Song Kol

            From all accounts, Kyrgyzstan can be considered as the emerald of Central Asia. It possesses that mesmerising combination of glistening expanses of water and tumbling rivers under a sky opening up to a vista of snowy and rocky mountains and green hills either forested or segmented into grassy jailoos. Song Kol is no exception. Each area of Kyrgyzstan is something different. Whilst Karakol had deep wooded valleys and towering crags, Song Kol is a desolate landscape of dry hills greening to high rounded mountain tops punctured by rocky peaks and the occasional patch of snow. Coming over a pass to a view of the lake is a phenomenal experience. The large freshwater body nestles into a ring of mountains and pastures feeding the lake with snowmelt. Waking to a crystal clear morning with the deep blue sky paling with the sunrise and the mountains reflected off the calm water was a stilling experience. Song Kol is not the sort of place you can just pass through. It imminently stops you in your tracks, demanding a pause and contemplation.

            The lake is not the only thing that will interrupt your journey: the local hospitality will hold you up for a while, too! Sitting by the lake for a day enjoying the sunshine and the view and not having to walk anywhere after a hard day’s trek, we had frequent visitors from the Kyrgyz in the surrounding bosi (yurts), mainly men and boys wandering around on their horses checking the livestock grazing languidly on the hillsides. Despite the shadow of a language barrier, they would often be content just lazing around with us at our campsite, drinking chay (although our lack of sugar didn’t seemed to please them much, as the locals drink all their tea with at least a good teaspoonful) and enjoying the pleasant weather. One young boy approached us on a horse many times his size. He rode with the natural competence of someone who is growing up in unison with their animals, and after springing off his mount with the agility of a high jumper he came and spent a couple of hours rummaging through our equipment. He was curious about anything mechanical, and his ability to decipher the mechanisms and utility of the items he found was impressive. He also annexed my camera for a little while and wandered around close to our tents, taking photos of anything that aroused his curiosity.

            A taste for kumuz is also essential. Wandering around the jailoos, you never know when you will be dragged into a yurt for chay, kumuz, naan with delicious fresh cream, sour yoghurt or even a dinner of langhmian or kyrdak. Kyrgyz hospitality seems to be centred round the consumption of kumuz, or fermented mare’s milk. The drink resembles sour milk (but without the rancid off taste) mixed with soda water and a dollop of alcohol. It is sold in summer all along the roads out of town. Even in Bishkek women sit with coolers of kumuz which is sold by the cupful to passers by as a refreshment from the heat of the city. Hiking up a mountain, determined to get back to Bishkek to organise myself before leaving the country, a small boy waved me over to the top of a hill overlooking the lake. Like many of the kids around the countryside of Kyrgyzstan he displayed poise beyond his years, and he had unforgettable piercing blue eyes set in an Asiatic face. After a greeting of salam aleykum and the obligatory handshake, he took me up the hill. Suddenly there appeared an old man sitting cross-legged. He smiled at me, putting away a set of binoculars into its worn case. His crimson clothes and black leather vest and riding boots reminded me heavily of a Tibetan monk, lingering on the hilltop to survey and ponder the world through wisened eyes. I paused for a moment, the old man signalling for me to sit beside him and rest for a moment. I tried to explain that I was in a hurry, but the concept of rushing is not one that seems natural to many of the nomadic herders. He literally dragged me to the ground, and pulled out two old coke bottles. One contained the sour yoghurt which, being unpasteurised I still struggle to feel comfortable consuming, the other contained the ubiquitous kumuz. I was forced to sit and sip the tart liquid, and explain my route to and from Song Kol. Like all the locals, the old man requested a couple of photos, to which I gladly obliged, and he took a few of me. Whilst I was eager to get on, moments like these are the ones that you cherish, sitting on a hilltop with a kindly old man, watching the sun swell its presence across the amazing panorama with his young companion astride a horse champing at the bit.

            The generosity of the locals did not stop with kumuz. An adolescent and an older man visited us during the day, informing us that they would be out catching balyk, and asking us if we wanted any. We didn’t really want to pay for more food, having enough rations, but a fresh addition of fish to our meal was welcome. They kept insisting that we take three, but we told them one would be enough to flavour our dinner. Evening came and we saw no sign of the pair, and presumed they had forgotten about the fish. We began preparing some rice – a risotto type meal with some bits and pieces we had left – when they appeared with three fish. They kept insisting we take the three, one for each of our company, but we had already plenty of food on the cooker. We finally agreed to take two, trying not to be impolite, but again not keen on paying the probably exorbitant price they were about to charge us. We asked them how much for the fish. They laughed at us. It was then we realised how rude we had been in not accepting the three fish, being gifts. We felt terrible as they walked off with one small fish in hand, the pair probably wondering what the hell they were going to do with one fish. They also invited us later to take some kumuz, and as night fell we strode over to their bosi and drank the beverage with some fresh naan and cream.

