6 Days in Tibet
After overnighting in Chengdu, Stephen and I decided to go to Western Sichuan instead of Tibet. Western Sichuan is ethnically tibetan but open to tourism in a way that Tibet is not. We decided not to go to Lhasa since it is overly touristy and expensive. The decision proved to be a good one as the area we went to was beyond our expectations. Here is an account of our 6 days of travel there.
Our first day was pretty normal. We caught the bus to Kangding which usually takes 8 hours. On the road though there was a rock slide in progress. We thought it pretty amazing at the time that we could watch rocks fall onto the road.
We waited about an hour and the rocks stopped falling and we were able to continue the journey. We arrived in Kangding which is the last Han Chinese town before Tibet but there are still lots of Tibetans there still. We set out to find tsampo which is barley meal, yak butter and tea mixed into balls. We did find a nice couple who happily made us some to try. It was interesting, filling but definitely high in calories. It was plain that it was invented to be easy to carry and energy given while herding yaks up in the mountains. We overnighted there and caught the two day bus to Dege the next morning.
The next day was primarily involved with bumping up and down on a rickety old bus and trying not to slide off the seats since they were angled down funny. Not the most enjoyable ride. We passed by the beautiful rock and pine houses of the Tibetans.
Our guide book says the ride to Dege is 24 hours so we thought it was non-stop. Unfortunately our bus driver was not able to drive for 24 hours straight so we stopped at a town called Luhuo for the night. When we got off at 6PM we thought they meant that we would be stopping for 6 hours because they kept saying 6. So we wandered around town for a while and tried to talk to the locals but we don't really speak mandarin or tibetan. They were most impressed with my arm hair though and Stephen found it very funny when about 20 men from the town were crowded around me petting my arm hair. My favorite guy there kept informing us that I was a 3 and Stephen was a 2. We have no idea what that means but I'm glad I'm higher than Stephen is. Eventually we realized, through the repeated attempts of the town people to tell us, that the bus was leaving at 6AM and that we had better get some sleep. We found a cheap room at the bus station and crashed.
Unfortunately that meant that we wouldn't be able to make it all the way to Dege because we would have to turn right around and head back to make it to Chengdu in time for our train to Urumqi. We decided to get off the bus in Ganzi which really confused everyone since we had paid for all the way to Dege. Ganzi is in a valley at over 10,000 feet and some of the passes we were going through were more than 13,000 feet. We were really looking forward to the pass to Dege which is nearly 20,000 feet high. Since we got off, we weren't able to do it. In Dege we found a good hotel, a great bakery and prepared to hitchhike back and do some camping along the way. So we went into the town to buy some food stuffs but we offended this one guy while trying to buy spices and stuff. We aren't exactly sure what we did but he got very angry so we just left. The next guy just gave us what we wanted for free so we weren't sure if we were doing something wrong but in the end we ended up with everything we needed without getting kicked out of town. We also had some time to look around the area.
One of the prime incomes in the area is from raising and milking yaks. One of the things we bought was yak meat to eat while camping but eventually burned it as we had pretty well mutilated it while trying to cut it and it was full of yak hair. Not very appetizing. Sorry that I didn't get any pictures of the amazing people. They were almost all in traditional clothes which included crimsen monk robes, bright skirts with wide brim hats for the girls and cowboy outfits or yak coats for the guys. I'm not kidding about the cowboy outfits. For some reason, the whole area feels like the wild west. There are horses everywhere and cowboy hats, towns look like Dodge city and even yaks look like hairy cows with horns. In one town we even saw a horse go bolting through the town with a saddle hanging behind it. A minute or two later a lady came running after it.
After spending the night in a hotel and getting cleaned up, we decided to try and hitch back to Kangding and do some camping for a couple nights along the way. We started out early the next morning walking out of town along the road. We walked for an hour or so before a tractor with a trailer came along and picked us up.
Also in the tractor was this lady who is the only Tibetan I took a picture of. I asked some other people but they either said no or wanted money which I wouldn't pay them.
