are huge!
Creepy Hotel Number Two
Due to the cold I got out of Manigango as fast as I could. That is, I stood by the roadside for two hours starting at 7am while it was somewhere between absolute zero and ludicrously cold waiting for a bus that was supposedly coming through. I was actually about to trying hitching on a truck when it finally arrived, much to the appreciation of everyone waiting for it. For some reason though, it seems that whenever it is the coldest, or when the weather is worst, the scenery at the next town is at its best. The drive north to Serxu was without doubt the most beautiful up until that point. Fresh snow covered everything, yet the sky was clear and I could see all the way to the horizon. White hills and mountains rose around me and carried off into the distance like brilliant
My Girlfriends
These girls showed me all around their village. white sand dunes. Every pass and every peak presented longer and better views as the landscape slowly changed. Eventually we were driving through grasslands and tree-less river valleys. I guess the word “steppe” would be appropriate but I have a disliking of it for no real reason. I couldn’t believe my luck, it was beautiful, it was warm-ish, the weather was perfect.
Then I got to Serxu. It was snowing. I guess the fact that I’d never actually been snowed on in person made it fun for about two thirds of a second. Then it was just cold so I rushed to find a hotel, that’s when things got, well, funny. A Tibetan guy named Thuptse who grew up in India and thus could only properly speak Hindi met me on the street and showed me to his sister’s guesthouse. He actually assured me that it wasn’t clean but it was cheap, so I decided to stay there anyway. Of course, despite being brand new the place had no water, no lock and no toilet. In fact, the entire town didn’t have a toilet. None of the restaurants had them, even the club we went to didn’t have one.
This wasn’t unbearable, just annoying.
Thuptse did a lot of things for me, he bought me dinner, he bought all my drinks at the club we went to (I had little choice as my room was above it), he introduced me to a lot of seedy “friends” of his and he organised my ride out the next day. I was really expecting to wake up without a head and minus all my belongings (his friends were the seedy mobster type that looked like they were working in the black market). In the end everything proved to be pure kindness, but at the time I felt very worried, people were just too nice to me. It was quite entertaining in the club though. I’m a terrible dancer, but in that company I was quite normal. It was as though I was dancing with the wiggles!
Endgame
After a short bus ride from Serxu, I found myself in Yushu. No longer in Sichuan, I had a whole new province to explore: Qinghai. At first glance Yushu doesn’t look at all like the areas I had just been through, it was warm and dry, almost desert. It looked like
School is Fun
If you're a Tibetan monk. the pictures I have seen of parts of the Middle East, only the people here are Tibetan and Hui (Chinese Muslims). High above the city (ok, town) sits a very old and ruinous monastery that I climbed which nearly became my downfall. On the way down from the peak, which was being turned into some kind of altar at the time by a group of workers, I stepped on what I thought was solid ground but turned out to be the roof of the workers’ shelter. How was I to know? Really, it was covered in rocks and dirt so it looked just like the rest of the hill only flatter and easier to walk on. You should have seen their faces! Yushu also has the world’s largest Mani pile, that is, the world’s largest pile of rocks with mantras written on them. Think of a 10 foot tall pile that takes ten minutes to walk around and you’ve got a general idea of it’s scale.
But the reason I came to Yushu wasn’t to see the sights, I didn’t even know what was here until I arrived. The real reason to come here was that it is one
Tibetan Writing
Apprentice doing his exercises. day’s drive from Zatou town, my ultimate destination and the place where everything would be resolved. So how do you get to Zatou? That was what I needed to figure out, and that is where my troubles started.
My first step was to ask at my guesthouse, a task that turned out to be so terribly painful that I still have nightmares about it (the fact that I’m still staying with them, sharing a room with a chain smoker, indicates my insanity). I will admit that things were against me from the beginning, I don’t speak good Chinese, they don’t either, well at least not as far as I can tell. They do speak Mandarin but their accents are so totally alien that neither of us can make ourselves understood in the slightest. Additionally, they think that they’re more adept at translating than I am which makes no sense at all, I at least speak some words in both languages. After half an hour the conversation had degraded to the point where one of them was looking through the English section of my phrasebook in the hope that they might find the words that they were after; they didn’t.
When I asked them to draw me a map of how to get to the bus station I was met with nothing but blank looks, so I just left. I think they are all daft, a fact which I have since verified.
