A taste of Tibet

Apologies for the mis-leading title - Tibet was unfortunately firmly off our itinerary. There’s lots of bureaucratic nonsense to go through to get permits and even then you can’t travel independently and must be shepherded around in a 4x4 with a tour group. It’s an effective means of stemming tourist inflow into Tibet and any resulting sympathy to the cause.

However we luckily did have the option of visiting western Sichuan, where the population is mainly of Tibetan descent, the mountains are high and snowcapped and usually tourists can do as they please.

We hopped on an eight hour bus to Kangding, the provincial capital. The town is a mix of typical Chinese development (apartment blocks, office buildings) and the natural addition of an icy blue river dissecting the main street and magnificent mountains always visible in the background.

We stayed in a great hostel ran by a friendly American couple who live in Kangding with their two children. On our first night the main square of the town came to life with hundreds of people dancing round in a circle to music blasting from a soundspeaker. Apparently this is a common evening occurrence in Chinese towns! I couldn’t get over how friendly everyone seemed to be, we were smiled at and hello’d at every few steps. Faces had changed, from delicate Han Chinese features to rounder cheeks, darker complexions and coarser jet black hair. Many of the women I saw were wearing traditional headbands and long swinging dresses.

Inadvertently for dinner we wandered into a hotpot restaurant. Sichuan hotpot is a delicacy all over China and the gist of it is: you get a big pot of oily broth loaded with chillies and you chuck in some raw meat and vegetables to cook. The result is volcanic and numbs your mouth so much that I have no idea what the cooked food even tasted like. Holy shit never again, we vowed. The only redeeming feature of the evening was the lovely staff who fussed over us incessantly and of course wanted the obligatory foreigner photo. (You want to feel like a celebrity?? Go to China!)

The next day along with a few new friends from the hostel we took a minibus high high into the mountains to a secluded lake in a stunning location. I had forgotten how blue the sky is when you’re a few kilometres above sea level. Wildflowers were blooming, the sun shone and we shared the lake for a few hours with some curious yaks.

Aiming further west we employed the services of a most affable and only mildly life endangering driver and set off towards Tagong, a small Tibetan town higher again than Kangding.

Literally passing through the clouds (4000m) we emerged at a temple strewn with the flapping colours of Tibetan payer flags. There were plenty of cyclists resting there, some of whom were aiming for Lhasa in Tibet! We’re talking about well over a thousand kilometres, all at lung crunching altitude. And even they wanted to take pictures of us! Oh this celebrity thing is so difficult..

Our driver

As we carried on, the villages started to look distinctly Tibetan, the houses square and white with pretty decorated windows. We drove through vast grassland and herds of the ubiquitous yak.

On alighting in Tagong, we took a look round the 1400 year old monastery, which is still an important religious centre. 

After lunch we bid goodbye to our companions who were heading back to Kangding. Having spent the last few days with Chinese speakers, we were back on our own! Through hand signals, we booked a room for two nights and settled in to the lovely but slightly headache inducing decor.

I tried some yak yogurt (pretty good), Damien had a yak burger (ok) and we explored the interesting little town. Much more so than Kangding, the Tibetan influence here was all encompassing. I loved just looking at the locals, the guys had the appearance of Mexicans we decided, long hair, leather tunics, cowboy hats. We had arrived in the wild wild west of China!

The next day we ventured out into the grasslands outside town, making for a monastery and secluded Tibetan village. In the shadow of some seriously vertigo inducing mountains we walked about eight kilometres and eventually arrived at the huge complex.

Some of the monks had a little English and explained that they were from Lhasa in Tibet and were there to study. And we saw the best monk activity yet – rollerblading!

The village is built beside a temple which has dozens of prayer wheels encircling it. Pilgrims walk clockwise around the building spinning the golden wheels as they walk and chant mantras. The Tibetan stream of Buddhism here is mystical and lovely, the prayer wheels are dotted through the countryside, often in rivers so that they are endlessly spinning. The colourful prayer flags are also such an aesthetically pleasing expression of spirituality.

Behind the village there is a hill absolutely covered in flags where sky burials sometimes take place. My understanding of a sky burial is that the body is brought to the top of a mountain, cut in a certain way and then left for the crows and vultures. Because the people believe the soul has departed after death, the body is of no consequence and as graves are difficult to dig in such stony hard earth, the cadaver is given as an offering to the birds. A little gruesome perhaps, but there none taking place while we were there.  

After two short days in Tagong we caught a minibus back to Kangding and went back to the same American ran hostel. The owner had some surprising news; Simon Pegg was in town filming a movie and had been there last night hanging out and drinking in the hostel. And we missed him.. ARGH! I don’t think I would have forsaken Tagong just to get a celeb snap, but it would be pretty cool to meet a filmstar in such a remote place. No one else in the hostel seemed to know who he was! Hector and the search for happiness is the movie in case you’re wondering. It’s going to be released in 2014.

Saving on the leccy

We spent our last night in West Sichuan hanging out with some Israelis and our Malaysian friend Wi Lei. Strangely enough the only other tourists we met in the whole area were from Israel! The people we got talking to reckoned it’s because the Israeli backpackers are always looking for somewhere unusual and special. They’ve certainly hit the jackpot in this part of China! I'd love to come back someday and hopefully have Tibet on the itinerary too. But for the moment we hopped on another bus and then a short plane trip to Xi’an, home of the very famous terracotta warriors.    

It was a one horse town