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“people with extremely bright clothing and a huge penchant for yak meat” |
AM sez
As you gathered from Ron’s last entry, our first city stops in China impressed us with their consumer-frenzied streets full of neon lights, cell phone stores wooing customers with live rock bands, and giant scantily clad billboard women beckoning us to the latest sale. We attempted to get 1) some nature, but discovered that to the Chinese this meant groomed paved forest paths lined with snack stalls and festival games, and 2) some culture, but discovered that Lijiang, once famed for its local ethnic flavor, had become indistinguishable from a Disney theme park, complete with plastic speaker ‘rocks’ playing fake bird calls and costumed 18 year olds herding us into souvenir shops. I must say that we were impressed by the enthusiasm of Chinese tourists to see their own country, even if they seem to be devouring it alive in swarms by minibus.
We finally had a successful foray into nature at Tiger Leaping Gorge, a magnificent sheer rock gorge cut by the Yangzi river. Even though there were guesthouses with kitchens to stay in each night, we really felt we escaped, saw beautiful rock formations, snow capped mountains, and waterfalls. We had heard many tales about a particularly magnificent waterfall, but on our first attempt to find it we were unable to follow the path and found ourselves making up our own/skidding down a steep brushy face, when we ran into a dead goat and decided it was an omen to turn back. Needless to say, we were then obsessed about finding the waterfall. We were staying at a new guesthouse run by a Tibetan family whose grandparents lived in a small village high up the walls of the gorge. One day they were going to visit grandma and grandpa, so they led us up to their house, showed us their hand powered stone corn grinding equipment and wheat fields, and then pointed us on our way to the waterfall, which we waded in in solitude.
We were inspired by this ability to actually escape tourist China, so we ventured even further off the beaten track to a town called Deqin only a few km from the Tibetan and Burmese borders. The town is 80% Tibetan, and after our great experience in Tibetan Sikkim in India we were excited to again experience Tibetan culture without paying the humongous fees and airfares to actually go to Lhasa. We found amazing 5000 meter high mountains, beautiful colorful Tibetan houses, and people with extremely bright clothing and a huge penchant for yak meat. We even had yak butter tea, which made us feel all Everest expeditiony like. Even though the Chinese really don’t understand trekking ON YOUR OWN and there were no maps available, we followed written descriptions and local footpaths to do a 4 day hike over a mountain pass to Yubeng, a village with no road access in a high altitude valley in the crook of several snowy mountains with glaciers. Life in Yubeng was pretty simple – with one wood burning stove for heat and farming the main occupation. We spent one day on a magical hike through misty forest to a sacred waterfall, which was surrounded by hundreds of prayer flags, beads, and messages left by pilgrims. We loved stopping in the small villages (usually just 6 or 7 buildings) – at one Ron talked us into a farm house at lunch time where we were served soup and sorghum wheat liquor.
previous travel blog entry
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