Ni howdy, partner!

He he he.

Hello from Songpan, another little town up in the mountains. We finally managed to escape the joy that was the bacon sarnies at Sim's Cosy Hostel in Chengdu and made it up here on Friday. Chengdu was great - so relaxing. We stayed there for 2 weeks, which is a stupid amount of time, but we were so relaxed! Many hours were spent in the local temple where the tea-house was the perfect place to lose an afternoon in true sichuan-style. You buy some tea in a cup for about 30p and your cup just keeps getting refilled whilst you relax people-watching, reading and trying to avoid the gruesome spectacle that is people getting their ears and eyes cleaned with sharp instruments. The vegetarian restaurant was amazing too. My favourites there were the yuxiang qiezi (fish-flavoured aubergine in a spicy sauce that has nothing to do with fish) and the tiger-skin peppers - green peppers scorched until they collapse and served with the most amazing soy-vinegary sauce. Mmmm.

We did manage to rouse ourselves and get out of Chengdu for a couple of days at least. We visited HuanglongXi, the Qing dynasty town where scenes from Crouching Tiger were filmed, but it was a little disappointing. It was swarming with Chinese tourists and our highlight was sitting in a teahouse by the river people-watching. From there we headed to Emei Shan, one of China's holy mountains dotted with temples, populated by greedy monkeys (real monkeys, not just yours truly) and swarming with tourists. It was crazy. In NZ we climbed a mountain that was 1400m and were kitted out in all manner of hiking-nastiness for the journey - just in case we died of hypothermia or sprained an ankle or whatnot. On Emei Shan we were surprised to see steps, everywhere. Yes, steps. A 3000-odd metre mountain and they have paved a path and put steps on every hill. Some of them were tiny (unlike my feet). It was so monotonous it drove us mad. All the Chinese tourists (and boy, were there a lot of them) were climbing in what me and you would nip to the shops in. Jeans, converse, little T-shirts. NO POLYPROPELENE IN SIGHT! We were even more surprised, when we were huffing and puffing up the steps at around 2000m to be overtaken by blokes running past with concrete slabs strapped to their back to fix the path. Craziness. What we approach as a serious undertaking, they think of as a walk in the park. Every km or so we were met with a little stall where you could get a full Chinese dinner (we were happy to see these!). Anyway, by 2500m we were so sick to death of stairs that we gave up and got the bus down - we had another 500m to the summit but it was raining and it was no fun at all. Give me hiking in NZ any day!


After Emei Shan we went to visit the Leshan Buddha - which is the largest buddha in the world, apparently. To my relief it was devoid of tourists, by Chinese standards, as it was raining. As with the other sights from this little side trip, it was a little disappointing. HuanglongXi, Emei and Leshan had been some of the things I was most looking forward too but for me they were all a little too packaged and too full of sheep-like Chinese being herded around together for me to have the wow factor.


One trip from Chengdu that was well worth it was the panda breeding research centre. These photos say it all really...

So, with now under 3 months left on our China visas (yup, we've been here 3 months already!) we left Chengdu and came to Songpan - back up in the mountains and away from the polluted grey skies of the city. There we joined a group on a 3-day horse trek into the mountains where we camped at 4000m and ate around a camp-fire (trying to avoid the horse-hairs in the stew). The ride was hard-core, we rode for at least 5 hours each day, which was quite an achievement. After a night sleeping on rocks our backs were killing us after the first night but the trek up to Ice Mountain rewarded us with amazing views. On the second night there was group solidarity as we all told our tales of back-pain woe over dinner. But it was well worth it - I'd say one of the highlights of my trip - and we made some new friends, some of whom we are going to try and meet up with in India.

It's all good. We're now spending today recovering in preparation for tomorrow's 12-hour bus ride to the next town. I hope it's easier to sit down by then!

Happy birthday to Rob and to Michelle. Lots of love to you both!

Tashy delay!

That's "hello" in Tibetan!

We've been busy since my last entry. I did indeed find buns in Lijiang and they were good, but not a patch on the yak buns we ate on the Tibetan plateau, but I suppose any hot bun would taste amazing in a blizzard at over 4000m. More of that later.

We left Lijiang and went hiking in Tiger Leaping Gorge for 4 days. Some people manage it in 2 days but it was a stunning walk so we took our time. It's less hardcore than the NZ great walks as there are guesthouses along the way providing good food, hot showers, leccy blankets and stunning views from the one-pound-per-night bedrooms.

