Horse Trek

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Now, this is our final blog for our first around the world trip, and I have been putting off this for ages, cause it was a real roller coaster of a place and at times horrible!!! So here it is, our final blog that took place around Mid May, while we were still in China.

We rose early that morning to catch our bus journey to Songpan. 13 months ago It would have taken 8 hours to reach Songpan, but due to the horrific earthquake in Sichuan last May, we have a huge detour to make, which made the journey 12 hours!!!! The Earthquake last year, was over 8 on the richter scale, the 15th largest in the world ever. It killed 69,000 and a further 11 million were made homeless, the Chinese govt response to this was, they have given the region 1 trillion yuan(1 pound = 10 yuan) to help build the required housing, infrastructure, and all by mid 2010. Thats serious money and help.

Driving through Sichuan, you can see the destroyed houses, the fallen debris, the cranes, the new housing and these houses are modern with glazing, electricity, clean running water. Most of our 12 hour drive is through mountainous landscape, and its beautiful, driving up winding paths , passing through valleys( containing villages being rebuilt after the quake), seeing huge rivers running through the mountains, even at one stage passing through low lying clouds, and not seeing anything except white all around us! it was truly magnificent. Some of the best scenery I have ever seen. All of us can't wait to reach Songpan.

Arrive Songpan, and after a bit of negotiating, we manage to get the fully functioning dormitory we thought we were getting, rather than the shabby double rooms, which had broken locks, no lower ceiling and windows that didn't close. Of course, our accommodation was actually an unfinished hotel in the public bus station!!!!!

That evening we walk around the town, its cold as we are 2800 metres above sea level, bought some cold weather clothing, we all bought the most distgusting gloves we could find for 25p a pop and Dan and Iain bought cowboy hats(I found out the next day that Ade thought we were going to get hard riding hats so thats why he didn't buy one, oh dear I think he forgot we were in China!!!)and Iain and Dan tried the local Yak Burger(tastes like beef according to Dan).

Dan is writing again
Next morning the 6 of us are ready for our intrepid 3 day horse trip to Ice Mountain. It reaches 3800m at base of Ice Mountain and then we can trek up to 4400m, before it becomes too dangerous for us on Ice Mountain(5200m). Hope you guys are enjoying all the interesting facts I am writing for you!!!!!!!!!!

So we start on our 5 - 5.5 hour trek for day one, and straight away we climb a huge mountain to the side of Songpan, and look down over the precipice below us, the views are amazing, my horse is the lead horse, bar the lead guide and his horse(5 guides in total). As I look around the views are stunning and before long we are descending our first mountain and in the middle of nowhere!!!!! We get off our horses as the descent is too steep on our horses and we walk through a small Tibetan village. The old lady there is smiling at us, and alongside her is her grand daughter, who looks very scared and grabs onto her granny as we say "ni hao".

Not long after our first descent, we are back on our horses and ascending again, and to my horror, my horse again has to lead, and trots the front again. We ride for 2 hours this time, and as I look around at all the mountains, trees and streams we pass, its fantastic, although it would have been better if I had someone to talk to, as all the others were a along way behind, talking to each other, as their horses didn't want to lead!!!!!

About 1 oclock we reach the top of a huge hill, and all we can see in the distance are several ice capped mountains!!!! Wow, we take a few pictures, and our guides hurry us on as we have lunch to take. So we descend again to a small camp site, surrounded by 2 streams, east and west of us, a river south, and huge green tree lined hills to the north. Now this is when our Horse Trek went from GREAT, to ITS GOING WRONG.

The guides set up camp, give us our lunch of, cucumber with Sichuan spices and Tibetan bread and then they pitch 3, 2 man tents for the 3 couples!!! We were told by the Horse Trek owner, our first night was at Ice Mountain Base Camp!!!!! Iain approaches the guide leader and we soon discover that's all the riding for today!!!!! We dismounted our horses at 1.19pm, and had ridden for 3 hours!!! That can't be it, we all say to each other, but as the guides don't speak much English and we don't speak Chinese, that was it. We are at their mercy in a way, as we had no clue where we were.

