Sixty One Degrees
An occassional journal of an Asia-overland adventure
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Kashgar, Xinjiang Province, China
The Torugart Pass is one of the world's most notorious borders. The Lonely Planet for Central Asia devotes three pages to a detailed analysis of this one crossing. It's officially a second-class border, which means no foreigners. In practice, if you line your cards up right, you can get across.
The cheapest option, catching the bus with the locals from Kashgar to Bishkek, was immediately knocked on the head. All reports, and the nice lady from China Travel, said that you'd be kicked off at Chinese immigration.
Plan 2 was to hook up with some other travellers and share a car. Apparently a permitted way to cross. Go figure. I was lucky enough to find a couple travelling on the same day I wanted and so the arrangements were made. The trick is to take one car in China, then have a another car waiting at the isolated border post in Kyrgyzstan. Without this second car you again are not permitted near the border.
So, after catching the famous Kashgar Sunday market the day before I'm ready to head out of China and on to Central Asia. I meet Paul and Jo, my companions for the day, and by 8:30 we're off and heading down a dirt road for the distant border.
The first checkpoint arrives after about half-an-hour but takes just a few minutes as the guard checks our passport and a mysterious piece of paper that our driver keeps waving at any official looking person. An hour further down the barren road we reach the point where the Torugart and Irkeshtam roads diverge, and Chinese immigration control sits. Everybody out of the car with all the luggage.
The border post is remarkably quiet. Apart from a couple of truck drivers we're the only ones there. We drag our bags across to the x-ray machine and put them on top of a huge pile of sacks. Then it's off to the first office to have the passports checked. A lady inside scrutinises our passports in great detail before finally deciding that they pass muster, pencils something into a log, then ushers us on to the next check. Now it's a guy with a computer who runs through the same routine before also deciding that we're okay. At this point I run my backpack through the scanner but casually slide my daypack along the floor so it doesn't get x-rayed. I don't entirely trust those "film safe" declarations.
Finally we're ushered in to yet another room where now two guys are working in tandem to flush out any irregularities in our paperwork. However nothing is remiss and they soon pull out the exit stamp with a flourish and we're on our way.
We're still 110km from the border at this point and we start to climb up to the pass, the stark desert landscape rolling by on both sides. The only signs of life are the overladen scrap metal trucks heading for China. They seem to be slowly dismantling all of Kyrgyzstan.
10km from the border we pass a lonely outpost with a couple of decaying buildings and a handful of guards. Our driver waves the magic piece of paper and we're ushered through.
The final stretch now and before we know it we're at the top. A lone Chinese guard stands on one side of the small gate. No-one stands on the other. He must have offended someone greatly to get this posting. Our car stops and we see the Kyrgyz car waiting on the other side. With smiles and thanks to our driver we cross the border. I ask the guard if I can take a picture of the scenery. He shakes his head. Wouldn't want the secret of his wooden hut and the thirty feet of low fence to get out.
Now it's another 10km down to the Kyrgyz border control. We reach a double barbed wire fence that looks straight out of Stalag 13. The guards are friendly enough though and in fifteen minutes we're on our way.
The scenery has changed dramatically. In China it was all red desert. Now it's lush green pastures and snow-capped mountains. Still very few people though. Just a few nomads and some distant yurts.
It takes another three hours to reach Naryn, the first significant town on the Kyrgyz side. I don't mind though as the scenery is tremendous. The driver says that he knows a nice place we can stay. His place as it turns out! Well, a flat upstairs actually. It looks very comfortable though so we happily accept and settle in to a nice cup of tea.
Specific details for other travellers
There are a couple of places in Kashgar where you can line up vehicles or hook up with other travellers. The well-known John's Information Cafe inside the Seman Hotel, and the Caravan Cafe just outside the Chini Bagh. Caravan Cafe can also line up transport if you're heading from Kyrgyzstan.
You can't change RMB in Kyrgyzstan but there was a guy hanging around at Chinese immigration that gave a reasonable rate of 5:1 for Kyrgyz som. Don't bank on it though.
If you somehow talk your way to the top (unlikely) without onward transport don't expect to pick up a share taxi at the border. The only car there on this trip was our car. In fact, the only car on the road almost all the way to Naryn was our car. It's a lonely road. There are a few trucks carrying scrap metal but they're all heading to China.
