The Deluge

  Bitu, China
Friday, June 9, 2006

"Hi, I'm Matt Damon, and I just went to Africa."

Descending into the Yu-Chu Valley, John and I joked about Matt Damon, who recently went to Africa to help a non-profit for one day.

"Who cares if Matt Damon went there for one day, I want to hear from the woman who lives there and has made a difference her whole life," John said.

Someone must care. Who?

The "Maaaaaatt Damon" syndrome is portrayed well in Team America: World Police. We sang the theme song as we hiked through a grove of big spruce trees.

Turning the corner, we were overlooking a sea of barley with waves of green rippling in the wind. Amongst the almost-ripened barley, small huts floated in the green sea. A cold sprinkling fell from the light purple-tinted clouds, which felt good as the rain collected on my WWF tee shirt and cooled my body.

Many switchbacks later, the brown undulations of the Yu-chu came into view as it flowed from the north, then west. At this point the Yu-chu is pinched between the Mekong and Salween Rivers and runs into the Kawa Karpo Range. It tries to escape the pinch, flowing west, then north, then east, but is eventually merged into the giant Salween River, a hostile take-over.

Late in the afternoon, we are entertaining villagers in Rata. It's easy: we were only preparing dinner. Nonetheless, John stood up and performed a rendition of "I'm a Little Teapot" for the children.

Meanwhile, I was attempting to fix the fuel bottle and was cleaning yak butter from other food and gear. Diagnosis: keep the fuel bottle empty. When ready to cook, fill the fuel bottle with fuel from the reserve tank after attaching the stove to the bottle. This worked, though I think the ball bearings just need some mineral oil lubrication.

That night, I slept on the roof of a nearby house, watching the moon and the stars as the Yu-chu rapids roared low in the background under the song of crickets.

In the morning, Tsering and I left by eight. The river was still roaring low, until we hiked along a cliff above the river. Directly above the river, the sound of churning water became clear and powerful. After another switchback, the river disappeared from view and we only heard the echoes of the river bouncing off the cliff across the gorge. Sometimes, we could not hear the river at all, and our trekking poles and shoes hitting the ground would become more apparent.

At Karpo village, our two groups parted ways: John, Osnat, and Amos continuing the circumambulation with their guide and two horses; Tsering and I heading north further into the Yu-chu gorge.

On the way, I notice long cables descending over the trail from the mountains above. "Are these for transporting wood?" I ask, seeing the piles of wood near the cables. "Yes," said Tsering. The villagers would collect firewood high in the mountains the attach it to the cables. When they released the wood, it would descend into the valley for collection. Smart idea, these ziplines.

Today would be a relaxing day, I thought, as Tsering had said we only had a five hour walk. By three, however, we had reached a village for a late lunch and he mentioned that we still had four more hours of hiking. So much for that relaxing day. After feeding some pork to cannibalistic pigs (I needed to know), we continued on our way, leaving the shade of the walnut trees and the entertainment of children for the blistering dusty heat of the ridge trails.

By seven, when we were suppsosed to arrive, Tsering pointed to our destination in the distance. I realized two things: first, Tsering had no idea where anything was north of Kawa Karpo, and, second, Tibetans may be good at many things, but estimating time and distance are not among them. As we were hiking in the dark Tsering said "half hour more."

Yeah, right.

It was another hour and a half.

The day, however, captured my senses. In villages below our trail, people were singing, yodeling, and warbling as they harvested barley. Other villages were abandoned and brown like the surrounding shrublands. Perhaps the fields had lost their fertility. Falcons flew overhead. The clouds wove through endless ridges of mountains, some forested, some higher and glaciated. Amongst these clouds, the sun sent beams of light which highlighted some ridges with a late afternoon yellow hue. Now the Yu-chu was flowing north.

After nine, we reached Sabu village too tired to cook dinner, unpacking our bags on a dirt path in town. A few snacks later, I was asleep under the stars.

Climbing another pass in the morning, we left the Yu-chu flowing north and entered another valley where the undulating Yu-chu flowed south. The Kawa Karpo range was now in the distance as we had covered many miles.

By noon, we had reached the road that would hopefully take us to Wamda on the Yunnan-Tibet highway. At Wamda, I could go west to Lhasa and Tsering could return home by bus. The road was under construction and they were building a bridge across the Yu-chu. As we ate lunch, a ridge exploded and the smell of dynamite reached our nostrils. An old man with a hiking cane joined us for lunch and we shared our tea and tsampa with him.

After a while, a road construction truck came by. We jumped on the back with the workers, who collected bags of poor-quality concrete on the way and filled a drum with water from the local stream. They were building rectangular blocks along the side of the road to prevent vehicles from falling into the Yu-chu, a likely possibility.

Finally, we arrived in Bitu, where hopefully we could find a vehicle. Tsering said that the truck could take us further, however. Not knowing the situation, I shrugged my shoulders. The truck stopped five miles north, and the driver told us there was another village another hour away. Perhaps there were vehicles there to take us to Wamda? Three miles later, we reached the village: no vehicles available.

Now we could either backtrack eight miles after hiking most of the day or could just hike to Wamda, at least 60 miles away, and hope to find a vehicle on the way. At 5 pm, we turned around, eight miles to go. After a few miles, knowing we had a long way to go, I tested Tsering: "how far?" "One kilometer," he said.

Yeah Right!

Then the rains came: the deluge. The rain was powerful and hard, backed by thunder. The road began to crumble into the Yu-chu in places and rocks were falling to my right. Water streamed along the road. I was not enjoying being on this landslide-prone road in a deluge. On the way back, I entertained myself by inventing and singing Broadway songs about the situation. Finally, we reached Bitu again, five kilometer markers later, having hiked in the dark as the road was collapsing around us. Again, we skipped dinner; it was just too late.

I was getting tired of following my guide in his seemingly irrational decisions: "I'm a fool for following a fool," I thought. It was all ok, because I had set myself on fire earlier--we all make mistakes.

In the morning, we ate breakfast in a small shack as the deluge continued. The mother-daughter restaurant owners from Lijiang placed pans under the leaks. One leak was a constant stream, one a regular drip, another filled a section of tarp and poured into the pan once it was heavy enough. The water dripping into the pans created a rhythm that changed speeds with the rain intensity outside. The red, white, and blue leaky tarps breathed--in, out--with the stormy wind outside. The rain continued all day.

"This place is awful," the young woman from Lijiang said. It was a one-horse town. We returned often for meals; my stomach soon forgot those missed dinners while hiking all day.

Sleeping two nights in a leaky shack under Snoopy blankets, I realized that reaching Wamda via the Yu-chu was not going to happen. The road was essentially useless after two days of hard rain. Even if we found a vehicle, it would not be able to continue north. Our only option: climb the high pass into the Mekong Gorge.

We would leave this one-horse town tomorrow morning.