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Published: August 9th 2007
After beautiful Baishuitai, we continued by bus climbing along windy mountain roads towards our next destination and the start of the Tibetan world, Zhongdian.
Zhongdian (aka Shangri La, or Gyeltang in Tibetan) sits at 3300m above sea level, and while not technically 'Tibet' (as we were still in Yunnan province), still felt a hell of a lot like it. Think scorcing hot days, cold clear nites, monks, monasteries, snowcapped peaks and yak meat on every menu, and you get the idea.
The town itself was good to explore for a couple of days, especially at night. Every night at around 7pm the locals (and the odd tourist) would gather in the town square to dance to canned Naxi music blaring from the surrounding speakers. They really got into their dancing too, and it was pretty cool to see young girls grooving next to their grandmas. The dancing was kinda like line dancing except everyone moved in these big circles, and it lasted for hours! There was even one old fella who moved like a drunk gorilla but no one seemed to care. Nice ;-)
Another day we hired bikes and rode 4km north to the biggest Tibetan monastery
in all of Yunnan, 300 year old Ganden Sumtseling Gompa. This was a cool mission because for most of the ride the monastery was completely hidden until you rounded a bend and suddenly saw it in all its glory. Its not only huge (600 monks call it home) but the location is awesome and the monks friendly too. Definitely worth checking out if your travels take you this way.
But the best part of the trip was still to come! After our adventures in monk-ville we got on a bus and headed further into the mountains, this time towards Deqin. Now we were really getting into Tibetan land (Deqin itself is only kms from the Tibet border) and the scenery on the way was amazing! Check out the pix.
This was just the start of jaw dropping views. 10km past Deqin is Feilai Si, a collection of chorten (Tibetan sturpas or white temples) which lie directly opposite 6740m Kawa Karpo peak. This is a truly special place. Monks from all over China come here once a year to pay hommage to the mountain, and tourists like ourselves come here to watch the first light hit the peak on
the tallest mountain in Yunnan. Luckily for us the weather played along and we got the views. Beautiful start to the day!
We then hitched a ride with a friendly Chinese family all the way down yo the valley floor to check out the 12km Mingyong glacier that runs off the peak. On the way chatted with the Mum and found out in Chinese (courtesy of our 10 language dictionary) that she liked purple flowers, her son was studying in Beijing, and Chinese cows go Moo. Useful! Spent a cool afternoon hiking the glacier (too hard for grandma so they put her on a horse) and the next day they kindly drove us over 200km back to Zhongdian. Xie Xie guys!
Totally satisfied with a great month in China, and with future missions planned (Tibet overland all the way next time!), it was time to say 'zaijan' to the mountains of China and 'xin chao' to tropical Vietnam...
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Norma
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Inspiration
Just read your blog (June 15) and you've got us very excited about our trip to Zhongdian this summer. I hope our photos turn out as great as yours!