Now that we are back in Beijing, and I have my computer, I can write and post pictures with a little more ease and clarity. Our exploration trip is over, Josh is back at work, and we have settled in to a nice studio apartment. I will be here for one more week, and Josh will stay until the end of July.
The last days of our trip were definitely the best. To orient you geographically, and to set the stage, we first left Beijing and flew to Shenzhen (down there by Hong Kong). Then we flew to Chengdu (Sichuan Province). That's where our first travel failures began, so we flew to Kunming (Yunnan Province). Yunnan is very cool geographically. It is mountainous and has foliage I've never seen before. It is bordered by Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Tibet.
Our journey through Yunnan took us up right next to the Tibetan border, which is why it was so beautiful and interesting. Tibet is technically (I guess) part of China, which is a heated topic here and worldwide. Here, it is called "Tibet Autonomous Region."
Here is a link to the Wikipedia page explaining how that works.
And here is a link to a timeline of Tibet's history and its relationship with China. It is probably impossible to gather objective information about it.
Anyway, below I've outlined our journey through Yunnan. We took buses from Kunming to Dali, then Dali to Shangri-La, then Shangri-La to just south of Deqin (various spellings), then back to Shangri-La for a flight to Beijing. As you can see on the map, and from pictures below, our hotel faced Meili Snow Mountain which borders Tibet. The area has massive, massive mountains and a major Buddhist influence. Tibetans (80%), Chinese locals and Chinese tourists, Western tourists, prayer flags, temples, and twisting mountain roads abound. I stole the map from the internet and added details from our journey:
On Wednesday, June 24, we arrived in Shangri-La. Shangri-La used to be called Zhongdian. But after the popularity of James Hilton's novel (and its subsequent movie adaptation),
Lost Horizon (
full version available here), China allowed cities to bid for a name change. Zhongdian won, and in 2001, it became "Shangri-La." Here is a brief summary of the novel offered by Wikipedia:
"Hugh Conway, a veteran member of the British diplomatic service, finds inner peace, love, and a sense of purpose in Shangri-La, whose inhabitants enjoy unheard-of longevity. Among the book's themes is an allusion to the possibility of another cataclysmic world war brewing. It is said to have been inspired at least in part by accounts of travels in Tibetan borderlands, published in National Geographic by the explorer and botanist Joseph Rock. ...
The book explicitly notes that, having made war on the ground, man would now fill the skies with death, and all precious things were in danger of being lost, like the lost histories of Rome. It was hoped that, overlooked by the violent, Shangri-La would preserve them and reveal them later to a receptive world exhausted by war. That was the real purpose of the lamasery; study, inner peace, and long life were merely a side benefit to living there."
Our Tibetan guide said he thinks the lifespans of Tibetans are decreasing.
Here are a few temples and the world's largest prayer wheel in Shangri-La:
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| Lots of stores and restaurants, uneven stone streets, and plenty of dust. |
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| View of Shangri-La. The wood-roofed buildings in the foreground are part of "Old Town" which suffered a big fire last year. The "New Town" (background) has been built up as part of the growing tourist industry. The owner of the hostel where we stayed wants to move again because the town has become too busy. |
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| Josh helping turn the prayer wheel. It is so heavy that at least six (maybe more) people are needed to turn it. |
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| Organized dancing in the square. |
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| Tibetan Flava Flav. |
We spent only one night there at an okay hostel. We did have a pretty good dinner at a Tibetan restaurant. The highlight was some confusion ordering beer (the words for "cold" and "two bottles" are very similar), which resulted in us getting beer with ice in it. Then, once we got it sorted out, the waiter brought us a second beer and proceeded to pry the cap off with his teeth.
Early the next morning, after more confusion and mistakes trying to get places, we ended up at the bus station with a ticket to Deqin. I also used the grossest bathroom of all time. But when you're about to board a bus for several hours, with no idea where you're going, and you can't really ask the driver to stop, you have to step into the icky pool of mystery water.
The drive was terrifying. The roads were narrow and curvy; the bus driver made passes on the outside of blind corners. But, I will say with certainty: There is a difference between these mountains and Colorado mountains. They are much, much bigger. And we do not have little villages with terraced fields. These next few pictures are from the bus, so they're not very good.
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| Outside of Shangri-La. |
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| Mountain farming. |
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| Mountain farming. The valleys are so steep and descend sharply to rivers or just turn into another mountain, so the villages are all on the mountain sides. |
We took a break at the summit of the road. It was not the highest point, just the highest we could drive on.
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| Road summit: 4,292 meters which is 14,081 feet. Our bus did a fourteener no problem. |
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| The bus. Josh is trying to talk to a cyclist. There were a ton of them riding on the scary road. This guy was riding from Kunming to Lhasa. |
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| Later, we learned that all of the prayer flags and other religious things at the summit were put there by truckers hoping for good luck in their journey. |
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| Where we went next. These mountains are way bigger than they look. |
The manager of the hotel where we were staying spoke to the bus driver and told him to drop us off here. They sent a driver down to pick us up.
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| Josh studying Chinese characters while waiting for a ride. |
We actually spent some money to stay at a very nice, all-inclusive hotel called
Songtsam Meili. Should you find yourself in northwestern Yunnan, China, I recommend it. The hotel (and our room, gasp) faced Meili Snow Mountain, which is considered one of the most holy mountains in Tibetan Buddhism. Its highest peak,
Kawagarbo, has never been summited. Our guide (later) told us this is probably because the mountain is holy, and it can't be summited. Pilgrims spend ten days or more walking around its base.