            Song Kol, like all places along my travels, was not a dream run, however. The commencement of the journey began discordantly. The mashrutka from Bishkek to Kochkor, the main transport hub in that area, was easy enough and priced at a reasonable 250 som, just a little more than local price. It was along this road that we entered into some horrendous weather, with dark summer storm clouds dumping sizable hail on the van as it wound it’s way through the mountain passes. The trip from Kochkor along the road to Chayek involved some intense negotiations. Taxi drivers the world over seem to be breed of greedy overpricers eager to sly you out of money at any opportunity. The rate for just thirty or forty kilometres was at minumum 1200 som and the highest bid was over 2500 som. We finally persuaded a young guy in a mashrutka to take three of us for a total of 500 som. The lad was cussed by one of the sleazy taxi drivers for dealing him out of a fare, and the driver jumped in his taxi and squeezed through the people as we were loading the back of the van with our bags, trying to nudge us with his car as retribution. We were on our way when rain once again pelted down along the road. We looked at each other, all pondering what we had gotten ourselves into. The driver and boy didn’t know the pass at which we wanted to be dropped, so we sat hunched over the map in the crowded bus examining the landmarks. We eventually found the spot, and disembarked to a bitter wind and soaking drizzle in an empty, desolate landscape. The boy and another passenger kept reconfirming whether this was the right spot, a slight look of concern on their faces. We reassured them that this was where we wanted to be, but we far from reassured ourselves. That afternoon we made it over the first pass into a valley with a couple of bosi and camped on the other side.

            Despite the miserable start, the weather soon turned for us over the next couple of days. The recent rain cleared the air of dust, and the sun decided to prevail within a high crisp blue sky. This meant the views wherever we reached a height were astonishing. Walking back to a town called Kyzart in my attempt to get back to Bishkek, I took a ‘shortcut’ where I bumped into the old man and his young relative. It turned out to be a ‘wrongcut’ and added time onto my journey and considerable effort as I was forced to climb a mountain, not a pass, to get to the town. Cursing myself and concerned that I would be running out of time, and beginning to fatigue as I climbed the slopes, I reached the ridgetop. The view took my breath away. The wide river valley in which several local towns sat stretched on to more mountain ranges in the distance. Back along the path, the lake could still be seen between the peaks of the valley. Before me rolled a rugged set of barren dry hills before more ranges. Being so high, snowy peaks disappeared into the horizon. I climbed one of the rocky summits next to the saddle. The feeling was invigorating. With a cool mountain breeze stirring the air, the sunshine beaming down, and uninterrupted panoramas, I had a sense of being in the middle of the backbone of the world. With the knowledge that large mountain ranges stretched in every direction, I felt as if I really was in the centre of the globe, and world stretched away before me.

            After this rejuvenating sensation and the free feeling of making my way down the mountain slope into the valley, I knew that I still had a struggle before me to get back to the capital. Entering Kyzart, it was amazing the difference between the warmth and generosity of the locals around the lake, and the distrust cultivated towards those remaining in Kyzart. This was all the harder to reconcile myself to, as I knew that many of those whom I had met came from Kyzart and were only in the mountains for the summer pastures. I stopped by some locals including some young boys, and asked them for the direction to the mashrutka to Kochkor. I had a map, so knew the general direction in which I needed to head and had some idea of the layout of Kyzart, but was looking for a turnoff from the road from the mountains to the main highway. One of the boys told me to follow him, and I acquiesced. He was friendly enough, but then began telling me as we walked that, being Saturday, there were no mashrutka or taxis or even cars to take me back to Kochkor. He kept insisting that he knew where I could pitch my tent in Kyzart (obviously for a fee), and that I could catch the bus the next day. Through hand signals I explained to him that I needed to get back to Bishkek as my visa was expiring. The boy continued to harass me to stay, and began asking me dubious questions like how many som I was carrying, and could he see my passport. I soon realised that he was deliberately hampering me. He then took me to this field in the middle of town and pointed in a vague direction as to where the centre street was, and then had the cheek to demand money off me for showing the way to nowhere. If I didn’t have a map, I would have been well and truly disoriented and would have wandered around for a while searching for the right direction. Another street that I had pointed out that I thought was the way to the centre of town he had also blatantly lied about. When he demanded money I walked off in a huff, all the more angry because of the strong contrast between the experiences of the last few days.

            I finally made my way up to the main highway between Kochkor and Chayek. One car came past, but refused to stop. I waited for a while. It was a hot day, and the heat shimmered off the asphalt as the road stretched on into the valley, devoid of cars. I sighed. It looked like the boy may have been right. I began to walk to the next town, Jymgal, in the hope that I might be able to pick a lift from there. Two more cars past me as I walked. Finally one car of locals stopped for me. They were happy to give me a free lift, unfortunately it was only to the next village. In the village I stopped at a small general store on the main street to grab some more water, the dry landscape providing me with no opportunity to refill my bottles. Some locals loitered around the shop. I asked about mashrutkas and cars heading to Kochkor, and again I was told that there was no possibility of getting a lift. One of the guys, who by all intents appeared to be heading in the opposite direction to Chayek, offered to give me a lift to Kochkor in his car for 2000 som. I laughed an angry laugh: there was no way I was paying some exorbitant fee for getting to Kochkor. There is one thing that riles me whilst travelling, and that is the perception amongst people from other countries that travellers are somehow laden with dollar bills falling out of our pockets and just itching to give money away. His car was no Mercedes, but his decent clothes and well groomed appearance belied the fact that he was no pauper. It frustrates me to think that people like this probably have more money than myself, a traveller with their entire lives strapped to their backs, and still they think that we leak funds with abandon. I walked out of the shop, then came to another small one, intent on stocking up for another day’s provisions so that I could begin to walk to Kochkor, and if nothing came that day, I could camp the night along the road and hitch a lift in the morning or walk the rest of the way. I bought some vegetables and dried noodles and stepped out of the shop.