In Naryn you can organise a homestay through the Tourist Information Office. They're on the main street, towards the Bishkek end, on the north side and about 500m before the bridge. It's about 300 or 400 som for B&B. We stayed at our drivers house.
If you're not planning to go back, try for a detour to Tash Rabat. 15km off the Torugart-Naryn road up a very pretty valley. In fact, you could even stay overnight there in a yurt which would be cool but you might have trouble getting out unless your driver stays also (which he'd probably do quite cheaply).
Oh, and you probably know this but you don't have to register with OVIR in Kyrgyzstan any more if your stay is less than a month (maybe even three months).
P.S. Happy Birthday Anita!
Everytown, Everywhere
It happens every time. You land in town and don't know which bus station you are at. You shrug off rapacious taxi drivers and start walking down the street, not knowing which direction you're going. All the street signs have disappeared and no-one knows where your hostel is.
Two days later: you know where to buy your water and where to do your laundry. You've sussed out three cafes and a great market for cheap meals. You know which buses go where and how to pay the fare. You know everything there is to know about this town. You're the king.
You see someone walking down the street with full backpack, looking around a little unsure and you look on with sympathy for their naivety. Then you get on a bus and go to the next town and it starts all over again.
Kashgar, Xinjiang Province, China
The Karakoram Highway. A name that sets a traveller's heart racing. Running from Kashgar south to Pakistan and beneath some of the world's highest mountains, it's often described as the best overland journey in the world. I'm not going to Pakistan but I thought I'd do at least the start of the trip. As far as Karakol Lake, about half-way to the border.
The journey started simply enough, the city giving way to fields giving way to barren desert. Having started at 9am we stopped in Upal at 10:30am for lunch, this being the last town before Tashkurgen, a further six or seven hours away. I was happy to sit it out on the bus but that was a little too strange for the locals so I got down and joined them in mutton and rice.
From Upal we followed a wide valley, water coursing over the grey rocks. Rising in the distance, beyond barren foothills, the jagged snow-capped peaks of the Pamir Mountains were visible. We climb to a higher valley, green pastures lining the wide valley floor. Gradually the valley narrows and the sides become steeper, the snow-clad mountains looming ever closer.
After some time winding along the ever climbing valley the peak of Mt Konger, 7719m high, looms above. We slide underneath its gaze and confront its companion, 7546m Muztagh Ata. Between them lies Karakol Lake. 3800m high and my destination for today.
I still had a few hours before dusk so I decide to circle the lake, about a three hour journey. On the way I meet a young chap who invites me in to his yurt to meet his family and see their collection of Chiang Kaishek coins for sale. I decline the coins and he then offers a lift on his motorbike, which I also manage to refuse.
The circuit of the lake is sensational. The weather is excellent and both peaks are always visible, high overhead. From this distance though it seems hard to credit their height. It almost seems you could climb them in a day, the height is very deceptive.
I eventually return to my cosy yurt and, just before turning in for the evening I'm greeted by the same young chap. His hands and knees are all bloody and cut up. He's crashed off his bike. He asked if I have any first-aid but I've left it in Kashgar. Just lucky I didn't take him up on his offer of a ride.
The next day I take a guide up to one of the higher pastures beyond the village at the southern end of the lake. About a three hour hike. He tells me that on Sunday the whole village, sheep, yurts, and all, are moving up here for the summer. Would be quite a spectacle. Today the village is a little quiet as quite a few have travelled the 10km by moterbike cross-country to a village in Tajikistan for its weekly market. Border? What border?
On my final day at the lake I decide to head up to the base camp for Muztagh Ata. It lies at 4450m and I find a Swiss climbing team preparing for the ascent. It's going to take the fifteen man team two-and-a-half weeks to get to the top and back. They were preparing the first of three supply drops higher up the mountain as we spoke.
I returned to the lake and headed out to the road to try to catch a lift back to Kashgar, the bus having already gone by. Offers from various hangers-on at the camp were thick on the ground at 150 yuan back to town, complete with dire predictions about the lack of vehicles on the road for hitching. I decide to ignore this and head up to the road, picking up a lift within five minutes for 40 yuan, no haggling required.
