The first several hours of the decent were all in the clouds. Part way down we landed on a very pretty bench complete with its on creek and the ruins of a stone house. When the clouds cleared we could see the the valley below and several small villages in the distance. The bench itself reminded me of a campsite in the goat rocks wilderness in WA. It had a very pleasant feel and watching the creek flow off the bench and disappear over the edge with Mt. Adams and Rainier in the distance was priceless.
At the bottom of the big slope and out of the clouds we ran across our first village and the first set of hikers. It was a group of 4 French people, 3 chinese, and 2-5 guides. It was unclear who was an actual guide and who was just along with their friends. They had split the trip into three days and were just starting their third day. They also had there packs on horses. We talked for a while with the guides and the guides friends before continuing down the valley.
Seeing the chinese tourists and talking to them, immediately reminded me of how I dislike chinese tourism. It wasn't anything in particular about these tourists, but a dislike built up over a year and a half in china. It is probably not even specific to chinese tourists, it just that domestic tourism is huge in china and I have been around tourists quite a bit. The bit that got me thinking about these tourists was their brand new full setup. Each had a new pack, new boots, hiking pants, hiking shirt, heavy jacket, hiking hat, hiking scarf, fanny pack, hiking poles, and big DSLR. On top of that they were tip toeing around the grass to avoid mud and cowpies, they didnt want get their boots dirty. Their boots were surprizingly clean, as if they had been tiptoeing for two days or been washing the boots each night. There is just something about the mentality that hiking or experiencing nature means or requires going out and buying a the lot of new things and then trying to keep nature off of them and off of you.
The valley was long, 4 hours long and beautiful all the way. A river ran down the center, clear enough to see the gravel and stones at the bottom. Scattered throughout the valley were small stone houses surrounded by shepards, cows, goats, and mules. Wildflowers were abundant in the meadows along the river. At the end of the valley the mountains closed in and became much steeper, turning the valley into a ravine. Shortly there after there was a fork in the trail. On path led down and across the river, the other kept to the side of the ravine and continued. I knew our destination lay at the end of the ravine, so elected to continue in the current direction. Ten minutes later we ran into an enormous landslide. A short inspection revealed a small makeshift path leading up and across the landslide to what appeared to be a road. The landslide was in fact created by the building of that road. The trail had been entirely wiped out by road building. Roads in the area had a distinct impact on the terrain (landslides, runoff, scar like appearances) and as i mentioned on the people and lifestyles. This particular road had caused landslides up the entire ravine, wiping out all the lower vegetation and uprooting most of the trees, not to mention dumping sediment into the river and changing it to the color of liquid mud. The road builders lived in canvas tents not far from the current end of the road. The tents were very simple with nothing more than simple metal cots inside. To support the workers there were several cooks/wives with their own chickens and pigs roaming around on the incomplete road.
We made it to the village around 7pm after 11 hours of walking and about 4800ft of decent. The guestho9ouse was run by Teacher Zhang and we were immediately offered pears and grapes while dinner was being prepared. The black flies were horrendous and all attracted to the empty plastic table we sat around. At dinner we were offered wine made by the teacher himself. I of course said yes and came to find out there were some catholic monks in the village 100 years ago who taught the locals to grow grapes and make wine. The wine was interesting and very sour, but drinkable. Breakfast was yakbutter tea and a plate sized biscuit called baba.
The next morning we caught a bus to deqin on a harrowing one lane road. Siting in front of me on the bus was a very young and very petite lady with pnuemonia. Every 5min or so she would have a caughing bout that sounded like she was drowning and then spit a mouthful of fluid out the window. I was privileged enough to watch the fluid fly/ streak past my closed window. In deqin we got another bus the mingyong glacier. 90min up 2600ft and 30min down. The glacier at the top was impressive, but the viewing platform was too far away to really experience the glacier. We did get to see some large chunks calve off and crash down.
That night we stayed at another guest house, that rather resembled a three walled barn with some beds because that is exactly what it was. The family had not finished building their house/guesthouse and one entire braod wall was open providing excellent views and a pleasant breeze. The place was family fun, ma, pop, two sons and a pair of senile grandparents. Grandmother was generally ignored by the family while she went about the place doing things i could never figure out. Grampa started drinking liquor by himself around 2pm was drunk shortly after and just sat looking at the landscape and holding his prayer beads. Both were out by 7pm. The two sons were 23 and 21 and apparently the biggest in the village and good at fighting. No one in the family had gone to school and could read very little chinese or tibetian. Both of the boys had girlfriends staying with them at the house. The older son, White Horse or Baima, had a 20something teacher from Hebei, while Rishi had a 45year old deranged finnish lady. The family was very nice and I talked to the father about tibetians and han chinese relations. I also found out that they started eating rice in the 1980's but still dont like it.
That night two of junyang's friends and a random person they picked up on the trip up joined us at the guesthouse and we all set out the next morning for the second portion of our hike.
To be continued...
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