Suddenly, I looked to my right, and lo and behold a mashrutka was stopped by the side of the road. I hurried up to it, filled with trepidation that it could represent a false hope. The hope was not betrayed. Not only was it a way to get to Kochkor, the mashrutka was going straight through to Bishkek. The vehicle admittedly ended up breaking down along the way and an empty van picked up the passengers, extending the trip to five hours, but for 250 som instead of the 2000 that the driver in Jymgal wanted, I was more than happy. The passengers were an extremely friendly lot, too. I whipped out my phrasebook and attempted to communicate a few concepts with them, but whilst the book may be practical for catching a bus or acquiring accommodation, it doesn’t quite provide for enquiries about family, occupation and other details about daily life. Coupled with the antics of an older guy who was keen to share bottles of vodka and kumuz and who in his intoxication didn’t quite understand that hand signals wouldn’t go astray when talking to a foreigner in Kyrgyz, we all had a good laugh. The Kyrgyz spirit reappeared and affirmed my faith in their warmth and friendliness.

Walking back into the hostel late at night, tired, dirty and hungry, it felt like a homecoming, having spent much of my time in Kyrgyzstan in the homely guesthouse. Flicking through some photos of Song Kol, sipping a well-earned beer, my little snapshot camera far from did the landscape justice. There is no substitute for being able to stand on a mountain top and feel your chest expand, breathing in the cool air and relishing the open sky and terrain stretching on to a horizon. Song Kol, like the rest of Kyrgyzstan, refreshed my soul.

Osh – Arslanabob

            Whilst Osh is nothing special, Arslanabob seems to project itself out of the stuff of legend. I travelled to Osh with three other foreigners by share taxi – Remi, a Belgian, Karol, a Slovakian, and David, a Canadian. It was a long squirmish ride, although a share taxi ride in a Mercedes is incomparably more comfortable than a hot, sweaty, stuffy mashrutka trip. Osh did not strike me as a place in which to linger: a fact identified by many that had been through the city. Unable to travel through the rest of Central Asia, however, it gave me a taste of what ‘non-Russified’ Kyrgyzstan felt like. Rather than the leafy streets of Bishkek or the alpine mountain scenery of the northern half of the country, Osh is a centre situated amongst lines of dry rolling hills that divide valleys which had been irrigated to produce fields of cotton and other crops. The obscure national boundaries are apparent, with the main highway skirting checkpoints with Uzbekistan. People roam the streets not in the latest European fashions, but in more conservative dress. Women wear long embroidered skirts and sport headscarves, or may wear the loose colourful pants more typical of the Uzbeks and other southern Central Asian neighbours. Men cover their scalps with different types of headdress defining their cultural identity: Kyrgyz men with the tall pointed cream felt hats and Uzbeks with quartered skullcaps. Here Russians are few and far between.

            Despite the novel atmosphere, there was little to see in Osh, and I had the feeling that I wanted to move on as soon as possible. Whilst Bishkek has a crossroads feel of foreigners awaiting visas, Osh has a similar aura of a haven for people wanting to travel in various directions having already acquired visas: either northwards to Bishkek and in order to travel through the rest of Kyrgyzstan, east to Kashgar and China, northwest to Uzbekistan, or southwest to Tajikstan. Osh was also definitely the most Islamic place I had travelled in to date – alcohol was banned in the guesthouse and the apartment’s proximity to the local mosque was noticeable. Having travelled to the city I had the feeling of dipping into a tantalising world that I hope to one day experience more fully.

            On the advice of the Canadian, I managed to obtain a mashrutka to the nearest crossroads at Bazar Korgon and then hitched a ride up to Arslanabob with two young Uzbek guys. I was immediately directed to the CBT office. CBT is an acronym for Community Based Tourism, a network of offices that organise guides, treks and homestays throughout Kyrgyzstan. It is a good organization for what they offer, and are often the best deals for accommodation and organised trekking in most places in Kyrgyzstan, especially as they operate out of smaller villages with part-time organisers where any other tourist service is rendered uneconomical. The organization does suffer from a degree of nepotism, however. It is often dubious as to how much benefit the ‘community’ receives. Operators are often one-person shows in small villages, hogging the accommodation, guiding and trekking. Where the CBT offices are larger operations, the homestays and guides are often friends and family of the main operator at the office. The organization does run on it’s own steam, with no help from the government to create a coordinated body. The chance to stay in a family home and have direct contact with locals is definitely a highlight in the trip, too, particularly given the renowned Central Asian hospitality!