As we start off towards Kashgar I cast a glance back south, towards Pakistan and the 8000m mountains of the Karakoram. A trip for another day.
There are a lot of things to complain about in China but the trains aren't one of them. I'd have to say that I think China has the best railway system in the world. An incredibly extensive network with some 52000km of track connecting just about every corner of the country.
And the trains themselves are pretty impressive. Typically about twenty carriages long with a selection of seats or sleepers. Sleepers come in two varieties, soft (ruan wo) and hard (ying wo). Hard is actually quite okay, it just means six bunks to a compartment rather than four, and no door. On a couple of runs, in Xinjiang in particular, it was pretty comfy.
Soft though is where the real luxury is at. For almost the price of an airfare you get just four bunks in the compartment, a door you can lock, volume control for the speaker (very useful), white linen table clothes, and, on the Beijing to Xian run at least, personal TV screens with a choice of Hollywood movies. I had Matrix 2 and Star Wars on my trip.
Of course, at the other end of the spectrum, hard seat, things aren't quite so rosy. The seats are padded but the journey can be tough depending on your number of near neighbours and their predilection for smoking and scattering the floor with food scraps. The dining car can sometimes be a refuge or you can try for an upgrade (bupiao).
In all cases though the whole journey is a very socialable experience. With the longer trips laster more than 24 hours there's plenty of time for talking, reading, listening to music, or just watching the scenery roll by. What better way to spend the day.
Beijing, China
The scene: Mao's mausoleum. I'm with Patrick from Sweden and we've been queuing for about twenty minutes to see Mao's preserved body. We climb the steps to the grand building, respectively removing our hats as we silently shuffle in to the ante-room. Before us is the great man himself, larger than life in a marble rendition, looking down upon us benevolently.
Patrick takes all this in then remarks under his breath, "Wow. He looks pale".
Great Wall, China
"It sure is a great wall", Richard M. Nixon
He may not have known much about tape recorders but tricky Dicky sure knew his walls. He's not wrong, it really is a great wall.
With all my time in Beijing I ended up spending about three days on the wall. There are several sections within easy reach of the capital. The most popular being Badaling, fully restored and with cable car access for the less able or just plain lazy. It's extremely popular with Chinese visitors who can combine it with a trip to the Ming tombs in a nice little day outing. Needless to say I steered well clear of this section.
I chose instead to travel to Huanghua, involving a slow bus trip to Huairou then a shared minibus to the village and wall. I hooked up with a New Zealand couple for the minibus journey so it was pretty cheap.
On arriving in the village you are immediately confronted by the magnitude of the effort in building this wall. The surrounding terrain is rugged to say the least, with steep mountains and deep valleys rising and falling on all sides. The route of the wall was simple: just follow the ridge line, no matter what it does. This results in some sections running at nearly 70 degrees as the wall resolutely follows the contours of the mountains.
The wall runs both east and west from the village so, somewhat randomly, I chose to go west first. My Kiwi friends, Romana and Donna, joined me and we scrambled up the hillside to reach the first bit of intact wall, the section right next to the road having crumbled almost away.
We quickly discovered that indeed, no restoration had been done on this section, the top of the wall was so overgrown it felt at times like a bushwalk. The sensational views of the wall on both sides of the village though made all the effort worthwhile. You'd have to stop every now and then and just marvel at what you were witnessing.
Every few hundred metres we'd come to a tower, mostly in surprising good condition with all doors, windows, and even roofs intact. Looking out it was easy to imagine the defenders peering through the windows, scanning the horizon for Mongol hordes.
A couple of hours of this was enough for Romana and Donna and we parted at an access point in a valley. They headed back to the village whilst I kept on. It was hard to stop. There was always one more tower in reach.
Eventually, as the day drew to a close, I reached a point at which the wall descended steeply then had a gap for a hundred metres or so where a dam was now in place. On the other side of the dam the wall climbed out again and continued on over the undulating terrain as far as the eye could see. This was it for me for the day though. I dropped out of the tower and climbed down the hill to the village below.