Becks then had to ask for tea, as we were not given any with our lunch, although the guides were drinking hot tea!!!!!! In the afternoon Becks(yes Becks) led us all on a small walk through the streams, trees and up a big hill. We had to make the most of what we could. We arrived back at camp by 4pm, to find 2 of the guides asleep!!!(Becks is writing) The reason I had to lead the trek was that the guides wouldn't show us anywhere to go, they just wanted to lay around and drink, so I was really pissed off and had to do something to calm down. Dan never actually made it all the way up to the top. By the way if he had led the way it would be a mountain , but as I led it has been downgraded to a hill, not sure why as he stayed at the bottom and missed out on the most beautiful views across to the snow and ice capped mountains. I've no idea if these were the mountains we should have hiked/trekked to as the guides wouldn't tell us which way they were!!!Wankers!!!!!!Actually any time any of the girls asked for anything we were completely ignored, they just sat down in the tent, they wouldn't even give us our water from the horse packs.

That night we all eat hot food, the guides one side playing Chinese card games, us the other, drinking and chatting. Tomorrow would be a better day!!!! We all go to bed by 9.30pm. By the way at lunch time they would not allow us into the tent to keep warm and so in the evening we muscled our way in. We had to it was dark at 8pm and they didn't make us a fire or hot drinks so we went and sat on their beds!!Plus Dan caught them going through our bags!!

Really annoyed, when Ellie and I were going spare with boredom in the camp we decided to explore and came across two old camps which were disgusting and filled with litter. This camp site was literally 10mins walk from ours and it had the most amazing views to wake up to. You had two streams, the valley lined with fir trees and then huge snow capped mountains in the back. But because they couldn be arsed to clean the old camps they put us somewhere with no views. There were just plastic and glass bottles everywhere(even in the stream) and tent pegs, wires, you name it.

The nights sleep was crap, Dan had a panic attack and thought we were going to die by being swept away into the river(it was raining really hard all night and it woke me up too, but really?)So no sleep either.

Dan writing again
Next morning, well it was a new day and hopefully better than yesterday(how wrong we were). Breakfast was freshly baked rolls and hot mashed butternut squash, however the guides piled their bowls up and we had half their rations!!!! This obviously cheered Becks up!!! Then Iain took it upon himself to ask the guides our route today, cause it seemed they were not packing the camp up. He was informed we would ride to Ice Mountain, then return around lunch time and spend the rest of the day at this campsite!!!!!!! Well, when he told us this we were not impressed. We were informed by their boss, Mike,that we would spend one night at the base of Ice Mountain and we would get the opportunity to climb some of it. After some real hard bargaining with the main guide, who was not speaking to the girls when they asked him a question and being an ignorant twat, we negotiated we could stay at Ice Mountain till 4pm and ride back for 2 hours, good or so we all thought, except, we only had rolls to eat and had an allowance of 2 litres of water per couple for the whole day, so when Becks complained again, the lead guide turned his back on her. This only angered Becks more, resulting in shouting and then tears, with several of the guides finding this funny!!!!! You can really imagine the situation, real connection being made with the guides! So as we leave we then discover only 3 out of the 5 guides are coming with us, as 2 are needed to look after the camp!!! LAZY.

So as we leave, my horse(who likes to lead) went the wrong way and trotted off followed by Adi's horse, so 2 of the guides chase after our horses, which leaves 1 guide with the rest of the group, well this is when Ellies horse chareges off back to camp, all you could hear was Ellie's screams, so the guide that was left, JUMPS OFF HIS AND CHASES ELLIE'S HORSE ON FOOT!!!!! About 5 mins late, Ellie appears crying, and we find out her horse charged back to camp and she only got off, as 1 of the guides at the camp caught her as she jumped off the horse. The guide who ran after Ellie, then returns with her horse, starts to kick it and throws rocks at it!!! Well all the girls started crying, so we all chat, and we told the guides we wanted to go back to Songpan, but Ellie was to scared to ride, so we will walk back. 2 guides lead us up this huge hill, with a stream running down it, my god it was stunning, pity such w...... led us( it says on thorntree, the guides are ever fantastic or shit, real pot luck, we just drew the short straw). We walked for an hour or so, with the guides so far ahead and with us all splitting into pairs or 4s, that Iain and Fiona got lost as the guides were not checking on our whereabouts!!!