 

            After organising at which home I would be staying, I was picked up in a Llada four-wheel-drive by an older man, Shakil. I was escorted to a beautifully colourful room where I dumped my things and was quickly treated to some afternoon tea. I felt like I was truly an honoured guest in that house: the homestay was a memorable part of my trip. I was sleeping in the most comfortable bed I had slept in for a long time. The eating and living area (typically Central Asian consisting of some rugs and cushions around a small, low table) was a wonderful spot with the sunlight filtering in through the trees outside and lace curtains over the glassless windows of the verandah outside my room. I spent some time just sitting and relaxing and reading a couple of good books in this spot. It is not often that I cannot finish food that is placed in front of me, but I was lavished with an amazing spread at every mealtime that I could never work my way through. Not only this, but the main dish, always a Kyrgyz speciality, was chosen from a menu no less, and I could let them know when I wanted to eat! The family was very generous and hospitable, too.

            The place was so relaxing that I spent the first half of my first day sleeping, catching up on some rest that had eluded me having been on the go since I left for Karakol. I spent the rest of that afternoon just walking around the hills and back around the forest. Arslanabob is a small ancient village nestled within a cliff-lined canyon. It slopes upwards to some grassy hills that rapidly grow into an isolated series of massive peaks topping over 4000m. It feels like an oasis amongst the region’s almost semi-arid landscape, and the backdrop is nothing short of spectacular. Snowmelt and mountain springs exuding delicious crystal clear cold water feed the streams that wind through the town and throughout the hills that circle the mountains. The climate influenced by the mountains and the permanent water supply give rise to the ideal conditions for the thing that Arslanabob is most famous for – the largest walnut forest in the world.

            Arslanabob is named after Arslanabob Ata (Ata meaning ‘father’, a suffix given to historically and religiously important figures). Arslanabob Ata was a significant figure in Central Asian Islamic history. From what I understand from the guides I had, he was a disciple of Kozha Ahmed Yassaui, whose mausoleum is a major tourist attraction and site of pilgrimage in Turkistan, Kazakhstan. I stand to be corrected, however, as my guides were a little unclear as to the exact chronology and linking of the various historical stories. Arslanabob Ata’s tomb is a site of pilgrimage in Arslanabob and stands just behind the mosque in the village along the main river. It is unclear as to whether the story goes that Arslanabob himself or another mythical figure discovered the valley and decided, upon the direction of the prophet Mohammed, to plant the trees amongst the hills. From what I have read, however, the forest predates Islam and it was Alexander the Great who brought the humble walnut to Europe from these very forests.

            After wandering around myself on that first day, I wanted to gain some insight into the life of people in this region. I decided to splurge on a guided tour, so that I would have chance to talk with an English speaker and ask questions as they came to my head. My guide turned out to be Almaz whom I had met the day before, as he was the son of Shakil (and, having mentioned nepotism, the nephew of Hyaat who runs the CBT office). He was a brilliant guide. Being a similar age to myself he spoke frankly about many things, and we soon became friendly beyond a simple guide-tourist relationship. He harbours a dream to travel overseas to work a little, gain some experience, and in particular practice his already good English. This was no passing dream, either, unlike many Kyrgyz I had met desiring to escape the harsh realities of holding down a job in Kyrgyzstan. Almaz had been looking seriously into emigrating for a few years prior to me speaking to him about the issue, with specific reference to emigration to a country like Australia. Besides the difficulties of negotiating the rigorous application procedures, he was also finding the necessity of requiring a large sum of money in a bank account prohibitive. The average Kyrgyz person lives hand-to-mouth, making enough to pay for immediate needs with cash and rarely having enough money to open a savings account. His frustrations were touching, as he was an amicable but serious individual, drinking no alcohol and smoking no tabacco, and intensely focussed on improving his skills and looking for any opportunity to fulfil his dream. I wished I were a millionaire who could throw him a few thousand dollars for a bank account so that he could finally experience his wish.

            We spent a long day hiking around the hills, visiting two of the main sights. The first was what was locally known as the ‘big waterfall’, an eighty-metre drop into a bowl that was too deep to be seen from the overhanging cliff. It was not spectacular for the volume of water, but attracted the tourists. Arslanabob was crowded with tourists predominantly from Uzbekistan, the town’s ethnicity also being almost entirely Uzbek. Funnily enough, most locals never even ventured to the falls or any of the other sights around town. Before working for the CBT Almaz had never seen the waterfall or the ‘holy rock’, a cube-shaped boulder protruding from a mountainside, despite having to venture into the hills to his family’s allocated jailoo to check on livestock. We took a long route back into town through the walnut forest and some stands of cherries and apples. I certainly got my money’s worth: we didn’t make it home until eight in the evening though the tour would usually conclude at around four. Having spent his youth in the orchards and forest and amongst the fields Almaz was a good source of information about the local agriconomy. I was especially surprised to learn that the walnuts from the extensive forest had only been exported for the last two seasons. Two years ago, a pair of Mongolian businessmen decided to buy up the entire stock from the village, set up a small-scale packaging plant in an old house in town, and began transporting them beyond the local area. Prior to this all the walnuts were sold in local markets in surrounding towns, particularly Bazar Korgon. The plant also gave welcome jobs to sixty people in town.