The whole day was so enjoyable I made a spur of the moment decision to stay overnight at the village so I could explore the other side the next day. I managed to stumble across a new hotel that had a room with a bathroom for 20 yuan. Incredibly cheap. And beer at 3 yuan (about 40 cents) a bottle! Who could say no?
The next day I was up early to climb the eastern half. Walking through the village I passed a lady grinding flour with a donkey-driven stone wheel. It seemed strange so close to Beijing. The eastern half of the wall had been kept clear of vegetation but was more challenging for the steepness of the terrain and the crumbling condition of the path. I found myself clinging tenaciously to the wall as my feet kicked broken steps and crumbling pavers.
The wall on this side seemed also to go on forever but beyond the first steep ascent and descent there was no obvious access so I reluctantly quit my wall-walking at about lunchtime. Time enough for a quick plate of rice before catching the bus back to Beijing.
A few days later I found myself with a day free and decided to head out to another section. A relatively well-known 10km walk connects the Jinshanling and Simatai sections. Thirty towers in all and four hours of walking. The start and finish of the walk are restored but the middle section is original. The relative popularity of these sections showed in the souvenir sellers though. Every entrance to a tower was greeted with "T-shirt? Drink?". As I was here fairly late in the day, and the last one on the wall, I was in a fairly strong bargaining position for drinks, which the sellers would otherwise have to cart back to their villages.
Reaching the end of the walk I was astonished by the terrain that the further (unclimbable) sections of Simatai traverse. A steep, sharp ridge with sheer sides made the wall look spikes clinging to the back of a dinosaur. Surely a great walk also, but not today.
Beijing, China
With crowds of people everywhere there's very little privacy in China. This has an interesting effect on people's inhibitions, or lack of them. In public parks people will sing as if they were Pavarotti and dance like they were Ginger Rogers. They are, of course, generally completely talentless but that doesn't stop them giving it their all in public places.
The corrollary of this is that they have an amazing ability to ignore others in their surroundings. It serves to prevent them from being distracted but they'll also quite happily stop and stand right in front of you when looking at a sight, as if you weren't there, because, to them, you aren't.
They also will not hesitate to stop and investigate some interesting behaviour. Taking a photo with a tripod, writing in a journal, or reading an english-language web-site all fall in to this category. They will happily take the guide book from your hands and I've had people lean over my shoulder, their face right next to mine, and slowly read aloud an email that I am reading, fascinated as they are to see a real-world use of english. The concepts of privacy and personal space just does not exist.
Beijing, China
Half-way there. Six months gone. Six months to go (maybe).
So far I've been steadily travelling north. Now I turn and travel west.
So far I've been travelling in Asia. Now I head towards the Arab world. It starts even before I leave China, in the Uyghur-dominated Xinjiang province.
The silk road beckons.
Beijing, China
I visited Tiananmen Square today. Built in typical communist style: huge and graceless. It's just a large concrete-paved space. No benches. No trees. Surrounded by Soviet-style buildings and with Mao looking kindly down from on high. It's really only suitable for two purposes: flying kites and holding mass demonstrations.
The Chinese however are very proud of Tiananmen Square. Many times in the south of China, after mentioning that I would visit Beijing, I would be asked if I had heard of it. "Oh yes", I would say, "it's very famous in the west". The irony of this was, however, lost.
China is famous for it's English signs. Some of my favourites are:
From a guest house in Hue (okay, this is in Vietnam) - "Do not laundry in the toilet"
Seen beside a lake in Lijiang - "Do not quarrel and fight noisily while boating, or take the responsibility for doing it"
In a garden in Suzhou - "The toilet has gone bad"
Suzhou, China
There can be no doubt that communism, as a socialist ideology, has been abandoned in China. It probably never really existed in the Marxist-Leninist sense. It was more just a rallying cry for the peasant farmers against the Kuomintang.
Unfortunately, in moving away from the communist ideal the Chinese government is discarding the good aspects: equality of the people, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", in the words of Marx; and retaining the bad: centralised government, a totalitarian state, and social conditioning.
The idea of equality probably never existed in the minds of the regime. Official announcements can, with a straight face, make the reference "from the highest state official to the lowest peasant".
