From Litang back to Kangding and Chengdu

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Despite continuing rainy weather, we are back in Chengdu getting ready to board the train tonight for Turpan, Urumqi, and the Uyghur areas in and around the Taklimakan Desert.

Litang to Kangding was another eventful 9-hour bus ride on the Sichuan-Tibet highway. The elevation profile doesn't reflect all the ups and downs, at least four passes over 4200m, the vegetation changes with all the elevation changes, and all the amazing scenery. The drop from into the Yalong River canyon at Yajiang followed by the climb back up was incredible. The heights on both sides were well above tree line, but in the middle the woods were thick and corn and many other crops were growing. The canyon was also still impressive down there as it was many km upriver when we traveled through it on the way from Ganzi to Litang.

Statistics for this route are 177 miles length, elevation range 8416 - 14951 ft. Total ascent 20814 ft, total descent 25200 ft. This was hard enough to do as a passenger on a bus, but we did see a number of cyclists on the road as well (they were headed west, so for this section they had a net gain, not loss, in elevation). The combination of high altitude, steep grades (alternating dirt and paved), no shoulders, heavy traffic at times, dangerous Tibetan dogs, and unpredictable and at times cold and rainy weather would seem to make this among the most difficult cycling routes that I could imagine. Definitely well beyond my capabilities.

We descended the long pass to Kangding late in the afternoon, got a room in the comfortable hotel near the bus station where we stayed before we left, and had a final Tibetan meal in town to cap off our tour of Kahm. We found out that the landslides had again closed the road back to Chengdu in that harrowing section east of Ya'an, but that fact did not concern us because we had plane tickets the next morning back to Chengdu. So early the next morning we boarded another bus back up the 4200m pass west of town to the airport built in 2008 in a high, relatively flat spot, the second highest airport in the world, they say. The flight to Chengdu leaves soon after the fog clears enough for the incoming plane to land, which, for us yesterday was around 10 AM. So we are back in the city, and, barring further railroad bridge washouts in northern Sichuan, we will board the train tonight for a 48 hour ride to Turpan, a desert oasis at -150m east of Urumqi. From the second highest airport in the world to the second lowest place in the world in a few days, if all continues to go well.

A few words about Chengdu. Like most Chinese cities it is huge and growing, probably 15 million people here. The streets are incredibly quiet as many people use electric scooters to get around, and these are allowed in the lanes previously set aside for the bicycles, which used to typify Chinese cities. We saw these for sale for $300 or less and were told that the go 55 km on one charge, which costs a few cents on the electric bill. Many buses and taxis here run on natural gas, making air pollution much less of a problem that it was last time we were here. There is simply no place to put cars for all of the 1.3 billion increasingly affluent Chinese people, and, from electric vehicles to a new network of high speed trains to new subway systems in many cities, the country seems to be dealing with the transportation issue very effectively.

Chengdu is of course a great place for food of all kinds. Last night we continued our culinary adventures with a great fish hotpot in a restaurant on the Yipintianxia Food Culture Street. (Yipintianxia means "a taste of everything under heaven", or something like that.) The chef netted the poor catfish or porgy or whatever out of a tank and pretty soon it was cut up, tail still twitching, next to our table and then they put the whole thing, head and all, into the hotpot. This restaurant district was within an easy walk of the apartment where we are staying, the same one as before, and well outside of the downtown area. We also sampled Chinese fast food, much healthier and tastier than ours, and some great food shopping at Carrefour, a French store that is also all over Chinese cities.


Here's a link to a Google map of our entire route in western Sichuan.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Chengdu,+Sichuan,+China&daddr=Garze,+China+to:ganzi,+Garze,+Sichuan,+China+to:Litang,+Garze,+Sichuan,+China+to:Garze,+Sichuan,+China&geocode=FSrQ0wEdWeczBikhd0QAI8XvNjECDiQuzlKGuQ%3BFfCEygEdR9ITBik1-eKuQCcdNzFgHMHUI8Wshg%3BFRaH4gEdX8T1BSmz3kHqN-cCNzHTpiLYVHFP2A%3BFRG0yQEd-v75BSlVewfpfsIdNzE9l_riPh2KvA%3B&hl=en&mra=ls&sll=30.722895,102.02934&sspn=2.965319,5.806274&ie=UTF8&z=8

Sorry it is so long, but this was much easier to create than to use the Travel Blog mapping feature. If you paste this into your browser, you may have to remove carriage returns to get it to work and see the map. On this map, point A to E is Chengdu to Kangding (ignore the fact that is is called Garze on the map), E to C is Kangding to Ganzi, C to D is Ganzi to Litiang, and D to E is Litiang back to Kangding. We flew from E back to A, avoiding the continuing landslides on the road west of Ya'an. Besides what's shown on this, we also went a little ways west of Ganzi and about 90 km west of Litang to the pass.

We didn't get to Dege and the 16500 ft pass leading to it, as originally planned. That would have involved too many bus rides and not enough time to see the sights and meet the people. But we saw some amazing things, went over many high passes, and all in all had an incredible time here.

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Photos

Chengdu commuters
Those electric scooters would have been bicycles last time we were here. China seems to be meeting the challenge of finding alternatives to cars as people become more affluent.