            The Uzbek ethnicity and the unique landscape gave Arslanabob an individual flavour that colours my memories of Central Asia with yet another palette. It was a comfortable place to be yet touched on a more fundamental part of Asian culture. It is amazing that a country can be so different from north to south, divided down the middle by a high mountain range. The north represents the truly nomadic ways of Asiatic peoples such as the Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Mongols, Tibetans and Siberian clans, amongst the mountains and steppe of that harsh northern band of the world. The north also appears a final bastion of remnant Russian culture. South west of the dividing line of peaks the people appear to be more heavily involved in Islam, and appear more intensely influenced by Indo and Persian cultures. The farthest extend of the USSR has been all but abandoned, too. I met no Russians in my week or so in the south. The area left an enticing carrot dangling before me – I hope to travel soon to the rest of the Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, to become better acquainted with this unique region. Afghanistan and Iran, too, represent teasing prospects for further travel.

Karakol – Karakol Valley – Alajkol – Altyn Arashan – Karakol – Tamga – Bishkek

            I had never seen roses like the ones I saw in Sergei’s yard in the Yak Tours guesthouse in Karakol. Brilliant velvet red blooms and pale roses with petals edged in pink cascaded over doorways and roofs, filling garden beds and exuding the most delicate relaxing odour. I had pitched my tent late, and so it was only waking to a sunny morning that I could fully appreciate the rambling garden that surrounded me. Bishkek was already a green relief from the chaos and urbanity of China, but the smells and visual sensation of the yard felt portentous of the landscape I was about to witness.

 

             After acquiring some supplies from the local supermarket in the morning I took the bus to the end of a road, the houses thinning as we went farther out of town. Eventually I was the only passenger left and the driver U-turned on his way back along the route. I hopped off, heaved pack and set off towards the hills. My heart skipped a beat as I walked along that dusty road in the midday sun towards the mountains that sprouted into view around the bends of the hills. It felt good to be alone, heading into wilderness. My journey was soon waylaid, however, by good old Kyrgyz amicability. About an hour into the walk I crossed a bridge and passed a clearing along the river where a large group of locals had gathered. As I made my way along the road a group of young men, in their late teens, approached me. I began to pass with trepidation but gave them a few smiles as I went. They closed in and called out salam aleykum in greeting. I decided I should stop and held out my hand to return the greeting, unsure of their motives. As I stopped they were overtly friendly and asked a few questions like where I was from and whether I could speak Russian.

They pulled me away from the track to the clearing to rest. I came to a huge mat that had been spread on the grass. Around it sat some older folks. On the mat itself was an array of plates of salad and fried dough and sweets and biscuits, and at the end of the mat was a huge urn of tea. It became apparent that they were a class of school leavers, celebrating together with their families the conclusion of school for the summer. I sat and tried to talk for a while with the help of a girl who spoke some English. They insisted that I stay for some shashylik, having recognised the remains of a sheep on my way into the clearing, but I explained I had to be on my way as I had only just commenced my walk and I needed to get to the camping spot before dark. It was a shame that I couldn’t have stayed. I drank a few cups of tea and ate a little of what was on the mat. We took a few photos and then I decided I had to keep walking. They handed me a plastic bag of fried dough and some sweets as I left, and wished me a safe journey. This was my first taste of Kyrgyz hospitality.

I had never navigated in such mountainous surroundings before, and from the topographic trekking map I still found it difficult to figure out exactly where I was. I didn’t know my rate of movement, so after a few hours I couldn’t tell how far I had come. I was trying to get to the Sirota Base Camp, a flat area along the Karakol River that served as a stopover for the trek over to Ala Kol – a lake positioned at 3500m that was the feature of the journey – and for the longer trek to Jeti-Oghuz, a town west of Karakol. It began to become a little late and dark clouds rolled in over the mountains. The wind picked up and the temperature dropped. A storm was approaching. I crossed a brook of crystal clear cold water that had spilled out over the track and came to a flat area in the valley where the river meandered and changed course. A few flatter spots occurred higher up before the treeline leading up to the high mountains. The clouds and mountains blocked the sunshine and though it was still early for sunset, dark began to descend. I decided to pitch my tent for the night as there was some cleaner water nearby that I could boil, and flat areas to camp away from the river.

