Thursday 23st July 2010

Quite a restless night between fighting the altitude sickness, headaches and the very bad, and very loud karaoke singers. I spent the morning resting in the vehicle and by lunch time was vastly improved and thus acclimatised. Lyn with Andy’s help found some Chinese herbal medicine and she and Michael also report that it improved their headaches and general wellbeing.

Had a light lunch and caught the local bus to Ganden Sumtseling Gompa a 300 year old Tibetan Monastery built by the 5th Dalai Lama in 1679. It is the most important in S.E China and is home to around 600 monks. 

A very interesting place and learnt a lot about the Budism religion from Andy.

One realises that we live in a closed world and it is travel that expands our horizons and minds.

Lyn using the large prayer wheel.

Only 4 years ago Zhongdian was only a one yak town with one accommodation place and no eating places now tourism had discovered this hamlet and it is booming.

Lyn photographed this large and very white yak from the bus

Camp 49: Shangrila City Square Car Park -3300 meters

Distance Today: 0 Kms         

Total Distance: 8870 Kms

N27*49.067 E99*42.195

Date: Saturday 24st July 2010

Finally got away from Shangrila Town after searching the town for bread, butter and cheese for our lunch stops. We have found that having our lunch on board allows us to stop at an appropriate time and position for lunch. It also means that we do not have two Chinese meals a day because we found that very filling, and we also do not need to be near a town for lunch.

Lunch is now sandwiches or rolls with a meat (cooked pork, a BBQ’ed Chicken, or even sausage meat), tomatoes, cucumber, cheese, lettuce, and we even found some pickles recently.

The road was bitumen for all the 103Kms to the Shangri-La Gorge turn off, and what a road. It was only just wide enough for two vehicles, and when passing a transport truck there were only inches to spare.

The roads are always built up so the culvert on each side of the road is a ½ meter vertical drop into the drain so there is no room for error.

As we climbed the mountains the scenery continued to amaze, the air was perfect and the sky clear and crisps as we are well away from industrial China. In fact for the next 500kms we are well away from even the tourist part of China.

Many a time it was impossible to stop to take pictures the road so windy and the blind corners. Drivers continually cut the corners and drive in the centre of the road making it a hazard.

The original horns in the vehicles increasingly became ineffective as we rose in altitude so we recently all ‘invested’ in a set of air horns for Y85 each (US$12.60) plus materials, hose fittings electrical wire cost another staggering Y30 (US$4.45).

Fitted they are deafening at close range, and they have saved us more than once from head ons. The Canter’s horn is more like a Diesel locomotive.

The altitude also causes a couple of other vehicle problems. John’s older Canter puffs a lot of black smoke above 2,000meters and above 2,600 the engine warning light comes on as the engine is starved of Oxygen. Above 3,500 the newer Canters and the Isuzu also puff more black smoke and suffer from less power. We think also the breaks may be affected, and are using our exhaust breaks almost exclusively in the very long down slopes, sometimes for 20kms or more we sit in 3rd high and just coast down.

The local vehicles have water cooled breaks and along the road they must refill their water tanks.

Businesses have set up along the way to pipe water from streams to the road side for this purpose. Here an old man weaves a basket with his daughter waiting for his next customer.

The roads so steep and long that at each crest are stupas and multiple payer flags.

I imagine an offering for a safe drive down!

As we reach the 103km mark villages are cutting barley grass and drying them on large racks in readiness for winter. This area is normally snow bound in the cold months.

The gorge turn-off is unmarked but before a bridge and a trucker’s guest house and restaurant a track leads to the right beside a vertical rock wall. We drive in only 200meters to an abandoned lodge and set camp. 

A walking track leads up the gorge, forever, so the locals tell us, as they use it to collect food and herbs from the pine forests.

We walked for about 1½ hours and that was very photogenic. This fast flowing moss lined river runs between vertical solid 150m rock walls.

Apparently Unesco were very impressed with the variety of flora and fauna.

Dinner that evening was

in that truckers dining hall.

Followed by coffee around our first camp fire evening.

Camp 50: Biiang Xiagu or recently Shangri-La Gorge Camp -3000 meters

Max Altitude Today: 3,800 meters

Distance Today: 112 Kms    

Total Distance: 8982 Kms

N28*24.566  E99*46.688