Going to sort this travel blog one of these days..

  Xi'An, China
Monday, May 14, 2007

...soooo, have been a little lazy with the old updates... have been faithfully keeping travel diary so will (here is the voice of optimism) maybe back date as i go along? thought i'd just dive in with current affairs and worry about last month when i have time...when? this travelling stuff keeps you bloody busy! ANYWAY. Latest adventures- I've just got back from Songpan, a small town in Sichuan province, about 100km from Lhasa and well into the foothills of the Himalayas, depending on your geographer.

Day 1- arr. songpan, 8hrs from Chengdu. bus ride past white yaks with decorated horns and locals in red turbans and heavy black robes. Pass the yangtze river upstream of the dam, seeing all the drowned foundations of demolished houses, roads, and bridges all swept up in mud between mountain river banks. our bus is winging its way round the ledges that double as a road, held together with rubber bands as far as i can see. neighbour in seat is a cage full of howling kittens- lunch? chinese MTV on the screen is f*cking hilarious, to be seen to be believed...
Songpan part desolate concrete, part old tibetan garrison town. cycle rickshaws, souvenir shops with wild cat and tiger furs, local industry like time travel- yak fur combing machines, blacksmiths with medieval style anvils, and goats being skinned wherever... Women wear red turbans, giant amber beads and coral in their hair, black dresses, and wings of threaded black hair across deep black eyes over scarlet windburnt cheeks

Tibetan Woman

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Yak for dinner...

Day 2- wake onto horseback and take off up mountain. All the local women wear the red and amber. Sunburning blue skies- wearing brown cowboy hat to keep off sun AND BECAUSE IT LOOKS FIT ALRIGHT DO NOT DISAGREE!!!! tarpaulin shelter at night and sleep in wool long johns and full clothes. Eating off dirt ingrained chopsticks and shared bowls food cooked in cast iron kettles over open fire. Guides are a bunch of trilby wearing weather-beaten professional bachelors with chestnut skin and the spectacular red cheeks of the region. No sleep because of snowstorm. Wake up in blues skies and white mountains

It snowed!

. Have snowfight and spitting competition with guides on way up (they started it!). camp in valley of small houses and tall prayer flags. Climb up a mud slide, slide down it... climb up waterfall, slide down...
Night time, drink with guides. The guides sing all the time, Tibetan songs sung as loudly as they shout at eachother and as frequently as they hawk and spit. The night is well below freezing, cant sleep despite wearing everything i own, 2 sleeping bags and 2 blankets plus gloves and hat... not the cowboy hat...

Note to family- the penknife you gave me has been used for: peanut butter sandwiches, jam sandwiches, peanut jam sandwiches (Japanese invention), peeling pomelo fruit (mistake tryiny to DIY this- later saw lady doing it with a chisel), taking a chunk out of anoushka's finger, taking a chunk out of my finger, opening beer bottles and now the latest, peeling a vegetable identified by the guide via the phrase book as a pea- not sure  about that as have never seen a foot-long pea that looks like a cross between a cucumber and a bamboo stalk...

Day 3- morning ride up to Ice Mountain, 4500m altitude

Ice Mountain

. climb is terrifying- tired, run down horses laden with huge packs as well as ourselves picking their way along steep, muddy, slippery ledges above murderous drops. several near misses- horses slipping all the time. tiny lemming-like creatures scurry out of the way and lugubrious yaks eye us from every angle. Their calves are unbelievably fuzzy and wide eyed and one of them joins our train for a while until wrangled out the way. Mountain goats posing on the skyline. When we get to the top the view makes me feel like i've climbed everest

Ice Mountain- very pleased with myself!

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Night spent huddled in Yak jackets- yakets. These are huge yak-wool lined robes which come down to the knee and are done up with a sash on the hips. The top half billows out to act as carrier or random objects or pretend beer belly. The sleeves are a good 20cm longer than your arms to act as gloves too and make devastating weapons in girly slapping fights. Most of them are black; one of them is magician-like green silk with dragons; mine is an attractive shade of 1970's sofa. We all look FABULOUS.

Yakets

Night around the fire with the guides again. It is hot, smoky, and unbelievably loud as the guide's chitchat is conducted at the decibel level of a pneumatic drill and is interspersed with raucous snatches of song in Tibetan dialect mocking one of their number, who has a pork pie hat instead of a trilby and unfortunately really does look a bit like a duck

Guide

; all this above bouts of machine gun like hawking and the roar of the pinewood fire. Singing competition is demanded and we rightly lose out to another round of the duck-mocking song, since they've added lying-on-the-back-pedalling motions and rolling around on the floor screaming and crying with laughter movements to the original portfolio of poultry mimicry. 

Day 4- still no sleep. no washing either as stream cold enough to freeze hell. 7hr ride back to songpan via monastery. very nice, jolly bit of chanting and letting monklings? monkettes? monkeys? play with camera. does not in any way compensate for   filth plus tiredness. aaaaaaaaaaaah for a hot bath......sadly songpan doesn't do such things, though we are reliably informed that the wealthier villagers come into town at least every three weeks for a shower...