Ineke and Wojtek, 14 May 2007
China , Datong / Shanxi province

Going offroad in the Tibetan highlands!

So how did we get to Chengdu around the first of May? All trains were fully booked for the next few days (everybody in China has holiday from the 1st till the 5th of May) so we decided to take the bus...

Damn, what a ride was that! It took us 5 hours to do 150 km because of construction works on the roads....luckily after these 5 bumpy hours we got to the highway, pfiew! Glad that the bus was still in one piece (it made strange noises) and glad we were finally in Chengdu, our Tibet-adventure could start! After two nights of very good pizza (yeah!) and seeing the panda bears we headed west!

Going west to Tibet - ethnic Tibet, not 'official' Tibet where there are almost more Chinese then Tibetans living by now; Sichuan and Gansu provinces are also part of the region of historic and ethnic Tibet -was like going back in time, back into the late winter/early spring! While driving into the mountains the altitude kept increasing (3000 m and more), it got colder (we could finally wear our sweaters and hiking boots again) and the trees didn't have their leaves yet! Spring hadn't begun here yet, incredible! And we even saw snowy mountains again! The last time we saw snow, this was in New Zealand, nice.

We started our Sichuan trip with Danba. A beautiful region with steep green rivervalleys dotted with beautiful Tibetan houses and towers. Unfortunately we can't show you pictures now, in this internetcafe we can't use cdroms (no drive), but in our next and probably last story we will put some pictures of Danba, otherwise, use google. We met a nice taxidriver there who showed us around some of these villages, all beautifully situated. The only downside of it was all the tickets we had to buy (entry ticket) for each and every village...Chinese really know how to make money out of tourism. Even for a piece of desert or grasslands you have to buy an entryticket...and I thought nature was free??

After Danba, we left for Aba, a place Wojtek (and Rogier) had already been before! This time we were accompanied by Rene, a Swiss we met on the bus from Danba to Barkam (stopover for Aba). For me (Ineke), this was great! Finally being able to gossip about the Chinese and someone who is almost as helpless as I am in Chinese. Wojtek speaking Chinese all the time can be boring (everybody is interested in him, why do you speak Chinese, blablabla) and we hadn't met a lot of foreigners in China so this was a nice change!

The bustrip to Aba was an early (07.00 am) but beautiful one, despite the weather. I must say, all the bustrips in this region were great, the views are spectacular, it's such a vast landscape! Grasslands, hills, yaks (longhaired cows which only live over 2500 m), Tibetans on motorcycles (and sometimes on an occasional horse) and living in tents like nomads. Instead of cowboys you have yakboys here! And then the clothes they wear; huge coats with sleeves reaching the ground (they use the sleeves as a shawl when it gets cold) and the women in colorful skirts and shirts and big turquoise necklaces, wow. Complety different from the Chinese.

In Aba (3200 m approximately) we visited some 'lamaseries' (Tibetan monastries) and enjoyed the great views. Tibetan monastries mostly have the same features: a big white stupa (chorten in Tibetan), some incredible colourful tempels with prayerflags (looks like birthday decorations) everywhere, the houses where the monks live and prayerwheels all around (depends which 'sekt' it is if you walk clockwise or anti-clockwise). At one of the lamaseries we even met a monk Wojtek had met before in 2004, how cool! Things can change very rapidly in China (hotels close down, whole neighbourhoods are being destroyed, new highways are being built) but in this region the pace is luckily of a different kind.

Going to Gansu province to visit Xiahe (one of the biggest Tibetan lamaseries outside of Tibet, called Labrang in Tibetan) was one of the best bustrips of all bustrips! Seeing the sun rise (the bus left at 06.00 am) and then the views again, wow! And now the weather was nice and sunny, blue sky, the most colourful people you can imagine (unfortunately Tibetans don't like being photographed) and great landscapes! I think the pictures will tell the story. It really is the Wild West out there in Tibet!

Later that day we arrived in Maqu, a small place surrounded by grasslands and mountains. It was getting colder and it started raining when we wanted to explore the surroundings so we fled into a teahouse where we drank tea and played cards all afternoon, nice!

The next morning when we woke up, we were surprised to see that it had snowed! Incredible! But what we didn't know yet was that we had to go over some mountain passes before reaching Xiahe! Luckily we had a very careful driver and there was a Tibetan guy throwing little pieces of paper out of the bus window (prayer-papers) for a safe passage. Every mountain pass has a bunch of prayerflags hanging around by the way, for safe passage, a wise thought! We made it safely to the other side and reached Xiahe later that afternoon. In Xiahe we spend a few days watching Tibetans and monks from the balcony (one of the results is the picture of the women going to the 'public toilet'...), walking around the lamasery, talking with monks and cycling a bit to the nearby grasslands (near Sangke). For these grasslands, which were less spectacular than the grasslands we had already seen, we were supposed to buy a ticket! Grrrrr, again, Chinese really let you pay for every mountain, village or other scenery there is to see! And now just for some grass?!? And what do they use the money for? The roads are maintained by the province and these grasslands don't really have to be maintained (sheep are doing all the work). We made a big fuss and in the end we could just enter for free. It wasn't much what we would have payed but still...

After Xiahe it was time to leave the Tibetan region and to enter China again! We first planned to visit the desert up north but it appeared that the Chinese have turned it into some sort of a Disneyland with cablecars, bamboorafts, camelriding and ofcourse nice entryfees... So we decided to skip this and to head for Datong in the northeast! A trip by train of 21 hours through Gansu, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia provinces! The landscape turned completely dry here, sort of pre-desert, steppe-like, something different again!

The next and last story will be about Buddha caves near Datong, interesting villages in Shanxi province, the Great Wall, Beijing and Shanghai! And after that it's strawberries and cheese sandwiches in Holland again, yes!