I found the bus station and asked the drivers when the bus left for Zatou, they told me 11am. Wow, that was easy, so I went to the desk and asked to buy a ticket. The Chinese lady there flatly refused to sell me a ticket to anywhere other than Xining which happens to be about 50 hours in the wrong direction. No matter what I said she wouldn’t help, so I just left and went sightseeing. On the way up to the monastery I meet a woman from Taiwan who happens to be the most aggressive and annoying woman in the world, she could talk Chinese though so I enlisted her help, this also turned out to be a problem. She asked some locals for me who said that the bus to Zatou had been cancelled recently and wasn’t running at all, also, they mentioned that no outsiders ever went to Zatou, not even neighboring Tibetans.
My Guide in Dege
This old guy showed me around the printing lamasery, he only ever said "hello". Hundreds of times. This old guy showed me around the printing lamasery, he only ever said "hello". Hundreds of times.Of course, no reason was given. All this information was of course causing me troubles, I really had no idea what was going on, so I went back to my hotel and started hatching plans. Two ideas came to mind, one was to hire a motorbike and ride to Zatou by myself, but I’m not allowed to rent in China, the second was to take a bus to the Zatou turnoff and then hitch the remaining 150km.
My guesthouse’s staff was in true form, they simultaneously seemed to be shocked that I intended to hitch and totally unable to understand a single word I said. Whenever I thought I’d explained something and they had understood, they would then come out and clearly demonstrate that they didn’t have a clue. I tried to get them to write a note to the bus driver explaining where I wanted to get dropped off, but that was so far over their heads that I gave up and went to dinner. I was truly frustrated by this point and I was not in the mood for any more
Printing Floor
Inside the Lamasery in Dege. hassles, but lo and behold, little Miss Taiwan showed up. She seemed to have just run a marathon, she was sweating like mad, she could barely breathe, and she seemed to be very angry and happy to see me. I couldn’t figure her out. She dragged me away from my meal, something that is extremely dangerous, and took me to a bus that she said went to Zatou.
True enough, there was a minibus going to Zatou-something. Unfortunately it wasn’t my Zatou, it turns out that there are about four of the places scattered around which was most definitely complicating things. However, Team Taiwan’s efforts were not wasted, I did get some information out of the driver: I got a note with the name of my destination clearly written on it, Zatouxian, and I was told that a bus probably went there at 11am. Why does everyone in this town say 11am? I asked someone when their shop opened and they said 11am too, it must be the default answer to give westerners when they don’t understand the question, that infuriates me! So there I was, with practically no idea about anything, just a few scattered bits of information
of how to get there and a whole day to figure it out. Could I get there? Or would I fail at the last turn?
In the morning I awoke late, I slept in to be honest, but only a little bit. I had to rush through breakfast because the guesthouse staff once again failed to understand anything I said or any of my sign language and I just managed to arrive at the bus station on the stroke of eight. I looked around, asked random people, showed them the note with “Zatou” written on it, and then someone said magical words: “Hello, can I help you?” Bob, a local Tibetan boy studying English in Yushu had seen me running about like a headless chook and had decided to come over and help me out, he was truly a godsend, and only the first that day. Bob found out for me that there was indeed a bus to Zatou at 9am and I just had to wait in front of the bus station for it. He also found out some other startling information though, the road to Zatou was restricted and only certain people could enter the region! And
5050m Up
The pass to Dege. why? Because there was a war there last year, a war over, wait for it. . . caterpillar fungus.
That sounded exciting to me, some monks assured me that it was safe to be there, unless you were a caterpillar I’m guessing, so I hopped on the bus. The bus was actually full of monks, packed full of them, and they spent the entire ride debating. Now, for those who haven’t seen it, Tibetan monks debate in a very animated fashion with lots of pointing and shouting, witty quips and retorts, quoting scriptures (the bus had a lot of them that were used as references), and my favourite: the clapping. Whenever a monk thought he had made his point clear he would clap his hands together in the direction of his opponent, supposedly silencing them, however this never actually worked. Old monks argued with young monks, the oldest monk sat quietly for hours until he made one remark which blew everyone away, people were clambering over one another to get in on the action, it was one exiting show to watch for six hours.
Sitting next to me on the bus was a Tibetan teacher who could speak
some English and who’s Mandarin was clear enough for me to partially understand. Throughout the bus ride he looked after me and explained to me what was going on. The local people of Zatou prefecture were blockading the roads and controlling who came into their region, and he wasn’t sure if I would be allowed to enter. Without his help I would have been quite lost, particularly after lunch.