He only drove us a few miles and then turned off. We continued walking and after 4 and 1/2 hours, we had only made it 10 miles. Finally a truck driver pulled over and gave us a lift. Now one of the things about hitching in other parts of the world is that you are expected to pay for the ride. It is also oddly enough more expensive than taking the bus. Anyways, the bus driver took us as far as Daofu although we wanted to go up to the next pass. He stopped to take on a load and he seemed to indicate that we wanted to take us farther. So we waited around for a while and they started loading his truck with used cardboard. We realized it was going to be a while so we decided to help as it would get us back on the road faster. 3 hours later we had finished it up with a bunch of empty plastic bottles on top. It was lots of fun and the loaders were very appreciative of the help. They even fed us dinner which is a big thing here. We had a friend in Kunming who said he has been living here for 3 years and has never been invited over for dinner at someone's house. We got back in the truck and drove another mile to the hotel, much to our suprise. Then to our even greater suprise, the hotel was crazily decorated on the inside like the picture below.
Every inch of the place was crazy like that and the hotel was built in the traditional tibetan stone with pine interior. We spent the night and were awoken by the truck driver who wanted to keep driving us. We kept trying to explain that we wanted to get off at the next pass but he didn't understand until we arrived there and motioned to get off. He thought we were nuts since there was snow everywhere and it was really high up.
We trekked up the hill and found a good spot to cook breakfast on the stove we brough with. We had figured out how to use it with diesel although it made everything taste a little funny. Noodles and tea later, we kept hiking till we found a place to pitch the tent and build a fire. We gathered wood and spent the next 2 hours trying to light the fire. We destroyed two of our three lighters (holding the last as an emergency for the stove) and still didn't get anything lit since all the wood was soaking wet. It was really cold too. Finally with a splash of diesel we got it going and worked furiously to keep it going. I started getting altitude sickness, although I didn't know it right away, so went and laid down. It started sleeting and I wasn't getting any better so we decided to head to Tagong for the night. We did so by breaking camp and hiking out to the road and hitching a ride on a pickup that liked to take potholes at full speed. We spent the night there then caught a quite shared taxi to Kangding then a bus to Chengdu.
Interestingly enough on the way back we had to stop again for the same rock slide. We wondered whether the whole thing was caused by the local villagers who always showed up to sell food at inflated prices to the passing motorists. One never knows. We finally arrived back in Chengdu and crashed at the hotel.
For anyone interested in visiting tibet, I would highly recommend Western Sichuan as it is very authentic, under touristed and still wild where Lhasa is overtouristed and mostly Han Chinese as the Tibetans have all cleared out. That is the account of our 6 days in (almost) Tibet.
Our first day was pretty normal. We caught the bus to Kangding which usually takes 8 hours. On the road though there was a rock slide in progress. We thought it pretty amazing at the time that we could watch rocks fall onto the road.
We waited about an hour and the rocks stopped falling and we were able to continue the journey. We arrived in Kangding which is the last Han Chinese town before Tibet but there are still lots of Tibetans there still. We set out to find tsampo which is barley meal, yak butter and tea mixed into balls. We did find a nice couple who happily made us some to try. It was interesting, filling but definitely high in calories. It was plain that it was invented to be easy to carry and energy given while herding yaks up in the mountains. We overnighted there and caught the two day bus to Dege the next morning.
The next day was primarily involved with bumping up and down on a rickety old bus and trying not to slide off the seats since they were angled down funny. Not the most enjoyable ride. We passed by the beautiful rock and pine houses of the Tibetans.
Our guide book says the ride to Dege is 24 hours so we thought it was non-stop. Unfortunately our bus driver was not able to drive for 24 hours straight so we stopped at a town called Luhuo for the night. When we got off at 6PM we thought they meant that we would be stopping for 6 hours because they kept saying 6. So we wandered around town for a while and tried to talk to the locals but we don't really speak mandarin or tibetan. They were most impressed with my arm hair though and Stephen found it very funny when about 20 men from the town were crowded around me petting my arm hair. My favorite guy there kept informing us that I was a 3 and Stephen was a 2. We have no idea what that means but I'm glad I'm higher than Stephen is. Eventually we realized, through the repeated attempts of the town people to tell us, that the bus was leaving at 6AM and that we had better get some sleep. We found a cheap room at the bus station and crashed.
