Backpacking in Kekexili

  Kekexili, China
Saturday, August 26, 2006

Sweet Innocent Killer and I packed our gear and left for the western bus station. At the bus station, however, I was unable to purchase a bus ticket. "New rules," said the ticket counter woman. Because of undisclosed "problems," the PSB now barred foreign tourists from purchasing tickets in Tibet, and the bus drivers were no longer allowed to let them on the bus.

As usual, however, others were around to help and soon we were in a caravan of 4x4 vehicles heading north to Golmud, in Qinghai province. But soon, our vehicle broke down and we were squeezed into another vehicle.

For the entire trip, we followed National Highway 109, the first road to enter Tibet from China, watching the kilometer markers count down as we approached Beijing, the beginning point of the highway: marker zero. Highway 109 was a narrow two-lane road with no emergency lanes. Instead, the road was built up and above the surrounding countryside, so that if you lost control because of a flat tire or black ice, your vehicle would flip down the embankment.

Somewhere around kilometer marker number 3,000 or so, in the afternoon sun, we donned our backpacks and left the vehicle convoy in the middle of vast grassland plains surrounded by snow-clad mountains--Kekexili.

Immediately, we saw wildlife around us, at a distance. The wildlife was skittish, as extensively-hunted animals usually are when they see humans. We walked the sandy hills towards the northwest, where my rudimentary map showed a river, the Chumar River. Killer, not used to the 15,000 foot elevation but acclimatized to about 11,000 feet from her time in Shangri-la, stopped every minute or two to catch her breath. We went slowly, and our packs were heavy--mine almost 70 pounds, hers almost 40 pounds.

A couple of hours later, we reached the Chumar River, which flowed red like an artery from the highlands of Kekexili and joined the many tributaries of the Yangtze River. The river was the color of the sandy soils that surrounded it and the sandstone found in the hills and mountains to the north. Along the river banks was red mud, filled with wildlife tracks--Wild Ass, Tibetan Wolves, Gazelles, and Chiru. We had picked a good location, it seemed.

I picked a campsite hidden from view, sheltered from the wind, and near the river. I pitched the tent then we set up a cooking area slightly to the west, near but not too near a small stream, where the water was clear, not red. For dinner, I cooked a creamy fish dish, rehydrating some salted fish and onions and cutting garlic and ginger slices. The Brunton stove was working well, despite the clog-inducing unleaded gasoline that pored through its veins.

Soon, you'll have white gas, I promised.

Thanks, 'cause right now I can only hold on just a little longer (cough, cough).

On the second day, we penetrated deeper into Kekexili with four-and-a-half hours of afternoon hiking. We ate a late pancake and honey breakfast while looking at the red Chumar River slowly flowing by. Cough, cough said the Brunton stove. The mature grasses were covered with morning frost, which slowly melted by the low morning sun as the shadows shortened. A King Yak grazed on the hillside on the other side of the Chumar River. Chirus fed together on a ridge. Pikas and marmots ran upon our arrival and called to their friends--they were everywhere.

By late afternoon, a cold front as part of a low-pressure system was upon us as we quickly set up camp behind a small grassy ledge. As the cold wind whipped sleet, rain, and sand around us, we buttressed the tent stakes with stones and brought food into the tent with us. Before entering the tent, I re-checked all the stakes, the rocks, and the gear we had covered in our tarp and rocks--all secure. Inside the tent we ate snack food for dinner. "I'm cold," said Killer. For a while, I worked on improving the warmth situation, then we slept broken sleep as the storm raged outside.

I awoke to a steely-grey sky and watched the marmots and pikas perform their rituals--eating grasses and undigging burrows following the storm. Killer was not leaving the tent, and it became apparent that desolate and cold Kekexili was not the place for her. While in Lhasa she could at least have the comforts that an urbanite woman needs, especially, for her, an assortment of skin creams picked by her skin consultant (As a guy, I will never be able to understand this, so bear with me). In Lhasa, Killer had one cream for around her eyes, another for her face, another for the back of her hands, another for her legs...about a dozen or so creams: "creaming is one of my favorite activities." Teasing her about her creams was easy.

"You can't bring these," I said. Yes, I was the bad guy who now could be blamed for any skin problems encountered along the way. But this was Kekexili, not the place to enjoy the pleasures of skin cream.

Finally, by early afternoon, she awoke. We hiked two hours, resting on a ridgetop with a local falcon at the half way point. I felt Killer needed to rest, so we went slowly: considering the conditions, she was doing great. We admired skulls, bones, and horns of long-dead animals along the way and found more wolf and fox tracks in the red mud flats of the river. Along another stream, we found a sheltered location for our camp. Killer pitched the tent now and was slowly learning the ways of backpacking and camping. Cough, cough said the Brunton stove as I cooked another dinner after a sunset walk to look back at the Chumar River, now deep blue, reflecting the sky.

On the fourth day, I awoke at sunrise, hiked around, unpacked the tarp-wrapped gear, and prepared hot muesli for us, breakfast in bed for Killer. Today, we followed a series of ridges and stream valleys, which bisected the ridge. We stayed as low as possible, as there was a ranger station nearby, on a hillside overlooking the broad river valley.