It was a lonely, eerie evening. The storm that I saw on the horizon dissipated at the mountain before my campsite, and there was even dusk as the setting sun peeped beneath the clouds to illuminate the tops of the mountains and tinge the underside of the sky red. The area I had chosen to spend the night had a wild, desolate feel to it. High rocky crags appeared shear out of the forest on either side of the river. Except for the stony four-wheel-drive track that scampered amongst the boggy grass there was no indication of humans. Noises in the forest reminded me that there were wild animals in the area: wolves, leopards and big game, though these were usually found further into the mountains away from the yurts and livestock of the locals who forayed into the valleys in summer. As soon as I had eaten some dinner and darkness finally fell I retreated to my tent and fell asleep listening to the sounds of the river and the valley around me. It was a restless night. Livestock wandered passed the tent at one point, stamping and sniffing around. There was a massive rockfall somewhere across the valley. I awoke to the cracking of boulders off a cliff-face and the tumble of rocks down the mountainside. This left me dozing with the thought of a boulder suddenly careening through my tent in the night. Finally the storm that had been brewing around the peaks hit my camp. I huddled in my tent, the new purchase being severely tested as the wind picked up, lightening and thunder pounded around me and the rain bucketed down. The storm was brief, and I managed to get some more sleep before sunrise.

 

The sun dawned on the mountaintops, though their height prevented dawn from sunning the valley floor. This meant I unfortunately had to pack a wet tent. I finally made it to the timber bridge that people had informed me signalled the turn-off east up to the lake. It took some confusion to figure out that this was the way. The path disappeared beneath a thick forest as the bridge crossed the river. I found the Sirota Base Camp just passed the bridge not an hour’s walk form my campsite. It was a much better camping spot where I would have spent a less lonely night. I stopped and asked some other Westerners whether the bridge led to the correct valley. It did. I retraced my steps, hesitated at which direction I should take, and plunged into the forest. There was a faint path that snaked its way through the undergrowth, which in places was so thick that I had to push my way through, getting soaked with the remnant wetness from the previous night’s storm. The ground was damp and mossy, and there was a complete canopy of some kind of fir or spruce. I couldn’t see the direction in which I was travelling. Faint glimpses of mountain tops through the trees and a general feeling of travelling uphill told me that I was probably heading the correct way. I felt I was in some fairytale forest, about to be led into the depths to be lost amongst the trees eternally. The path then steepened and I began to climb through thinning trees. I eventually appeared into a clear area amongst thick flowering herbs with bees and wasps humming in the sunshine.

The path went on and on and on. The climb was steep and steady and tiring, and every new bend looked as if it might be the end and reveal the mouth of the lake. It did not. Eventually the trees stopped, and the path wound through brambles and other small bushes and summer herbs. I came to a small pond where I stopped to have some lunch. The scenery took on a distinctive barren feel, as if any life here had a very temporary foothold. There was a cascade that fed the lake farther on; I swore that it had to be the mouth of the lake. Snow-capped mountains peeked around the corner. I climbed, and found yet another valley with the river tumbling over rocks from a cascade at its end. I sighed. Eventually I came to a point where there was a cascade pouring over a chunk of remnant ice. I had given up hope of coming to the lake anytime soon, and staring at this icy waterfall I felt as if I was climbing to the roof of the world. I scrambled up the slope beside the noisy stream.

Finally my heart jumped as I glimpsed glinting blue water between some rocks. The path levelled and I strode to a vantage point. The scene below took my breath away. I had never witnessed a body of water like it. The lake was not huge, but it sat in such desolately beautiful surroundings. It sat in a bowl formed by two rows of mountains. The side on which I stood had rocky peaks and scree slopes that stepped down to some greener slopes leading to the water’s edge. The end from which I had appeared was the mouth of the lake where the lake’s icy waters spilled down the valley on their way to Karakol and eventually Issyk Kol. At the head of the lake at the far end was a flat white glacier retreating up the slope, feeding the lake. The far side, however, was the most spectacular. A ridge of jagged peaks sunk shear into the water, their snowy tops like the jaws of a shark. More peaks could be seen behind these. The scene was beautiful, and like many landscapes no photograph could do it justice. There is nothing like standing in a landscape like this, particularly after a long and tiring hike, feeling the icy wind on your cheek, your heart pounding from the exertion, adrenalin feeding into your system at the sight of a panorama that reminds you how truly small you are compared to the timelessness and expanse of the world.

 

The most magnificent feeling was the solitude and silence as I drifted to sleep that night, camping alone at 3600m amongst the mountains, and then waking in the morning to a crystal clear blue sky cold against the rocks and snow of the mountains, and the sun spreading its rays across the lake. I packed up, took a deep breath, and then started for the pass. It was hard going, as the path was nothing more than a faint line through the scree slope. Each step lost power as loose rocks varying in size from pebbles to boulders slipped under my feet. The climb to the lake made my heart skip, the view from the pass at 3860m made it palpatate. It wasn’t a wide vista stretching into the distance. What made it special was that at the height of the pass, you could see the peaks disappearing beyond the line of mountains beside the lake. It gave me a tingling feeling, to see summit after summit, knowing from maps that these mountains were some of the highest in the world, the tallest of the peaks being beyond 7000m, and that the range was massive, extending pretty well unbroken through to the Pamir all the way to the Hindu Kush and eventually to the Himalayas. Peaks capped with snow protruded along the ridge to my left and right. The valley leading down to Arashan opened behind me.