Unfortunately that meant that we wouldn't be able to make it all the way to Dege because we would have to turn right around and head back to make it to Chengdu in time for our train to Urumqi. We decided to get off the bus in Ganzi which really confused everyone since we had paid for all the way to Dege. Ganzi is in a valley at over 10,000 feet and some of the passes we were going through were more than 13,000 feet. We were really looking forward to the pass to Dege which is nearly 20,000 feet high. Since we got off, we weren't able to do it. In Dege we found a good hotel, a great bakery and prepared to hitchhike back and do some camping along the way. So we went into the town to buy some food stuffs but we offended this one guy while trying to buy spices and stuff. We aren't exactly sure what we did but he got very angry so we just left. The next guy just gave us what we wanted for free so we weren't sure if we were doing something wrong but in the end we ended up with everything we needed without getting kicked out of town. We also had some time to look around the area.
One of the prime incomes in the area is from raising and milking yaks. One of the things we bought was yak meat to eat while camping but eventually burned it as we had pretty well mutilated it while trying to cut it and it was full of yak hair. Not very appetizing. Sorry that I didn't get any pictures of the amazing people. They were almost all in traditional clothes which included crimsen monk robes, bright skirts with wide brim hats for the girls and cowboy outfits or yak coats for the guys. I'm not kidding about the cowboy outfits. For some reason, the whole area feels like the wild west. There are horses everywhere and cowboy hats, towns look like Dodge city and even yaks look like hairy cows with horns. In one town we even saw a horse go bolting through the town with a saddle hanging behind it. A minute or two later a lady came running after it.
After spending the night in a hotel and getting cleaned up, we decided to try and hitch back to Kangding and do some camping for a couple nights along the way. We started out early the next morning walking out of town along the road. We walked for an hour or so before a tractor with a trailer came along and picked us up.
Also in the tractor was this lady who is the only Tibetan I took a picture of. I asked some other people but they either said no or wanted money which I wouldn't pay them.
He only drove us a few miles and then turned off. We continued walking and after 4 and 1/2 hours, we had only made it 10 miles. Finally a truck driver pulled over and gave us a lift. Now one of the things about hitching in other parts of the world is that you are expected to pay for the ride. It is also oddly enough more expensive than taking the bus. Anyways, the bus driver took us as far as Daofu although we wanted to go up to the next pass. He stopped to take on a load and he seemed to indicate that we wanted to take us farther. So we waited around for a while and they started loading his truck with used cardboard. We realized it was going to be a while so we decided to help as it would get us back on the road faster. 3 hours later we had finished it up with a bunch of empty plastic bottles on top. It was lots of fun and the loaders were very appreciative of the help. They even fed us dinner which is a big thing here. We had a friend in Kunming who said he has been living here for 3 years and has never been invited over for dinner at someone's house. We got back in the truck and drove another mile to the hotel, much to our suprise. Then to our even greater suprise, the hotel was crazily decorated on the inside like the picture below.
Every inch of the place was crazy like that and the hotel was built in the traditional tibetan stone with pine interior. We spent the night and were awoken by the truck driver who wanted to keep driving us. We kept trying to explain that we wanted to get off at the next pass but he didn't understand until we arrived there and motioned to get off. He thought we were nuts since there was snow everywhere and it was really high up.
We trekked up the hill and found a good spot to cook breakfast on the stove we brough with. We had figured out how to use it with diesel although it made everything taste a little funny. Noodles and tea later, we kept hiking till we found a place to pitch the tent and build a fire. We gathered wood and spent the next 2 hours trying to light the fire. We destroyed two of our three lighters (holding the last as an emergency for the stove) and still didn't get anything lit since all the wood was soaking wet. It was really cold too. Finally with a splash of diesel we got it going and worked furiously to keep it going. I started getting altitude sickness, although I didn't know it right away, so went and laid down. It started sleeting and I wasn't getting any better so we decided to head to Tagong for the night. We did so by breaking camp and hiking out to the road and hitching a ride on a pickup that liked to take potholes at full speed. We spent the night there then caught a quite shared taxi to Kangding then a bus to Chengdu.
Interestingly enough on the way back we had to stop again for the same rock slide. We wondered whether the whole thing was caused by the local villagers who always showed up to sell food at inflated prices to the passing motorists. One never knows. We finally arrived back in Chengdu and crashed at the hotel.
For anyone interested in visiting tibet, I would highly recommend Western Sichuan as it is very authentic, under touristed and still wild where Lhasa is overtouristed and mostly Han Chinese as the Tibetans have all cleared out. That is the account of our 6 days in (almost) Tibet.
posted by Randall Knutson at
4:06 PM
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