Amazing People

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OK well I think if you want to see all the amazing photos from our travels - and there are so many that will take your breath away - you'll have to visit us for a photo session. As they take too long to upload & I'd prefer to keep you up to date with what's been happenning since.

What we do promise to do is put our favourite photos into a hard copy photo album. So you'll be abe to browse them then. In the meantime, as a final offering of China, here is a tribute to the amazing faces & costumes (their everyday clothes) we saw. You'll see why we felt like we were on the wild frontier - and why it's important to visit tehse places before they become spoilt.

Claire

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Photos

Baishutu. China's own White Terraces
Kiwis will find this a very familiar image. However this one was at the end of Tiger Leaping Gorge.

I want his hat!
A real, original Davy Crocket hat! You know it's all for real when the locals walk up the streets with Machetes at their sides and yaks, cows, pigs & dogs all wander up and down the main road.

Love their bright colours
And smiling faces & ruddy cheeks. It is damn cold. Even Brendon is now wearing a woolly hat (thanks Granni Reid).
The local masses are leaving after the largest religous gathering of the year. Our group (the German couple, Dutch couple & us) was very lucky to chance upon this & were the only white tourists present.

THe most spritual experience of our journey..
And the most surreal...and we have no photos to prove it. That's right, we entered the huge, dark, tapestry & cloth hung monastery & watched over 1,000 monks perform religious ceremonies. It is hard to describe the atmosphere, and worth a whole story in itself. Watching the monks take their places amongst the smoky yak candle-lit room; walking, respectfully, up to pay homage & receive my own Buddhist blessing (& prayer beads) in return; the smoking incense wafting the room. This really was surreal and we felt extremely privileged to be able to watch this (kneeling as we were from the back of the room for most of the time, terrified of causing offence). What made it more real, but even stranger at the same time, was seeing the young monks (of about 7 or 8) running in late to take their place, and the ornately decorated lamas wandering in their enormous robes, headpieces reminiscent of the Dark Crystal and staffs at the ready – to whack any misbehaving boy. This really was an amazing experience. More so as it is so rarely seen by foreigners. Unfortunately no cameras were allowed, so we had to drink it in with our eyes.

The plains of Zhongdian - from the mountains above
This whole area is exteremly barren. Either huge mountains or windswept tundra, with the odd, white clay or stray coloured home. We think that's why the locals dress so colourfully. Whatever the reason, it makes a striking backdrop to the few rays of the sun that manage to pierce the iron grey clouds.

Minyong Glacier (near Dequin & Farsii)
Well I certainly felt 80 years of age as we hiked up this glacier in the rarefied air. We'd slept at Farsii the night before - at about 4,600 M!

So that explains why we were the only ones at the glacier.
We were the only ones with a driver who was mad enough to cross a recent road slip. If only he'd spoken English we might have realised the real danger. Instead he crossed it nonchalantly on the way there & on the way back got Brendon & Min (our friendly graduate from Shanghai & someone who actually spoke english) to push. What you dont see from this angle is the blood oozing down Brendon's legs afterwards from all the flying stones kicked up by the wheels whacking him in the shins.

The slip from the other side. Oopps
sorry mum

Brendon ruins a perfectly good photo
Wandering through Zhongdhian, you only have to go back a street or two to lose the tourist facades & see homes & life like they have been for 100s of years. Here Brendon walks past some local houses with an enormous Prayer wheel on the hill in the background. No Brendon, Jim Carrey didn't look like that.