It's not that we didn't like the rangers; we just didn't want to be sent back. The rangers, as seen in the movie Kekexili: Mountain Patrol, have a great reputation throughout China for their bravery in fighting armed Chiru poachers. As they were successful in removing weapons from the nomadic populations, poaching using guns had almost vanished. Instead, however, poachers would chase the Chirus with motorcycles until they would collapse with exhaustion. Then they would stab them to death, skin them, sever the horns, and sell the skin and horns on the black market. If we met the rangers, we both wanted to congratulate them and give them donations.

But we didn't meet the rangers. Instead, we continued on, taking a long nap by the Chumar River in the afternoon sun. Along the way, I gave Killer some shatoosh--Chiru fur--that was caught on some grasses, and a very long feather, likely from an Eagle. Wild Ass paths in the grass headed in all directions, with many heading south, where the climate was warmer. Swallow cavities were abandoned for the fall. Sparrows fed their large chicks, almost fledged. Bar-headed Geese flew in formation overhead, migrating. In the afternoon, we crossed the Chumar River, walking waist deep in places, holding onto one another for support: "the most fun part of the trip so far," Killer said. Finally we camped, looking at a red cliff above the Chumar River. I cooked a dinner of noodles, yak, and veggies.



In the morning, I cooked breakfast burritos:

Breakfast Burritos
Beat three eggs with some powdered milk and water
Rehydrate tomato and red peppers
Slice garlic
Add garlic, dried onion, oil, salt, and rehydrated veggies to the frying pan.
Once the onion is browned, add the egg mix. Stir.
Mix one cup flour, some salt, and yak butter.
Add warm water, knead, and shape tortillas.
Fry tortillas in oil.
Sprinkle the eggs with grated yak cheese and serve.

On the fifth day, Killer broke down. She couldn't go further for many reasons: she wasn't feeling well, the trip was getting too remote, and she was having bad dreams about her parents and missed them. In Kekexili there was no phone reception, although China Mobile promised 99.9% coverage.

"Kekexili alone is much larger than 0.1% of China," she complained.

Killer explained to me that her parents would kill themselves if she were to die. Going to such remote areas was considered irresponsible in some ways: "how can you leave your parents like this," said one of her relatives when she left. She also would speak to them every day by phone: "This is the longest time ever that I haven't talked to them."

"Its in our blood," she said, referring to the Confucius and Chinese beliefs of a tightly-knit family where the children felt obligiged to live closely with the parents and would have children of their own. With China's one child policy, all the pressure to succeed--good grades, getting into a good university, helping the country, finding a good job and career, and raising children--fell upon the single child.

Killer was despondent, as previously she had talked about traveling the world and had so many grand plans. All these plans to be a truly free woman seemed to collapse before me: "I won't expect the same of my children."

"Kekexili is a hard place...hard Kekexili. Maybe its not the best place to have come," I said. At this point, I had been feeling Killer's frustrations for days--her coldness, her tiredness, her feelings, her inexperience with being in the wild. Backpacking with someone in that state of mind makes for a truly unpleasant camping experience. I felt that I'd much rather see Killer in a place where she's more comfortable.

We continued to talk for hours of debate about freedom, dreams, history, Tibet and China, and more.

Finally, the time had come: we would turn around.

"I can't wait to get back to civilization," she muttered.

On the way back, we passed a large herd of sheep and yak, clearly outnumbering by far the amount of wildlife I had seen. Even in the most remote parts of China, livestock were now driving wild animals further into the mountains. I thought about the wilderness areas in the United States and wished that something like that could exist here, and elsewhere: "In wildness lies the preservation of the world." Not that humans aren't a part of nature or aren't a part of the ecosystem, but that in the modern world, many agricultural practices aren't compatible with wildlife and reduce or eliminate the wildness of an area. As we would soon learn in Changtang Nature Reserve, this was indeed the case.

Finally, on the afternoon of the seventh day, we turned the corner to see Highway 109. "You can get cell phone reception here," I said. "Look at the two cell towers in the distance." She called her family and a couple of friends and felt much better. In all, I think she was happy to have visited Kekexili, which few other people can say they've done. I mean this in a "This car climbed Mt. Washington" bumper sticker kind of way. She also was relieved that the ordeal was over. I was fine either way, but relieved that we were going to be in a place more comfortable for her, or so we thought.

Little did we know, but we would spend the night in a blizzard at over 17,000 feet at the Thanglha Pass, the border between Tibet and Qinghai provinces. We found a ride on Highway 109 with a group of three truck drivers. Soon, the rain began, but the winshield wipers didn't work. The fuse wasn't broken; it was the alternator.

On the way, Killer enjoyed some good conversations with the jovial drivers, and I could tell she was happy to be back with some of her people.

We awoke to freezing temperatures and finally found a ride to Nakchu, where we would figure out our next steps. After some debating, we finally decided to go to Changtang Wildlife Refuge, but would do it by 4x4 vehicle with little to no backpacking. I wasn't sure if this was such a good idea, given our experiences in Kekexili, but going to the Changtang had been a dream of mine since I read George Shaller's books on the area and its wildlife.

To Changtang...