Kham adventure

To get to the essence of the past two days:we have been driving through the most remarkable landscape I have ever seen. We left Luhou for Sertar with Marty watching the barometer closely since our guide Lee has been worried about the threat of rain and landslides..it remained high and we had broken clouds..real Taos clouds, towering cumulus thick clouds..
As with all travel in Kham, the roads follow the rivers upstream to a pass, at which point you descend following a river downstream to the next valley system. Then to progress further West as we are doing, you have to descend and ascend over and over again.

The road to Sertar followed a large river with wide meanders in softly rolling grasslands. The grass is emerald luminescent, thick in places with carpets of lupens, lowgrowing...we are at 12-13,000ft.

Scattered on this carpet are thousands of yaks, pitch black with an occasional white or grey one. These are true beasts right off the Altamira walls, massive chested, furry with long arching horns. Watching them are men and boys on little strong mongolian ponies..the horses move, the riders float along on the the horses backs. Also scattered as far as the eye can see are gers (yurts) black woven wool tents with flying prayer flags outlining them. and white tents too..with little cooking fires tended by women in rough woven wool clothes, children and dogs , tethered pack yaks, ponies, grandmothers, old grandfathers...and THEN
crisscrossing the landscape, monks and nuns going their way in their red and golden robes, occasionally one progressing slowly in inchworm fashion, on pilgrimage with prostrations...under the God-blessed cloud filled sky...

Then there are the roadside and hill side shrines...whole hillsides wrapped in banners, all colors, the purple the most exotic and wonderful. With stone chortens, people at prayer..One long hillside had the very form of Cristo's running fence..elsewhere are mad ribbons of color, tall poles jammed with fluttering flags. Of course each pass has its shrine and we remember to shout in Tibetan as we cross...the God's have had their way!!!..by which we mean they have spared us this time..

If we stop,and we do often, to take pictures
the road may seem empty, but in a moment people materialize..really, magic happens.A child shepherd with sheep, a monk on pilgrimage, girls going somewhere, sometimes a whole caravan of yaks and herders, looking , what???, sixth century?? timeless..and always the laughter and smiles..tashi delik, tashi delik tashi delik..such joy that we should meet here on these vast grasslands on this day of clouds and sunshine...

We wanted to see the inside of a ger and were instantly invited..it was poor, a stove in the middle and lambskins to sit on, meager possessions for these nomads. All smiles and pride as we took pictures...I have a big collection of toothbrushes which are very welcomed, and they got two..

The ride from Sertar to Ganzi also took us through grasslands and at the top of this pass, 14,800 ft, we suddenly saw the Himalayan high ranges at plus 20,000 ft in clear sky with permanent snow. The nomads are getting ready for winter and they and people in little villages are bringing in the hay which is collected in sheaves from the very orderly fields on either side of the river.
As we drove by a village that was build vertically against a clilf..each street formed by the roof tops of the houses below..yaks, loaded to more than twice or even three times their height with piled hay, their massive black and hairy faces stuck out under their loads, were being driven along the road to, and into , the village...

If only I could load up the photo part of this blog you could see...but dear ones, you will have a chance when the we do our slide shows...

Now Sertar was something else. We knew from the internet that the chinese had partially destroyed this very large and important monastery and school,with its international connections in 2001...but we needed to get there to make the excursion I just descibed possible. The town is the first depressing place I have been to here. Mostly being torn down and not yet rebuilt it is a shabby ruin.There were no accomodations for westerners and we needed a police permit to stay the night and could only stay in a goverment guest house. The road to the monastry was blocked to anyone without a special permit which we were denied. Grim.

One other thing to report. I was asked to get medication for a Rimpoche who had liver fluke disease, a parasite probably from eating raw watercress..a delicacy but a frequent source of infection..by his student who we met in Davis. I had thought we would meet him in China and maybe through him meet his Guru. He emailed me to say he was begining esoteric studies and couldn't give us any more information. I did have the
Rimpoche's name and monastery and discovered that it was 60 kilometers from Sertar, by a bad and muddy road. When people characterize a road that way, they mean something terrible. So I suggested we go to the road head and hope for a monk going to the monastery who might deliver the medicine with a covering letter. The first person we asked turned out to be a woman who provided rooms for monks from that monastery when they come to town and that one of the senior monks would deliver ther medicine !!n Mission accomplished.

So..Ganzi is a central town in this prefecture and surrounded by important monasteries. We plan to seek out an english speaking monk or one who speaks chinese to get more insight into Buddhist practice.

We are in good health,the major challenge is altitude adjustment. Sertar is at 12,500ft. Today's pass topped off at 15,800 ft. We have little personal bottles of oxygen which puts things right.

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