Reluctantly I descended down the other side of the pass, slipping and sliding down the scree until I got to firm ground not far down the other side of the mountain. I paused for a break on a rock, looking down the valley, the sun shining on my back. Suddenly, I felt the air go cold. The sun disappeared, and the air became heavy and still. I looked up. A black cloud sped over the pass. I swore, packing up the food and rushed to put on thermals and wet weather gear. Within ten minutes sleet began to fall. I just managed to get my things packed before the precipitation appeared. The wind picked up, frigid and wet with sleet. I strode down the valley. The sleet began falling thick and fast, and the valley became white: I couldn’t see the mountains around me and could only see a couple of hundred metres ahead. Eventually, between gusts of wind, the air was still and the sleet transformed into small flakes of snow, falling thick but almost in slow motion, crystalline structures disappearing into patches of wetness against my jacket and on the ground around me. The ground began to become patches of white amongst the grasses and rocks. Despite the cold and wet, and the prospect of perhaps having to walk the rest of the way in this weather, the storm had a serenity that was tantalising.

It wasn’t long, however, before the clouds rolled on and the sun appeared, forcing me to strip once again in the summer warmth. The storm hung for a while around the lower valley, the clouds releasing some lightening and thunder, and the sleet and snow transforming into heavy rain. Whilst the climb up felt long because it was steep, the descent was just long. The way down to Altyn Arashan was a long slow drop from 3500m along the floors of two valleys down to 2500m. Unfortunately the maps I had were not clear as to where to cross the Arashan River. It appeared that I had to cross back over the stream coming down the valley from the pass, then somehow cross the Arashan before reaching the village. I was puzzled, as I presumed there would have to be decent bridge in the village. After a little wandering I found a small bridge to cross the first stream, now swollen with the rain of the recent storms. I followed the Arashan along the valley, looking out for somewhere to cross. The river was tumultuous and muddy, foaming dirty white as it swiftly flowed between the mountains.

I came to a small bridge across the river: nothing more than a couple of logs with a few cross bars perched across two boulders on either side of the river. It looked precarious to say the least, and once again I wondered at the absence of something more sturdy. It occurred at about the point that the path on the map indicated to cross. Not wanting to have to spend time back tracking to the bridge, I decided to try it. The logs were not too thick, and flexed under the weight of me and my pack. It was nerve racking as I tried to keep steady, knowing that I was top heavy and the slightest flex in the bridge could send me into the river, and probably halfway back to Karakol, alive if I was lucky. With a last couple of steps I crossed the river. My heart sank. The river was so swollen that the remaining gap of about five metres, usually crossed by stepping on a couple of smaller boulders, was now under some fast flowing water. There was nothing for it, but to try and gain a footing on the boulder and hope to only get my ankles wet as I crossed. The jump from the bridge was too high, so I crabbed down low wedging myself across the gap between the boulders. The boulder between the bridge and the bank was slippery. I crossed my fingers and hoped that as I transferred my weight my boots would find a purchase and I could launch myself across to the bank. They didn’t, and I slipped thigh-deep into the frigid water. I jumped up to the bank. Looking down at my soaked pants and boots the hot springs of Altyn Arashan would be very welcome. I glanced back at the river. It was only then that my peril in using this crossing sunk in. The river seemed to roar angrily at having missed a possible victim.

I squelched along trying to find the dirt road that was meant to follow the river on this bank. Gradually I became aware that the squelching was not a result of my wet boots, but the ground underfoot was wet. I walked a little further then sunk calf-deep into mud. I sighed. I had entered some kind of mire, where the stream from the mountains spread out into the grass creating a muddy field. I extracted my feet from the mud, and tried to jump from tussock to tussock, slipping now and again back into the mud. Eventually I managed, wet and muddy, to find the road again, and I squelched along until Altyn Arashan came into view. It consisted simply of a couple of large country buildings and a few outhouses and yurts. As I came through, I came across a Russian man with Colonel-style moustache and baseball cap, flannel shirt and down vest. He was Valentin form the Yak Tours hotel a little further down the valley.

I was overcharged at the hot baths and was a little unnerved by the prices charged by Valentin, possible because of the lack of competition in the ‘village’. But I didn’t care. I pitched my tent, and spent nearly an hour in and out of the soothing hot water, warmed naturally to a perfect hot bath temperature. The baths were old concrete pools a couple of metres long protected by old timber and rusty iron sheds. Scale from the sulphur salts was thick on the walls. The water and pools were crystal clear and clean, however, and the steaming liquid was invigorating despite the slight sulphurous smell. A hot dinner and a fireplace discussion with another Australian couple who were coincidentally in the springs complex finished the evening perfectly and I slept well that evening, finally warm and comfortable.