From there we caught a bus to Zhongdian. As our bus climbed up onto a high plateau we left Han China and our trip to Tibet started. Now, avid followers will know that we were contemplating different routes - including a trip into Tibet. Well, with a fab gang we picked up along the way we followed a back route from Yunnan province into Sichuan province, neither of which is offically Tibet according to the Chinese government. However, geographically speaking western "Sichuan" is the eastern third of the Tibetan plateau. 80% of the population is Tibetan (compared to 40% of the population of Lhasa) so to all intents and purposes we were in Tibet and by all accounts having a more authentic Tibetan experience than we would have had in Lhasa. The people of the region are Khampa - they look different, they speak a different language and they eat different food to the Han Chinese - nasty rancid yak butter made into a salty tea or mixed with barley flour to make tsampa - a roquefort-flavoured dough. The scenery is what you'd expect from Tibet - grassy plateaux surrounded by snow-capped mountains with yaks grazing everywhere and cowboys riding ponies with ribbons in their tails. Each town has a monastery and you can see trainer-wearing monks clad in red-wine coloured robes scooting past on their motorbikes.

Our gang comprised 2 Brits - Matt and Charlotte, an American girl called Aly and a French girl called Jessica. We all got on famously, they were great fun and were our first travelling companions who weren't in couples. Together we shared huge dorms in gaudily painted Tibetan guesthouses, tales of horrific Tibetan toilets that lacked running water of any kind, fantastic meals, the solidarity that comes from surviving another night at high altitude without heating when it's snowing outside, the shame of not having had a bath or taken your thermals off in 5 days and the love of Tibetan cowboys.

Our favourite stop was Litang. At over 4000m it is higher than Lhasa and we found it hard to walk around because of the altitude. It snowed heavily whilst we were there so our thermals, which we didn't take off for the afore-mentioned 5 days, came in very handy. Litang is a trading town and is full of characters. The cowboys wear crazy outfits. They are so outlandish they are cool. My favourite was this man. He and his friend were dressed identically - they reminded me of Milli Vanilli!

Me shopping for sunglasses - Tibetan styleee... Pete and Matt in the snow...

From there we headed in a taxi through snowy mountain passes to the Tagong grasslands which were stunning. The snow-capped mountains were so high and beautiful.

One day we all went on a hike. Along the way we visited a sky-burial site, which was a little disturbing. Thanks to the buddhist belief that the body is nothing but a vessel for the spirit plus that fact that the ground at that altitude is too frozen to dig graves, a Tibetan burial in those parts consists of the body being chopped into chunks by a monk on a hillside and being left for the vultures. Obviously we didn't see the act but the "burial" site had axes and pick-axes and was surrounded by heaps of splintered bones and masses of human hair. High on the hill with only the sounds of hundreds of prayer flags fluttering in the breeze and the squawks of huge black crows it was pretty spooky.

Further down the track we were invited into an old Tibetan man's house for lunch. He lit a fire, boiled a pot of water, "cleaned" some bowls with a cloth that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in millennia and served us tsampa. Mmmm yum. Not! I hid some of mine in my bag for disposal later. The grandad then left us with his screaming granddaughter who I did manage to calm - but only for a couple of minutes.

Back in town we found better food at a lovely Sichuanese lady's place (Chinese food is far better than Tibetan!) She let me help her make dumplings for our breakfast soup and served us amazing dishes for next to nothing. Sichuan is home to spice and the food is fantastic - spicy tofu, fish-flavoured aubergine (is nothing to do with fish and doesn't taste like fish either), deep-fried green peppers, pork and green chilli. We've also been for the famous hotpot - your table is furnished with a bubbling vat of boiling oil and stock, you choose skewers of various meats and veggies and cook everything in the pot. It's a bit like a fondue - but deadly, what with poking your eyes out with skewers and suffering lip-blisters almost from the strength of the chilli! Check out Pete's face, all this picture needs is steam coming out of his ears!

The other night the gang (minus Jess who had headed off towards Tibet) went out to celebrate Pete's 31st. We went to a private room in a posh restaurant where we were served duck, raw prawns with chilli dressing, spicy tofu and other lovelinesses. Pete was pleased with being presented with arm defenders (what every self-respecting Chinese lady wears to protect her coat sleeves) and had his head pushed into a cake in true Chinese birthday tradition.

After feeding the remainder of the cake to our hostel's pet piglets we headed of to a karaoke club where we sat drinking whisy and vodka by the bottle singing bad 80s songs and Spice Girls classics until we finally tiptoed into our dorm after dawn, only to find that some people were already getting up to start the day as we collapsed into bed. Not a regular occurence at 31, we feel, as it took us all day yesterday to recover!

So, now we're sitting the rest of the Chinese holiday out here in the city of Chengdu. This week we will head south to Emei Shan mountain and the huge buddha at Leshan with a visit to the town where they filmed Crouching Tiger... along the way. From there we plan to head north back into "Tibet" and then we'll head east towards Japan. After our Tibetan experience of the last two weeks, plus the restrictions in force following the demonstration at Everest, we've decided against paying through the nose to get into Tibet proper. After all, we're going to need all the cash we can get to fund my restaurant habit in Japan!

I hope you're all enjoying the May bank holiday. I hope it's as hot as it is here now that we're back near sea-level.

Finally, just for my big sis, here's a photo of a were-yak spotted scoffing from a dustbin on the Tibetan plateau. Ooooooooo, scary!