We stopped at their checkpoint for lunch (two minute noodles) before heading onwards. However, to get back on the bus we had to walk through a gauntlet of men, one person at a time. These men were tough, they were real Tibetan cowboys, they had knives and one guy up on the hill overlooking us had a shotgun. It was a tense moment as each passenger tried to board, the men would ask them snappy questions, ID cards were shown, some people were very carefully looked over. I stayed at the back, I was in no hurry, but eventually I was pushed forwards towards the men. I slowly advanced, feeling much smaller than usual until I reached the door. The biggest man, with a crooked eye and a scowling face
Lakeshore
Mist over Xinlu Hai, I think it was hailing at this point. put his hand in front of me. His eyes said “Stop”.
I froze. Dozens of eyes glared at me, not a word was said. I didn’t know what to think, all I could focus on was the scowl on that man’s face. Slowly, the scowl turned, he smiled at me and started laughing. They pushed me on the bus to the sound of a laughing crowd. I don’t know what I felt, thankfully I was wearing two pairs of jocks. Once through the checkpoint everything was easy. The bus drove to Zatou, my friend from the bus showed me to a guesthouse and I was all set to walk down to the Mekong. I thought though that I should know the name of my friend so I asked, his name was Karma.
Zatou prefecture is a beautiful place with vast mountains and deep valleys, completely unlike any of the other mountains and valleys that I have described in this journal. I can’t describe how good the Mekong looked as it flowed through Zatou, my photos will have to speak for me. Unfortunately though, the town itself is nothing to look at. The place is dirty and the people
Misty Lakeside
It was snowing at this point. there are less friendly than your usual Tibetans, also, many people in the town appear to be quite rich, and only recently so, which seems to make them somewhat guarded and distant. I didn’t come to Zatou for the scenery though, the adventure had to be completed, so I walked down to the shore of the river. Sadly the place was filthy, rubbish was strewn everywhere. I couldn’t believe that a country that wishes to be first world can still treat their environment so badly. Here I was, 4000km from the delta in Vietnam, with 100 million people relying on this river for their livelihood and survival, and all I could see around me was a rubbish dump. Even here, within 200km of its source the Mekong is filthy, and to think I took baths in that water when I was in Laos!
The river flows off the mountains in western Zatou prefecture and when it reaches the town at an altitude of around 4000m it is a wide and fast flowing brown river, just like the Mekong is everywhere. As I walked down to its very edge with Baz and his buddies I couldn’t help but think, looking
around at the rubbish beside me.
I almost couldn’t comprehend that the water was the same as that I had seen in Yunnan, in Laos, in Cambodia and in Vietnam. In that water I have swum, I have bathed, I have taken boat trips, I’ve seen dolphins, I’ve seen fishermen working, boats ferrying goods. I have crossed that water in ferrys, in tourist boats, even on two canoes strapped together. I’ve had dinner on its shore, I’ve shared drinks with mates there. I’ve sat in hammocks and I’ve eaten cakes. I’ve met so many people on that river, so many different cultures and peoples, and yet all of them share the one common link of the river. I can’t tell you all of the stories that I have from all the people I’ve met on that river, I can’t even tell you all of the stories from the people I met on this particular adventure (despite the fact that this is so ridiculously long, it could have been much longer). I’ve had such a great time just getting here, I’ve met so many great people along the way, and that’s what made this adventure worthwhile. Just like how traveling
is about journeys, not destinations, the story of the river is not about where I went, it is not about seeing the river at all, it is about the people that live on the river and the stories that they tell. Here’s the truth: destinations are for lazy people, journeys are for me.
So what is the story of Zatou? Another Earnest Young English Speaker started talking to me on my return from Zatou, he was a local and he explained the situation. Zatou is fortunate enough to have the biggest and best caterpillar fungus’ in China, if not the world, so people want to be able to collect them. The fungus is actually the part of the caterpillar left over when it becomes a butterfly (or whatever these ones turn into) and it is used in Chinese medicine. A single fungus can sell for as much as six US dollars in Yushu, and considerably more further afield. Last year the neighbouring prefecture of Nangchang tried to take some of Zatou’s lands in order to get the fungus, which resulted in a war. A lot of soldiers were even sent from Xining to stop the fighting. My friend wasn’t
certain but he thought that some people did actually die during the conflict. Once I knew this, everything about Zatou made sense, the nouveau rich, the strict entry control and the troubles involved in getting there.
As for the answer to the original question, I never would have been able to tell you anyway as I couldn’t have followed Baz back to Vietnam, so there was no point even trying to find out.
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Chris
non-member comment
So you didn’t get a single picture of a monk with ducky on their head? I’m disappointed