April 15, 2004

Next time I'm walking

Yading, Sichuan Province, China

We reached the entrance of the park and stopped in for some instant noodles at the house we'd stayed at before. It's now about 12:15 and apparently most of the minibuses returning to Daocheng leave at about 12:30 or 1:00pm.

That must be when there are minibuses. Hour after hour passes by with virtually no traffic at all. The occasional motorbike. A truck. Nothing remotely resembling transport we could use. The helpful owner of the house comes out in to the lightly falling snow to tell us that, oh yes, when it snows the minibuses don't come from Daocheng because the road is too dangerous. Great.

It's now about 4pm and I'm taking a break inside when Bradley comes rushing in to say that he's scored a lift. I quickly grab my stuff and run out. They already have five passengers so it'll be a cramped ride and they want a fairly outrageous 100 yuan a piece but we decide to go with it. Three of them squeeze together in the back seat whilst I jam in next to a small guy in the middle row and Bradley squeezes in next to me. The three of us on two seats. I'm so close to the poor Chinese guy that I'm virtually in his lap.

Things quickly go downhill from there. As we climb up the tricky mountain road it becomes immediately apparent that the windscreen-wipers don't work, the demister doesn't work, and the driver is seemingly short-sighted. The front passengers has to keep calling out obstacles on the road.

With the constant snow and no windscreen-wipers the visibility out of the windscreen naturally begins to deteriorate. The driver tries every couple of minutes to wipe the inside of the glass, apparently unaware that the snow is on the outside. He occasionally winds down his window to put his hand out and check if it's still snowing, despite the very obvious flakes continually hitting the windscreen.

Just as it seemed things could get no worse we began to climb to a higher pass. The snow was getting thicker and beginning to drift on to the road. Bizarrely, just as we hit a large drift, one of the guys in back asks the driver to stop. More bizarrely, he does! Bradley and I look at each other and we both know that we are not going to get going again uphill in this drift.

Sure enough, when the driver tries to move the wheels just spin. He clearly has never driven in snow before. Or he's just an idiot. Hard to say. We eventually push the little van past the snow and can continue on. Only a few hundred metres later he stops again and gets out to look at the back tyre. Almost flat.

It's now 7pm, the snow's still falling, the road is getting more treacherous, and I have no confidence this guy can even change a tyre properly. With an hour of light left Bradley and I decide to strike out on foot and at least get over the pass, just a few hundred metres away, and down the other side to warmer terrain. For all we know they might be sleeping up there for the night.

We head off and quickly begin descending. We don't know how far it is to the next village and there's very little traffic on this road but it still seems the safer option. After 45 minutes a four-wheel-drive heads towards us. We try to flag it down. It zooms by. Typical. They'd rather we died in the snow than they be inconvenienced.

Soon after we see a monastery on the other side of the gorge. "I claim sanctuary!", exclaims Bradley. Unfortunately, there's no way to cross the gorge here. We continue on.

8:00pm. Dusk is here. We see another set of lights approaching. Damn, it's the minibus. Hard to decide which is worse: to trudge on in the dark and snow, not knowing when shelter will appear, or to risk descending the mountain with Mr Magoo at the wheel. We strangely opt for Mr Magoo.

The driving snow makes visibility terrible. The driver tries various combinations of lights to see which is best: high beam, low beam, no lights, and, bizarrely, the interior light. Strangely that doesn't help.

Ultimately, against all odds, we make it, although we have to force them to drop us in the middle of town rather than the outskirts. A further two or three minutes for them. They manage to stop the van right in the middle of an intersection. After a thoughtful critique of the quality of the driving we cough up the 200 yuan and get away from the van from hell as fast as possible.

But then we find a restaurant with some excellent and cheap food. The guesthouse owner is very pleased to see me return. The room is warm and the bed is comfy. Home sweet home, for one night at least.

Posted by David at April 15, 2004 10:20 PM