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| Meili Snow Mountain and Kawagarbo Peak on right (22,110 feet). The hotel is the building on the ridge center. |
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| A Tibetan village of only five families lies directly behind the hotel. |
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| Mountains behind the hotel. Tibetan village house on the right. |
At the hotel, we enjoyed tea time, an hour long hike, and a delicious dinner of local yak meat, pork, and soup. During dinner, a rowdy group from Shanghai kept trying to talk to us, but their English was non-existent or fragmented, so there was a lot of gesturing, translator app using, and bilingual friend recruiting. All this resulted in a loud game of charades and a night hike where they, for the first time, saw stars.
The next day, we begrudgingly paid for a guided hike to Baima Snow Mountain. We were tired of trying to figure out where to go. Josh really wanted to see the Mingyong Glacier, which is right below Kawagarbo and is supposed to be super interesting. It is huge, you can walk up to it, and it has diverse biomes. The hike has some temples along the way, but, after doing some research, it seemed impossible to get to. It would take a whole day, and, at this point, we were exhausted. It sounded nice to be kind of pampered.
Here is an article about how the Mingyong Glacier is receding due to global warming. Our guide told us he has seen where the glacier was and where it is now. Everyone over there admits it.
So we set off with our guide who was also the hotel's manager. I don't know his name, sadly, but he was happy to answer all of our invasive questions. In the car, he explained the holiness of Meili Snow Mountain, the prayer flags at the summit, and that our view of Kawagarbo's peak was very lucky.
Our hike began by parking in a construction site. On our journey here, we saw that a new, wider road with many tunnels was being built. At the trailhead, we saw the tunnel work up close. The mountain's innards were poured out into a valley with water running down. Josh explained that this is not good.
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| How to make a tunnel. |
We proceeded with our hike, and our guide sang some songs. He speaks Tibetan, Mandarin, and English. The songs he sang were in Tibetan, and he told us about them as he sang. Baima Snow Mountain is part of a reserve that is closed off to the public. The hotel has a deal with the research center so they are able to take guests through.
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| Research base that guards the trail to Baima Snow Mountain. |
We hiked along through woods and across streams. The guide pointed out types of flowers and talked a little about his life on a farm in Sichuan. We ate a huge lunch. The mountain was hard to see because it was so cloudy. This is normal for summer, unfortunately. We never saw the summit.
There were a lot of yaks. Yaks are very important up here. The people use the meat, make milk and cheese, use the wool, make leather, etc.
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| Pretending to be a yak. |
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| Our guide, posing with some yaks. |
Along the hike, our guide also told us about Tibetan nomads who herd yaks. There were three nomad huts along the trail, and the research center allows a few herders to stay there through the summer.
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| Nomad hut. |
Josh said something like, "Can we say hi to them?" Our guide replied, "Of course!" Then he went and knocked on the door.
The two men inside greeted us and quickly moved blankets out of the way so we could sit on a bed. The hut was symmetrical, with two beds on either side and a fire pit down the center.
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| Butter churns and equipment. |
They were quick to pour Josh endless cups of yak butter tea and gave us cheese. They had made it all for eating and selling. The men live in the hut four to five months out of the year, then they return home (I forget the name of the town, but it was pretty far, about halfway through our bus ride) for the winter. The cheese was really good, and the tea was weird. It tasted like melted salty butter. They kept trying to give me more.
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| Left: Yak cheese the men make and sell. Our guide boasted that it was "organic." Right: Yak butter tea. |
They spoke to our guide in Tibetan, and every now and then he translated. We asked a few questions, too. They have about sixty yaks, and they have been coming to the same place for grazing for twenty years. The man on the right talked at length, and after we left, our guide explained that he was criticizing all the Chinese tourists who come to Yunnan to take pictures of Meili Snow Mountain. He says they just take pictures when the mountain is holy, and you are supposed to honor it with your heart and soul. He said they all were getting bad karma.
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From left: our guide, two Tibetan nomads
They keep the fire going all the time. Above the fire is a row of logs that the smoke dries. In the background, you can see the wooden bunk. We are sitting on the other one. Each guy had is own half of the cabin. It was pretty organized. |
After we left, we talked with the guide about the lives of the herders and the changes in the area. It is becoming more and more touristy.
He said Tibet is being more built up, and the people there and in China are being seriously affected by pollution. He told us that in Buddhist scriptures, humans' lifespans will decrease to ten years, then the future Buddha will come. That will be the end of the world. Already, his great grandfather lived to one hundred, and his grandfather lived to seventy. He says the lifespans of Tibetans are decreasing, so he doesn't think that the end of the world is that far off, especially when you can't drink the water or breathe the air. Some Chinese tourists to the area have never seen clean air, or, like our friends, stars. He said, Tibet is the rooftop of the world. When it gets to be like this (meaning China), the whole world is in trouble.
... All of which recalls the fictional history of Shangri-La. Zhongdian might be becoming the opposite of its adopted name--not a refuge, but a place of rapid, dangerous development, like the rest of China (or the world).
When we were walking back and approached the construction site, we came upon another stream. This one is downhill from the tunneling. I guess it's what a lot of the streams will look like soon.