Attempts at social conditioning range from the famous one child policy to the work of the Children's Song Committee, a group of elderly song-writers charged with writing songs for children so they don't have to listen to the adult themes of Cantopop. Their most famous work is 'Take Lei Feng as a Fine Model', mythologising a young soldier who was always ready to help others. The sixty-five year old committee chair acknowledges that they may be out of touch with the current young generation.
And today it was announced that henceforth, foreign (ie Hollywood) films would be banned from release during school holidays so that children could watch more wholesome fare. The threat of Harry Potter was too great. In the wake of China's entrance to the WTO it seems likely that such actions, they also limit overseas films to just ten per year, will fall foul of powerful US lobby groups.
Of course, all this pales beside the information access offered by the internet. The government is terrified of this medium and rightly so. Even behind "the Great Firewall of China" typing "Tiananmen Square" into Google brings up several websites about the massacre before any official tourist sites. Even those, such as Amnesty International's, which are blocked, are easily accessed via Google's cache feature.
Still, maybe the government has nothing to fear from the internet. In all the cafes I've visited the locals do nothing but play games, read emails, or chat online.
Hong Kong is freaking me out. It's so strange after mainland China. I just paid HK$50 (about 50 yuan) to store my bag, it costs 3 yuan in China. I couldn't find Chinese food for lunch (had a Canadian hamburger instead), and I only just stopped myself from spitting in the street (just a small piece of food stuck in my teeth mind you, not hacking up my guts in the Chinese fashion).
That said, coming in from China is the only way to enter Hong Kong. You start in typical peasant-and-rice-paddy country, riding a fairly shabby bus. Gradually this gives way to the urban sprawl and high-risers of the new city of Shenzen. Then it's through immigration and on to the modern and clean Kowloon-Canton Railway through the New Territories. Half-an-hour later you find yourself walking past the venerable Peninsula Hotel and boarding the famous Star Ferry. As the boat bobs in the waves of the harbour you see the incredible skyline of Hong Kong Island approach. Huge skyscrapers rising high but dwarfed by the steep, tree-clad slopes of Victoria Peak. You step off the boat into the central square, from where the British governed the colony for a century, now overshadowed by the sensational Bank of China building. Symbolic of the new millenium for the city.
You have arrived.
Daocheng, Sichuan Province, China
We've discovered why there's a distinct lack of activity at the bus station. No buses can get over the four passes from Kangding to Litang, on the route to Daocheng.
With just about every distraction in this town exhausted though Bradley and I decide to strike out anyway, first taking a share taxi to the nearby junction of Sangdui, then hopefully hitching from there.
Things are looking pretty good at the start. Blue skies all round. Cheap fare to Sangdui. We stop in at a small cafe for some breakfast, downing a tasty plate of Chinese ravioli, before looking up to see a blizzard outside. Where did that come from? We step outside to investigate but are quickly convinced we are going nowhere for the time being. Resigned to our fate we go back in to the cafe and huddle around the fire with the locals, drinking cups of tea.
The snow continues bucketing down for a good hour or so then, just as quickly as it started, it stops again and we are once again confronted by horizon to horizon blue skies. Where did it go?
No time to ponder this question though as a four-wheel-drive dual cab Nissan pickup truck comes around the corner past the cafe. We wave it down and find that the driver is going to Litang, our next destination. Some quick negotiations and we're on our way. A little disappointed to not have visited the local monastery, complete with hermit monk up in the mountains, but you don't turn down a 4WD when it comes your way.
The drive to Litang is spectacular, traversing up and down small passes, running alongside a rich green valley, and with snow everywhere brightening the scene.
It turns out that the driver is going all the way to Kangding, potentially a two day trip depending on road conditions. Bradley is heading towards Tibet whilst I'm heading away so our paths separate at Litang, the most Tibetan-looking town I've seen yet.
I was pretty keen to go to Tibet but it's still a bit of an ordeal to get in as an independent (read: cheap) traveller. And once you are in there are quite a few restrictions on where you can travel. Tempted as I was I decided to leave Tibet for another day. Now I turn eastwards.
