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Kawakarpo
A Sacred Buddhist peak.Its amazing how one song by Monty Python can be so useful. Well, its only Wazza on Holiday once again. After 3 great weeks together, Yvette has had enough and is on her way back to Sydney, and I'm stuck here on my own in the amazing mountains of Yunnan. Its a hard life.
We spent the best part of the last week or so in the mountains west of Deqin, about 180km by winding, mountainous road northwest of Zhongdian. The town itself is a small, decidedly depressing settlement (although boasting a kick-arse internet centre, auspiciously enabling me to see highlights of the mighty Maroons flogging of NSW last week) in a valley feeding into the upper reaches of the Mekong, but we stayed about 10km west at the village of Felai Si, which had magnificent views (across the steep Mekong valley) of the real reason for coming here, the Meli Xue Shan mountain range, featuring Yunnan's two highest and most sacred peaks: Kawakarpo (6700m) and Miucimu (6000m).
We nearly didn't make it at all, after a 6 hour bus ride from hell with a driver whose main purpose in life seemed to be finding something (talking on the
Miucimu
... and the moon at sunrise phone, fiddling with the DVD player, chain-smoking) to take his mind off the boring task of navigating a bus full of people through the highest and scariest road in the area. The bus trip wasn't without its lighter moments though, as, at a meal stop, Yvette, wanting to find out what was in the dish, treated the non-english speaking waitresses with pig and chicken charades to match the best of them, and was duly rewarded with a plastic bag.
We spent two days in Felai Si, the highlight of my trip last year, and while the continued development of the area was disappointing, we still had a very relaxing time on the deck of the 'Migrator Bird' Bar, mouth agape at the amazing mountains. While there, we were also fortunate enough to meet up with the Buddhist Rinpoche Song Jie Chuen Zhen whom I met here last year. He is now a Lama, but appeared to be on holidays as we spent an evening joking around with his Tibetan friends (one of whom had an uncanny likeness to a Tibetan pop star, as the Rinpoche helpfully pointed out).
Tumbling down the side of Kawakarpo is the Mingyong Glacier,
and our next stop was the town of Mingyong, on the glacial river lower in the valley. This little village, with its green meadows, fields and vineyards under the immense Kawakarpo, was the highlight of the trip. The Chinese, in their rush for tourist dollars, refer to these areas as "Shangrila", and Mingyong is probably the best reason I've seen for this definition. We stayed in a relatively new, and unoccupied except for us, Tibetan hotel. Luckily, Yvette had by now honed her charades and we actually were able to enjoy pork for dinner after she snorted a few times to the bemused owner.
From Mingyong we climbed 1000m up the pine-forested valley for awesome views of the glacier from two Buddhist temples. While at the top temple we met an old monk from Lhasa making a pilgrimage to Kawakarpo, who must have thought it was his lucky day meeting two tech-savvy tourists, as he produced his camera and video-camera for us to record him doing his pilrim-stuff. He was a fun, forever smiling old man who decided to join us on the trek back down, including a fairly strenuous side trip to the best glacier viewing point. Our
Shangrila
The flowers, the prayer-flags, Kawakarpo and Mingyong Glacier jokes about him having a heart attack didn't really sit well the next day when we ran into him on his way to be driven to Deqin for 'tests' while pointing at his heart!
Our return to Zhongdian featured a driver who actually watched the road, and drove carefully, and so we were actually able to enjoy the amazing scenery, and the 4300m mountain passes, the second time around.
And so we spent the last few days enjoying the western delights of Zhongdian, and stuffing ourselves with the amazing Chinese and Tibetan dishes, before Yvette took the sleeper bus (yes, it had actual beds) back to Kunming for her flights back to Sydney, via Bangkok.
As for me, tomorrow I am off to Daocheng and Yading in Sichuan province, to yet another group of sacred snow mountains, in yet another area the Chinese authorities have seen fit to declare the "real Shangrila".
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