We walked for another hour or so, before all the guides and horses caught us up, as they were packing up the campsite. We all mounted our horses as we had a few steep walks and a few kilometres to walk. Ellie rode with the main guide as she was still in shock from the earlier incident. After another 30 mins on the horses, we were all walking again as most of the group had lost confidence with the guides, the horses seemed unhappy and we felt they were not in control of them. Several times the horses would gallop off, and we were on cliff edges at times. Becks was really unhappy, so we all dismounted, even Ellie was still shaken as her horse was not being controlled by rider. We walked for another couple of hours with the guides and horses ahead, and us just following. The scenery was breath taking, but the guides shocking!!! Eventually we reached a small Tibetan town, where the main guide called his boss, and we told him we were finishing the trek early!!!!!! We called a lady called Emma, who worked for Mike(the horse bossman) and she organised a pick up for us(we had to pay £7 for that pick up!!!). The guides left(except 1, who made sure we got back) and we enjoyed the little Tibetan town, surrounded by mountains at every turn, small rivers and lush trees and grass. There was a small Monastery and an old man was spinning several prayer wheels, we all agreed as we got picked up, we must return here.

When we reached Songpan, it was the all the boys turn to go and confront Mike, led by me (the oldest). 90 minutes later we left, still pissed off, but we had a whole days money refunded for everyone and our accommadation for that night paid for!! But the whole process of 3 English speaking guys against at times 10/12 Chinese/Tibetan all speaking in their dialect, was tough. Luckily I had my camera showing the times and locations of where we were, and we knew Mike was pissed off with his guides as they argued in whatever language. We were informed the guides had changed the itinerary and not informed him or us!!!! Then Mike's co owner came in demanded to hear what went on. This was an hour or so into the discussion and I informed him nicely to go away as I was dealing with his partner!!! Left feeling exhausted and to be honest pissed off that our experience was blighted because several guides wanted a jolly and couldn't be bothered. This is what happens, when 1 company controls everything in the town and their is no competition.

Next day we all decided to walk around Songpan, which is visually beautiful. We had breakfast and we then avoided the part of town where the horse company and Mike were and went off and explored a really old bridge, had Chiness tea in a tea garden and watched loads of Chinese play this really complicated board game. We walked to sevreal monasteries and temples and started to enjoy the town. We all got talking to a really friendly shop keeper and she told us the name of the Tibetan town, where we walked through was and how to get there, plus the location of a smashing waterfall.

So Iain with his best Chinese(better than the rest of us put together) negotiated a price with a man in his little seater van, to visit this town and waterfall. We start driving and he passed the road to were this town was!!!!!!! Ok, he knows were he is going, he then dropped some old lady off(his mum) and kept driving for 30 minutes or so!!! Confused?? Very! Well, it was worth the wait, we stopped in this little village, with a couple hundred prayer wheels lined up along the road, loads of colourful Tibetan flags and a huge Monastery, WOW. We got out and started to walk around, when a Tibetan Monk, approached us and led us uphill to his Monastery, where another monk approached with a huge bunch of keys and opened the door to the Monastery, we did not expecting this!!!! We walked into the Monastery, the only people there and it was magical, we found out it was 9 hundred years old, and at the back it had a picture of the Dalai Lama and loads of old colourful paintings of religious stories, with flags hanging down everywhere. Surreal! We had a hour or so, looking around this little village, had a group photo and it was just amazing!! No tourists, except us and it felt like a huge difference from 24 hours earlier. We all sat back into the van and drove off to the waterfall. We had to pay to enter, although Adi lent me his spare out of date Student card, I put on my glasses and saved myself several pounds!!!

The waterfall was the best on our whole trip, 100 metres or so high and pretty powerful with a real force and matching noise. We climbed up one side and looked over the top, pretty awesome, a great view. We climbed back down, walked around the other pool areas and as we left(about closing time), we went to the car park and our driver had gone!!! Well, being the only one who was concerned, decided to run off and have a look down the road, at the next car park he was waiting, to my relief!!!!!! The others eventually caught up and we drove back to Songpan, waving at everyone as we drove past, in the middle of the Chinese Mountains, passing small pockets of people and towns. Let me tell you, the housing there was good, big wooden houses, good roofs, large land areas, clean, tidy, poor countryside areas!!!!! Although the Tibetan houses all had pictures of Mao outside them and we passed several Police Cars, they are closely watched!!!!!

That night we slept badly, because the accommadation we moved to, was poor and dirty, so we were glad to be leaving the next morning, only 1 bathroom/toilet between 3 shared dorms!!!! Mike and the Horse company- one word to anybody going there, BEWARE!!!!!

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