The Cora Kawa Karpo trek

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Happy 23th birthday, and the marvelous Cora Kawa Karpo.

My 23th birthday was also my best one. I guess it takes 23 times to get to perfection... :)
I arraived to Shangri-La again after 4 months, with my two good friends Dan and Omer, met Zhang-nian and Helen Ye again, and felt like home.

We came here to get ready for our Trek: the Cora Kawakarpo, whice we had no information about it in that time. At the same day we had a wonderful dinner with a local Tibetan singer (that later on become our friend as well).


26/9/06 Birthday in Shangri-La.
Early in the morning Dan and me went out to buy some things for the trek. Amir arrived from Dali at noon.
I saw Shio-Che, the charming worker of the guesthouse cooking somethings but i didn't thought it's for us.


When night came we came back to the guest house and found the whole "family" sitting next to a big table, full with Chinese food, my birthday dinner.
after i got a couple of gifts and we aet, we went to sit by the small fire-place in the nice Tibetan living room.
another Israeli friends arrived, with Steven, a good friend of mine from Belgium, and the night began... A Tibetan song was followed by an israeli one. Amir held his guitar and we all sang and drank beer.

the atmosphere was amazing and i couldn't belive how i celebrate my Birthday in Shangri-la, my second home, with good Israeli friends, good Chinese and Tibetan people, singing in Hebrew and Tibetan, and at the end eating a wonderful birthday cake that Zhang-nian bought for me. no words. i went to sleep all excited and happy... :)



27/9/06 Starting the road for the Unknown Cora trek.

We went to Deqin, and then straight to Feili temple - the starting point of the trek. We tried to get some information about this trek, what we should take with us, if it's cold and snowy, etc... after a short while we understand that the way to do it is: just do it. so we went to the first village after we bought some food, sleeping bags, and two big plastic sheets for our improvised tent.

I don't have enough time, or brain cells to write a short sum of each day. so just a short info about this and some nice stories...

The Cora Kawa Karpo is the circit (Cora in tibetian means "circle") of the Meili Snow Mountains.
The Tibetans have 8 holy mountains in their religion. the Meili mountain is the most holy of the eight. every Tibetan have to do the Cora around it, and many believers comes from India, Nepal, China and Tibet to do this.

The circuit takes around 12 days. slower or older people do it in 16, we "ran" the trek in 8 days.

What so spacial about it, is that this Cora goes through Yunnan province in China, then enter Tibet, and at the end goes out again to Sichuan province in China.

Along the way we met many tibetian worships that circle the mountain. groups of old and young people, Carry heavy bags.
We had our "carrimor", "low Alpine" bags, and they had dirty bags with fabric strips for the shoulders, and of course, about 10 - 30 years more...


It was very impressing to watch them and try to communicate with them. Every mountain pass we reached, they circled it too, prayed and "gave" it something from themselves: a neckless, a group of hairs, or a prayer flag, with a short ceremony.


some of the nights we slept in out small and cosy "Tent", and some we just slept inside a village or a tibetian house. it was interesting to sleep inside a house, as the family cooked for us, and we could see the true life in those remote places.

we slept in the kitchen or on the roof, thanking god for this wonderful opportunity - living with a Tibetan family for a night.

To make a long storie short,
we did this amazing experience after the footprints of the tibetian worshiping people, we were seven (Amir, Dan, Omer, Me. Ajoeen the tibetan guide, GoGo the donkey, and MishMish the baby goat found on the way...), we walked for eight days, 250 kilometers, climbed too many passes, the highest was 4800m. drank river water, sang with tibetans women, showered in "hot" springs, eat Delicious Tibetan food while staying in houses,
or our food while camping (rice, meet, garlic, noodles, rice, rice, black coffee, rice, and... rice?)


We had a GREAT time !
After we came back to Shangri-la, Omer, Dan and me went straight to Noah Cafe,
with our big backpacks and lovely smell, to eat the Yak Stake we dreamed of during the whole fu**ing trek !

You can see the pictures down here, with some words on every one. if you want to comment please do, to my E-mail address.
That's it. now i have a diarrhea to fight with, and to plan my way to the next destination: Lhasa - Tibet !

(Please click on the "Photo Pages" down here to view photos...)

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