Sichuan-Tibet Highway, Part 1

My waking up in time for the 7 am bus depended on my new alarm clock working. I spent $2 for it (a lot in China) so I figured I was in good hands. I even replaced the battery it came with with one of my own. I tested it at the shop and it seemed to work. I went to bed with the sound of the second hand ticking. I set the alarm for 11 pm just to make sure it was working. However, when I woke up in the middle of the night at 2 am I realized the alarm had never gone off, and the clock was stuck at 10:30, despite the fact it was still making that ticking sound. Great...I bought a broken alarm clock! A lot of good that was going to do me. I went back to bed hoping my body's internal clock would get me up in time. It did, but at 4:30, still too soon. Then my brain did some intense dreaming, in which I reunited with everyone in my high school class in a parking lot in China, and everyone was really angry about something. When I awoke, again it was 6:30. I'd wanted to get up at 6:00. In any case, I made it to the bus station on time (in a taxi) to buy some steamed pork buns before boarding the bus from hell.

This bus ride was one for the ages. Now, I shouldn't complain too much. I knew what I was getting into. The book warned me that the back road to Chengdu is notoriously long, arduous, grueling, and prone to delays and setbacks. It takes several days of traveling by bus over some of the most difficult terrain in China.

The first leg for me was from Zhongdian to Daocheng. It was a 12 1/2 hour bus ride. The bus had narrow seats. The road was windy, and every time we went around a bend, we were squeezed together like sardines. The man behind me had a habit of resting his hands on my headrest, which pulled my hair whenever my head bounced, which was frequent, because most of the trip was on a dirt road.

At first, leaving Zhongdian in the early morning at 10,500 feet and climbing even higher, it was extremely cold because several passengers had their windows open. Later on, with the sky clear and blue and the hot sun beating down it became quite hot. I naturally wanted to open my window to catch a breeze (and air out all the infernal cigarette smoke emanating from the sea of chain-smokers surrounding me) but the men in the row in front of me kept shutting it.

I tried to read my book (having finished Catch 22, I am now working on The 1000 Mile Summer and The War Of The Worlds), but it was too bumpy. I did drain my iPod's batteries, though.

The first six hours or so were on a dirt road. After that it was asphalt, but hardly smooth sailing ahead. About nine hours into the trip the bus started having problems and stopping every couple of kilometers. The driver and his assistant would get out and start looking underneath the bus. All along the route we would stop next to waterfalls, where a hose siphoned off water and pumped it into a big tank in the bus. I think this is akin to the old radiator water tanks that used to pepper America's highways, to keep engines from overheating. Anyway, it sure looked to me like our engine was overheating. We would pull over to the side of the road for several minutes at a time. Some of the passengers even ditched the bus and hitchhiked with a passing truck.

In any case, the above description makes this bus ride sound absolutely wretched, which it was from a comfort standpoint. But the journey easily redeemed itself in my mind. It may have been temporarily uncomfortable, but it there’s no denying it was a memorable experience, and the scenery was absolutely spectacular. A couple of the passengers spent much of the trip singing Tibetan folk songs and they had haunting, beautiful voices. But then some teenagers with awkward screechy voices started singing in out-of-tune falsetto, and I plugged in my iPod.

I was lucky to have a window seat on the left side of the bus, which faced the most panoramic views. The first six hours on the dirt road were spent climbing through granite mountains and pine forests not unlike the High Sierra Nevada (but higher). Since the base elevation was 10,500 feet, we must have climbed to at least 14,000 or 15,000 feet, which is the highest I have ever been on land on earth! We were in forested mountains most of this time, but the view across the valley was of immense, towering bare-rocked mountains rising to probably 18,000-20,000 feet high, their jagged gray peaks seeming to announce the entrance to the plateau of Tibet.

Along these six hours of dirt road I saw very few signs of settlement or habitation. A few fields and homes perched on the mountainside. A couple of small villages. The topography in these parts is more complicated than that of just a single mountain range, encompassing several different valleys and watersheds. After the first six hours, we descended into a valley lined with terraced yellow fields and white stucco box-shaped houses. The crop was wheat and the Tibetan villagers were out in full force, harvesting and laying their crop against erect timber structures to dry. The standard white Tibetan house is formulaic and simple, but elegant as well, with intricate colorful designs around the windows and doors.

About half the passengers were Chinese and half were Tibetans. The only other person who spoke any English was a tourist from South Korea. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the young Tibetan man sitting next to me on the bus, with his chestnut skin, sharp facial features, and long flowing black hair, resembled some Native American Indians. And why not? North America's Indians, after all, migrated from Asia. And specifically, they migrated from the mountains and steppes of Central Asia, from the Stans, Tibet, northern China, and Siberia.

The last two hour stretch of the ride was of an entirely different type of terrain. We entered vast, rolling grasslands, smooth, rounded hillocks, with rocky streams. The land here was grazing land - pigs, cows, horses, and yaks. We passed settlements, and they were probably the most humble I have seen so far in China. Some of the folk are nomadic, living in tents. Our bus stopped on one family’s property to refill the radiator water. The family had a hose running from a spring and charged 2 yuan to each vehicle that stopped for a fill-up. The rosy-cheeked children scampered up to see who was on this bus.

At long last, after 12 1/2 hours, I arrived in the biggest city I had seen all day, Daocheng. Daocheng is a tiny city by Chinese standards, and on top of a remote rural plateau surrounded by high mountains, but it still boasted signs of municipal improvement: a wide main boulevard lined with shops and restaurants, banners, and street lamps. I bought a new alarm clock. And I could even buy my new favorite drink - Nescafe in a can. If you venture off the two main streets you'll find yourself among dusty lanes and dilapidated Tibetan houses made of stone and mud. They're not as picturesque as the white ones I saw in the valley, but they still have color patterns painted around the windows and doors. Many tourists who find themselves here use it as a base camp for Yading National Park, two hours away. I'm told it contains some of the most spectacular scenery and trekking in China. However, the entrance fee is high (250 yuan), and that's on top of the private minivan you have to hire to get there. Much as I like the outdoors, trekking was never the main goal of this trip.

I just realized that I'm at the half-way mark in my trip. I've been in China for 5 weeks now, and I now have just 5 weeks left. And there's still a lot I want to see. Gotta keep moving. However, I wasn't so eager to keep moving that I was prepared to get on the next bus out of town at 6 the morning. After that all-day bus ride, I needed a good night's sleep.

So I'm staying in Daocheng for two nights. On the second day, I had a full day to explore. I wandered around without a map (speaking of maps, I still don't actually know where Daocheng is...it's not on my map or any other I can find!). It didn't take long to get out of the town. I wandered through a forest, escaped a nasty dog, took off my shoes and waded through a river (no leeches!), and found myself in the middle of a serene, placid meadow, along with some yaks, horses, pigs, and Tibetan farmers. They all stopped what they were doing as I passed. I was glad Let's Go provided me with at least one phrase in Tibetan - "Ta shi de lah" (Hello!).