The small city of Kangding sits on the Trans Tibetan Highway. It’s only 3 streets wide but winds its way around the mountainous valley for quite a distance. It is an old trading town on the crossroads of Han China and Tibetan ‘China’, the population reflects its location and history with an even mixture of Han and Tibetan people. The Han women wear short skirts as they always do although in this cold climate they wear tights too. The Tibetan girls dress a bit more conservatively. Despite having excellent air quality I’ve seen a lot of people, mainly women wearing face-masks, I don’t know what that is all about. I guess they are nomads who spend most of their time up in the hills and consider Kangding to be dirty, with all the vehicles and construction going on. They’d be horrified if they went to Chengdu, or any other large Chinese city for that matter. The horizon is as clear as daylight. It’s -8°c at night. During the day the sun is surprisingly hot but there is a significant change as soon as you step into the shade.
One of Kangdings uninspiring streets
I stayed at a family home with a few bedrooms at the top. It wasn’t luxury but I got another electric blanket and Wi-Fi with 5 green bars all to myself. The 6 or 7 year old girl was really cute. She spoke very clear but basic English and behaved like she was the manager of a 5 star hotel. She was very helpful and bluntly honest in the way that only young children can be without being rude. I love it when children think they are adults and treat real adults like they are stupid whilst maintaining a polite demeanour. The place has no heating, Chairman Mao said that houses south of the Yangzi River don’t need heating and even now that all that Maoism is irrelevant, the notion of radiators hasn’t yet caught on. I can’t imagine there are too many Chinese babies born in September or October. The showers and the squat toilet are in the same place, you’ve got to watch your footing. I’ve been in a few places like that and it no longer bothers me. I’ve got used to watching my step. Other than those minor things, it’s an ok place.
Unfortunately I had my bank card frozen again. RBS insisted it wasn’t. Kangding is the last place for a few hundred miles that has Banks which accept foreign cards. The Chinese pin numbers have 6 digits and not all banks have the software installed which reads accounts with 4 digit pins. It shouldn’t be a problem providing the snows don’t make travel impossible and I have to stay in the Tibetan Plateau longer than I’d anticipated. Banking is a pain in the ass and prevented me from spending a day climbing up a mountain which has views of Gongga Shan, (the one I wanted to climb couldn’t have been done in a half day). Gongga Shan is the third tallest mountain out with the Himalaya/Karakoram range; it’s the 41st tallest in the world and at 7556m is taller than any mountain that isn’t in Asia.
I went to a really nice monastery instead. There are two monasteries in Kangding. One that costs 60 kuai and one that is free and is full of genuine monks who don’t want to sell you anything. I didn’t want to look like a tourist so I started pushing the big prayer wheel with the monks for about 30 minutes. It was quite relaxing hearing the bell ring after every rotation and the rhythmic muttering as they recite the lines of the Buddha’s teachings has a hypnotic flow. I can understand why people can feel a spiritual presence whilst doing this ritual. All that walking around in circles made me feel a bit light headed too.
As I was leaving, a monk said hello to me and invited me into his quarters for some Yak butter tea. He asked me where I’d come from and wanted to know if I was going to Lhasa. I tried to explain that getting a Tibet permit is complicated, police, protests, no independent travelling allowed, blah blah blah. I think he understood me but I often say I understand just so that the person who’s talking to me doesn’t keep on repeating the same thing over and over again. Nodding your head and saying ‘Mingbai’ is often more convenient. Maybe he was doing the same. There was a huge poster of the Dalai Lama in his dwelling and I was curious to know if that was a potential flare but the monk said that they weren’t a problem. I think it’s an arrestable offence to have posters of the Dalai Lama. I’d read that there had been problems in the past in Kangding regarding Tibetan independence. There is a large volume of police that patrol the streets and there had been riots a few years back when people campaigned for the return of the Dalai Lama. There’s even a hotel in the town specifically for policemen. A drunken man came along and insisted on staying in the monk’s quarters to bow at his feet, refusing to leave when the embarrassed man in robes shooed him away. He was absolutely legless and quite aggressive; it took about 3 monks to kick him out. The monk showed me around the Temple then to spark up conversation I looked up the word monk in the dictionary and asked him how many years he had been a monk. He corrected me by saying he was a Lama and didn’t answer my question. A minute later he shook my hand and told me he had to go and do something or another but invited me round tomorrow. I thought about why he had been so friendly and then so abrupt when I left. It later occurred to me what a stupid question I’d asked. As far as he’s concerned he’s been a Lama for about 15 generations!
The following day I climbed the mountain I had intended to climb the day before. It is 3900m which is 200m taller than the highest place I’d been prior to this (Mount Tidi in Tenerife). I started off at 2500m so I feel quite chuffed that I climbed higher than from the sea to the top of Scotland’s highest hill Ben Nevis and with significantly less oxygen in the air too. On the other hand I look around to see what other mountains people climb in the area. There are several over 6000m and one over 7000m. In comparison, my walk was a pitiful token gesture of outdoor adventure. Some people have told me I could be a travel writer but you have to do things more dangerous to grab people’s attention in the first place and get notice from publishers. I’m quite content to do my wee climbs then spend the evening all cosily tucked up in my electric blanket. I was taking breaks soon after I started ascending and used a Tibetan Yak herder as a pacemaker until I could no longer keep up with him. I had planned my climb on Google Earth but turned right too soon. I ended up causing mini landslides and clambering through thick bushes for about an hour before finally getting onto something that resembled a path. Other than having to dodge the multitudes of Yak shit it was plain sailing from there on. The 14mg tar Chinese cigarettes have really taken a toll on my stamina. I was stopping every 20m or so towards the end, panting for breath. I’d struggle to do more than 2000m climbing in high altitude a day and my knee would be screwed for the following day and to think that something big, like Mount Everest would have just a fraction of the oxygen I was breathing. The mental anguish and physical torture was worth it though (that was a shameless attempt to make my climb seem epic). The views of the towering peaks were gorgeous. I think that nothing is prettier than seeing the smooth snow glisten in the sun on the tops of craggy mountains. From the summit I managed to see the route I was supposed to have taken and got down in no time, it’s not easy memorising Google earth imagery. I had a cigarette with the yak herder during my descent and was quite amused watching him slinging stones at his livestock to keep them in line.
A look up to where I'm heading.
The views from near the top, similar to the view from the top but with a wee house as well.
Me and Mr Yak having a cigarette.
My knee wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated and I had my first proper meal of the day when I got down at 5pm. All I had with me was 4 little bits of dry bread the size of Swiss rolls that got devoured in no time. For some reason, dry bread on its own is really popular here. The Chinese say that Western food is flavourless then take the blandest of western foods and make it so dry it’s hard to swallow. It’s difficult to fathom. Apart from having every hair stand on end when Tibetan Mastiffs growl at me, it was a good day. Getting all the twigs and berries out my fro in the evening was no easy feat.
No comments:
Post a Comment