More Tibetan Than The Tibetans Themselves

Local Tibetan Girl in Tagong
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It's termed the back door route to Yunnan, but the route through Western Sichuan holds much more than an alternate back road to get to South West China. It posses some of the most intact culturally Tibetan areas within the map that is now China. I show only one stop on my map just to simplify things, but in reality things were a lot more difficult than this map shows, as you will find.

My journey to Leshan to the see the giant buddha brought me back to Chengdu to spend the night and from there I headed on to Kangding, my first enforced stop in Western Sichuan. This was just an overnight stop; in at 8pm and back out on the 6am bus the next morning. Bus times are unforgiving in the area, and usually only leave once a day. I was told the setting for the town was beautiful, but I'll have to rely on others word for that!

Little Girl in Litang
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Off To Tagong

The first stop that I wanted to make was at the Tagong Grasslands. It was hard to image a small quaint place like this existing in China after traveling down through Beijing and Chengdu. Located in the middle of nowhere northwest of Kangding (at about 3700m), as it's name suggests, it's vast area of meadows surrounded by snowcapped peaks. It was a little late in the year to see the meadow at their best, with the Tibetan nomadic herdsmen tending their flocks. I had come here as I had heard that this little village was like a place that the Chinese had missed when rolling through the Tibetan culture. While there are always Chinese everywhere (this is real China after all!), you got a sense that the Tibetans moved about with more freedom than in Tibet, that they weren't second class citizens in their own area. This was one of the sad things about most of the towns in Tibet itself. Local girls were fabulously decorated. Red and black plaits of thread fixed into their hair, with large silver pieces inlaid with large round coral stones around the top of their heads like a headband (see photo). The guys just drifted up and down the town in their home made tractors, looking every bit as wild as the nomads in Tibet itself.

Litang Dude!
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A jewel that I hadn't heard about before I went there was the small monastery in the middle of the village. It was built during the Qing Dynasty to commemorate the Han Princess Wencheng and Phagspa, the same couple that united to bring the most sacred statue in Tibetan Buddhism to the Jokhang in Lhasa (which no doubt you remember form that entry). There is a sacred statue of 12-year old Sakyamuni (Buddha) in the monastery which was brought by Princess Wencheng on her way to Lhasa, a sister statue to the most sacred of all in the religion and decorated just as magnificently. Very few in town spoke any English, but the monk watching over the statue had lived for many years in Dharmasala, India. He explained that the lack of light was due to a rule imposed by the Chinese that electric lights are not allowed to be used. He pointed to one in the ceiling, that was just a hanging dead pendant.

Making Dung Pies
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Another great thing that was hard to miss in the area, no Chinese tour buses and no guides with ridiculous little speakers and triangular flags. It's not easy sometimes to get away from these flocks, but when you can, China seems like another country. There are enough people traveling through that there is one little guest house. Called 'Sally's Cafe', chaos reigned because Sally was out of town. They had a menu in English and Chinese, but because the crew that were left to hold the fort could read neither (they're Tibetan), you could literally end up with anything. I ordered fried rice with vegetables and ended up with fried tofu and beef!

Engraving Tibetan Buddhist Prayer
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Hitting the Road to Litang

I departed early morning departure from Tagong, intended for Litang. I really had no clue where I was going to end up. The girls at the guesthouse had told me 7:30am, but when they saw me waiting for the bus the next morning they started to tell me 6am. A bit late for that! By some miracle (or maybe even a mobile phone), the little stuffed minibus that I was on connected perfectly with a big bus along the route and brought me to my destination. The road was soul destroying and the fact that the only seat on the bus was at the back didn't help either. It was a paved mountain road that was in bits. Roads like this that are not maintained would be better just as dirt roads, terrible to say it but it's true. There were a couple of designated stops after descending from mountain passes with hoses at the ready to cool the bus' steaming brakes. One of these had a prayer wheel continuously spinning in the rapidly flowing mountain stream (see photo). I could smell the prayers flying to the gods just standing beside it! Six hours later we rolled into Litang. At 4,000m now and already in November, it was more than a little cold in the evenings. Even the streams in the area were starting to freeze over.

Monster Prayer Wheels in Tagong
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A bigger place than Tagong, Litang is a place still very much dominated by Tibetan people. Wandering about, you get all the same wild stares and smiles as wandering on the Tibetan plateau. The northern part of town contains a larger collection of traditional Tibetan houses than I saw anywhere else. Locals were busy making dung pies to stick to the walls of the house (see photos). These will keep the place nice and snug in the freezing evenings. The locals seemed very fresh to the sight of a foreigner, something that you really have to get out of the way to achieve in China.

Monastery in Tagong
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After hearing from the monk in Tagong, I was interested to see the way that they are building a new temple in the Litang monastery. A large glass panel facing south doesn't seem like it's an accident in the design. A little glass to shed a some light on what lies within! The stupa in the middle of town was a fabulous spot to sit and people watch. It was just a garden (with the perimeter ringed with prayer wheels) and a stupa in the middle also ringed with prayer wheels. Some sat on the grass in front spinning their own prayer wheels. Most circled nonstop around the stupa, one had one their own spinning wheels, the other keeping the prayers of the stupa flying to heaven.

Tibetan monk buying meat!!
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The life of the town for travelers, was Mr. Zhang's local restaurant. A larger than life little Chinese guy with good English, he had lots of sheets of paper with English writing scribbled in the window and a hand drawn map of the town on the wall and plenty to say about each of the places he deemed worthy to make it onto the map. It made for some entertainment in the evenings!

Headed for Yunnan

It was strange trying to actually get out of Litang. Officially, it seemed, the only bus was one that passed through at 3pm. For what is a really spectacular route, I didn't want to travel it mostly in darkness. I enquired around, and there were wildly different stories about how you get out of town in the morning. Some said 6am, others 7:30 and most thought I was just crazy to think there was transport in the morning at all. I met a French guy that thought he had a good tip, to get to the station the next morning at 6am for a minibus headed for Darong. We figured it was worth a shot. The girls running the guesthouse I was staying at marveled at this idea.

Local Tibetan Girl in Tagong
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So with another early rise, the 'bus station' was a hive of activity at six in the morning. It seemed incredible that for a bus that nobody seemed to believe existed, we just about got seats. It couldn't have been some random stranger ferrying people about as the others all had proper tickets. The less than nice Chinese guy directing the bus pocketed our money just before departure. Eight hours later and after heading through some really spectacular scenery we arrived in the little town of Darong. Scenery is one thing, but to see the traditional Tibetan houses dotted on the mountains really brought life to the picture. Darong itself is sheltered between two very closely located steep mountains giving it a beautiful feel. As little tourists as Litang sees, I don't think Darong gets too many at all. That night all the women of the town came out in force to the town square. Strobe lights bounced off the mountains and speakers blared the traditional music that old and young joined in a circle to dance to. It was beautiful to watch such a natural gathering of locals doing what they assume as natural.

Street Chatter in Tagong
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The last leg of the journey was completed the next morning. A 7am bus to Zhongdian, the place that the Chinese call Shangri-La. Comfortable bus, magic scenery switching from one valley to the next and some interesting cargo from the locals. I've been on buses with lots of chickens and pigs in the past, but this is the first time that I've been on the bus with a barrel of live fish (see photo, taken during the stop for a flat wheel). The guy strapped them to his back when he saw the bus coming and marched on like it was a bag of clothes on his back. Every now and again a fish would make an escape attempt and beat against the lid. They usually managed to knock the lid off, but none succeeded in seeing the rest of us in the bus!