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Published: April 13th 2005
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Hello to you all,
Before I start telling you about the trek I must tell you a it about our guide. We found this guy when we drank coffee at his guesthouse in Baisha (near Lijiang, where we met the old lady...). We called him and had a meeting with him, and he seemed quite serious and experienced. He just came back from a hike or a route he did for the first time, and he was full of stories, pictures, and so on.
His english was OK, but still he had some funny phrases. He told us about a cliff they had to go on in his last trek, some 100 m above the river below, and they had no ropes, so as he described it "you fall - you die". He also told us about land trips to Tibet, when you go so high in the mountains during the ride that you feel dizzy and want to sleep, but as he described it "you fall asleep - you don't wake up".
So that's the character...
We met Sunday night, and already had some arguments with him regarding some extra charges that he forgot to tellus about...
On Monday morning
we all went shoping for food, put everything on a jeep he hired, and drove away to Shudu Lake, where the trek began.
While loading the horses the guide totally lost it, started shouting at everybody, and we really reconsidered going with him. We decided that if we went that far - we are going forward.
Finally we started walking, and it was great!
We had two small horses with a Tibetan horse guide, and we started going around the lake and up the mountain pass. The weather was cold and it started snowing on us lightly along the way. Since most of the stuff was on the horses, it wasn't that hard, even though we climbed from 3600 to 4100 m, and the oxygen refused to climb with us...
When we stopped for a snack the locals took out eggs. At first it looked normal, but inside they were transparent-black! When we asked them what it was - they said that these are eggs that they preserve by heating them in the ground for 2 monthes (!) and then they last for more than a year. You can see the picture of it, and as you can imagine -
we didn't even try it because we feared for our lives...
All along the route there were Tibetans houses and huts, and yaks were grazing the fields.
After a while we reached the altitude of 4100 m, where our shepard's hut was waiting for us for the night camp. Some local Tibetans joined us and we all had dinner in the hut, where we made fire, and the locals prepared some local dishes. The main thing that Tibetans eat is yak butter tea, which is nothing like tea... It has some tea leaves, hot water, and yak butter, all mixed in a wooden tube (see picture). The taste is like a salty soup, and they eat it with local pita bread...
The high altitude, and the fact that we walked all day, gave us all mild altitude sickness, which means headaches. With some aspirin and a night rest it went away.
The fire kept burning in the hut all night to keep us warm (it was still very cold), and the smoke was an unforgetable experience. Some visitors (dogs, yaks, etc.) kept knocking on the door all the time.
We woke up to a white morning after light snow during
the night. We started walking in order to keep us warm.
We saw some locals on the hike, either with horses going from one side of the mountain to the other, or keeping an eye on their grazing yaks.
The views along the way were great - snowy mountains, forests, river streams, and more.
The second day ended at Niru, a small and remote Tibetan village. We stayed at a family's house, where we had dinner and breakfast (yes, some more yak butter tea).
In the village our guide discovered that the next mountain pass is blocked with high snow, and cannot be walked. We had to wait 4-5 days for it to open. We didn't have the time, and after a long argue with the guide (he offered other routes - either very expensive or not interesting), we decided to head back to Zhongdian.
It was a very sad evening, and arguing with the guide about money was no fun either.
The next day we hired another jeep for the way back (5 hours drive). After an hour or so we hit on a dead end - a land slide blocked the road (if you can call this a
road).
While we waited for it to open we just sat in the sun, listening to music (the iPod is a man's best friend) and I used the guide's laptop and his GSM modem to check emails (and once again - you didn't send any...).
A small army of Chinese blew up the big rocks with dynamite and threw the rocks down the cliff. I have a movie of it, but you'll have to wait till I'm home to see it.
This is how our great trek ended...
Until next time,
R.
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anonymous
non-member comment
hiii
i see i am the first one to comment ..thats a great idea this web..u will have great memories that way kept forever.. keep in touch love tali - tali