The road to the east, to Kangding, is a spectacular series of passes and valleys. I get a taste of things to come as we head out from Litang and begin to climb and climb and climb. We rise above the snow-line and I'm soon looking at a scene of snow-covered mountain peaks all around. We finally reach the top, 4718m, before dropping down and down and down in to the next valley.
The scene is repeated three more times. On the second peak we have to negotiate our way past an army convoy of 75 trucks. The third pass was pretty uneventful but on our approach to the fourth pass it was clear that our luck had run out. A huge traffic jam had formed just over the crest as big trucks struggled to put on chains and managed to run in to each and off the road in slow motion. With several vehicles totally incapacitated chaos reigned. Every attempt to clear a path for one direction of traffic was thwarted by some idiot in a small vehicle racing up to jump in to the new "space". I took advantage of the delay at least to get out and take a couple of photos in the last light of the day. In the end we were stuck there for two hours before finally extricating ourselves and heading off down the road.
My driver decided to make up for lost time and, oblivious to the terrible condition of the road, proceeding to race down the mountain and along the final valley at breakneck pace. Nevertheless we made it to Kangding by about 9:30pm and I found myself sharing a room with two Korean guys who I'd met in Xiengcheng. Turns out they were stuck on the same pass overnight the night before last.
As for myself, I had a nice hot shower. My first in a week.
Postscript: Much later I ran in to Mili again, about 2000km away, in Yangshou. Turns out she got in only a day or so before me because of all the snow. She was also stuck for 24 hours on one of the passes. She was particularly impressed by the generosity and charity of the local monks, who came down from their monastery to sell the hapless travellers 2 yuan packets of instant noodles for 10 yuan a pop.
Daocheng, Sichuan Province, China
I spend some time wandering around the outskirts of town today, in the Tibetan quarter. At about 1pm I'm beckoned in to a house for lunch. Sounds good.
I follow the elderly gentleman through his main gate, across the courtyard containing a horse, and in to the house. The bottom floor is a stable with at least a couple of cattle. Hard to say as it's so dark. Up some steep steps and around a corner to the large kitchen where the man's wife prepares lunch in the dim light. I'm ushered to a corner next to the window and offered butter tea, dark bread, and yak cheese. Two cats and a lamb wander around the room.
After a time my host beckons me to follow to another room, a small chapel where pictures of the Dalai Lama are prominent. "Dalai Lama", says the man in a slightly conspiratorial fashion. "Yes. Dalai Lama", I say, immediately clinching our brotherhood. He shows me pictures of his two sons, monks in some far off monastery.
Back to the kitchen and lunch is ready, noodles and some sort of green vegetable, and rice. Very tasty actually. The lady goes back to churning the butter tea whilst I eat.
Lunch finished I prepare to make my leave, asking how much I owe. Six yuan the lady indicates with a hand gesture. I give ten. They were very nice.
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.
Daocheng, Sichuan Province, China
I'm strolling the streets of Daocheng with my current travelling companion, Mili, when a western chap, the first one we'd seen in the town, came across to us.
"Are you going to Yading?", he asked. We both looked at each other, a little puzzled. That wasn't the plan, we didn't even know where it was. "I just wondered", he said, "because why else would you be in Daocheng?". Why else indeed, but here we were, and it wasn't too bad a place really, in that western-Sichuan a-little-bit-of-Tibet kind of way.
Turns out Yading is an excellent and almost undiscovered National Park a little to the south. After a look at a few photos I was convinced to make the trip. Mili was a little short on funds and so decided to skip it and head for Chengdu. So Bradley was now my new travel mate.
He'd already scoped out the mini-bus situation so we decided to head down straight away. I hastily packed a few things in to my day pack and left the big bag behind. A summer sleeping bag, a couple of packets of biscuits, and a toothbrush. What more could I need?
The journey took about three hours to the entrance of the park. It was getting dark by this stage so we decided to stay in a farmhouse just outside. The weather was definitely cold but we could pad our beds with about four blankets (yak I think) underneath and another four on top. Toasty warm.
Next morning we awoke to amazing blue skies. We could see two of the three mountains in the distance, tops covered in snow. Thus inspired, and after a hearty meal of fresh bread and packet coffee, we set off to the park.
First stop was a monastery that we supposedly could stay at. Not at the moment. No monks but plenty of construction workers. It seemed to be prepared more for tourism than religion. A common theme in China. In any case, no real option to stay there at the moment. The place was mostly just workers tents. They did sell me some overpriced packet noodles on the basis that there was no food further on.
Continuing on we noticed snow falling a bit more persistently before reaching our destination for the night, the Luorong Pasture. The original plan was to camp but with all the snow about we opt for the simpler choice of staying in the group tents already set up. They have heaps of blankets at least. Oh, and a full kitchen. No food indeed.
The next day we strike out for the high lakes. If the weather improves we'll circle the mountain.
The weather doesn't improve. It snows on-and-off all day and visibility is a few hundred metres. Not enough to safely find all the necessary passes. We climb to the top of the first pass, wait for a while to assess the situation, then decide it's too risky to continue. Back to the delights of the Luorong Pasture camp.
We awake the next day to find the visibility exactly the same as before. Looks like the circuit is off. Some Chinese from the east coast have arrived to assess the regions viability for tourism development. They have a local guide and are planning to cross the pass we reached yesterday then continue on. They seem woefully ill-prepared with casual trousers and dress shoes. It's almost worth staying just to see how they fare.
But in the end we decide to cut our losses and head back out of the park. The next challenge will be to try to catch a lift on the very quiet road back to Daocheng.
Zhongdian, Yunnan Province, China
Having kitted myself with the best in Chinese winter gear I was heading for the Mingyong glacier. First step was a seven hour bus ride from Zhongdian to Deqin.
We headed west from Zhongdian and down a long valley. Small villages and isolated houses overlooked green terraced fields. Mostly the terrain was rocky though and unsuitable for cultivation. We travelled up and over a couple of passes then we started to climb and climb and climb.
Snow began to appear by the roadside and I saw the clouds above getting steadily closer. Well beyond the last signs of habitation we continued climbing and soon we rising through then above the clouds. Suddenly a huge vista of snow-covered mountain peaks surrounded us. We continue to climb, higher and higher, each turn more impressive than the last. We're well above the snow line now and the sun is streaming down on the distant mountain peaks, lighting the snow in colours of white and gold.
Finally we reach the summit at over 4200m. I was expecting a bit of a cheer from the crowd but they all seemed a bit underwhelmed. Not least my seat companion. He'd been asleep on my shoulder for most of the journey.
Zhongdian, Yunnan Province, China
The western part of Yunnan and Sechuan provinces begin to show a bit of Tibetan influence. With this in mind I was looking forward to visiting the large Ganden Sumtseling Gumpta (monastery). What a shock I had.
Monks with mobile phones, labouring on the buildings, driving trucks. Very different to Thailand and Laos. Virtually no monastic or religious activity going on. Just a small boy down an alley chanting scriptures in a sing-song way. Very disappointing.
I was hoping for a small slice of Tibet. I'm afraid I might have found it.
Walnut Grove, Yunnan Province, China
At the guest house this morning I was brought two bowls of porridge for breakfast. I had forgotten the cardinal rule of travelling in south-east Asia. Always specify "one".
"I would like the chicken and rice".
"One?"
"Yes. One"
This conversation is so common that long term travellers short circuit it by always specifying "one", usually with single finger clearly held up, with every order. No matter how superfluous it might seem.
Dali, Yunnan Province, China
After ten weeks in Indochina it's strange travelling in a semi-industrialised country. So many things are different.
The immigration people in Hekou were about the nicest I've ever encountered. Helping me with the forms and telling me about the bus and train times. I left the building and was immediately approached by a young man claiming to be an english translator and offering help. Alarms bells start going off big time as he offers to escort me to the bus station or the bank. Turns out, he really is an english translator enployed by the government to just stroll around and help lost looking foreigners. Amazing!
There's very little hassle to buy things, take motos, or go to guest-houses. Everyone is generally honest over prices. A bit dazed after a long bus ride I offered 35 Yuan for a 3.5 Yuan purchase. The nice young lady just gently corrected me. The Vietnamese would take the cash and laugh to their friends.
There are real mountains now looming overhead. With snow!
Strange thing though. I sort of miss the hurly-burly of Indochina. It was fun.