 

The walk back to town dragged a little. The descent was strange, coming from lush alpine valleys into dry hills. I passed a village. I was almost going to try and hitch or pay a taxi, if one would pass, but noticed that a mashrutka had disappeared down the road in the opposite direction. I figured that if it went all the way out of town, it would have to come back and at least make it to Aksu, and from there I could get to Karakol. It seemed an eternity: the road never seemed to make it to Aksu and there was no mashrutka. Finally, the grunting sound of a minivan engine signalled that my gamble had payed off, and payed handsomely. The mashrutka went all the way back to Karakol. My only disappointment in heading back to Karakol was that there was no hot water in the guesthouse when I returned. A good hot cleansing shower would have to wait until Bishkek.

The next morning I decided to try to make it to the Pzerwalski’s museum out of town before heading to the southern shore of Issyk Kol. I went in search of the bus, but had to resort to a taxi to get out there. Despite this, the trip was worth it. I had a wonderful English speaking guide who told me all about the memorial and the history of the Cossack explorer. He managed to criss-cross China and Central Asia over several expeditions and tragically never completed his penultimate journey to finally contact the Dalai Lama in Lhasa, contracting typhus and dying by the shores of Issyk Kol. Pzerwalski was buried by the shore of the lake; now a memorial site in a park containing a small museum. The memorial is a magnificent construction from twenty-one blocks of stone, and various bronze edifices symbolising parts of his life or beliefs. I found it well worth the trek out.

That afternoon I caught the bus out to Tamga, a small town about halfway across the southern shore from Karakol. I found the little sign saying ‘Bed and Breakfast’ which indicated the guesthouse that someone had recommended. It was basically run by a couple who let some spare rooms with beds. They, too, had a garden of magnificent roses in bloom, as well as some vegetables and a chook pen beside the outdoor toilet. The afternoon was perfect for heading down to the beach, being hot and lazy. It was a long way from the guesthouse, a result of the receding shoreline. Like Pzerwalski’s grave, once on the edge of the lake and now barely within sight of the water, the sanitorium that once sat within easy reach of the water found itself stranded with the dry hills of the former lake bed and an avenue of tall poplars between it and the beach. I dozed on the beach awhile before plunging into the lake. It was relatively warm, compared to the icy waters of the mountain lakes and streams I had recently been experiencing. The dip was refreshing. I took some dinner at the guesthouse and soon after fell asleep.

The next morning I woke early to catch the mashrutka back to Bishkek, but ended up taking a share taxi instead, being quicker and much more comfortable and not much more expensive. The car was owned by a young couple who interrogated me with questions about Australia. Like many Kyrgyz frustrated by the lack of opportunity in their own country, they were keen to emigrate. Unfortunately, they were naïve about the opportunities that western countries afforded. Life is better in a country like Australia, but only if you can afford it. To struggle on low wages in a new country far away from friends and family and any other support is a hard wager, especially in the strict environment that Australia now offers. Gone are the days of the lucky country where opportunity would abound: only skills that Australia needs are welcome. Unfortunately taxi driving is one skill that doesn’t seem to be lacking amongst immigrants. I also tried to drive home to them that whilst we may earn more, we spend more, too, to keep up our lifestyles. No eighty cents for a pack of cigarettes like in Kyrgyzstan.

Walking into Nomad’s Home was like coming home. A few familiar faces, some new additions, and some people I had met in China meant that sitting down in the communal area after a hot shower and some dinner was like sitting amongst an adopted family. This was an impression that grew over the month I was in Kyrgyzstan. I relaxed, pondering over the photos reminding me of unforgettable scenery, and planning my next foray – south to the other half of Kyrgyzstan.

Bishkek

            There was Little Old Laos, and now there’s Beautiful Bishkek. For some Bishkek was the hell that Urumqi became for me. But Bishkek was bliss for my soul after the nightmare and intensity of China, and I contend a much lesser hell than being stuck on the other side of the border.

            The visit to the Kyrgyz capital began with the usual tremors that accompany a flight into anywhere. Major stations – bus, train or airports – are magnets for sharks circling for an easy feed. Airports particularly. My entry to Bishkek commenced with the obligatory overpriced taxi ride into town. I was desperately sick. It was nearly a week since I had eaten anything other than the occasional bread roll or bowl of rice. I decided that now was as good a time as any to splurge on a hotel room in which I could recover in solitude. We went to one hotel that was in the guide book, which turned out, either as a result of the inflation plaguing the country or an opportunistic owner, to be much too expensive. Examining the bleak concrete building, I wondered what a lesser price would enable me to acquire.

During the negotiations the taxi driver discovered what I was looking for, price wise and what I wanted for the price. I directed him to another hostel that was in the guide book. I was trying to follow the driver’s movements on my map, and though I was disoriented having just arrived into the town I was sure he wasn’t going in the direction that we needed. The driver drove up and down the small street and I was starting to get agitated and concerned at the driver’s motives. He finally stopped and jumped out of the car at a large nondescript house, disappearing beyond its high walls. He returned to inform me that this was a local hotel, and that they had rooms for the price I wanted. Mistrustingly, I got out of the cab and followed the driver into the hotel. The attendant took me up a couple of flights of stairs resembling a slightly modern grand entrance to a mansion, and unlocked the door to a small room on the top floor of the house. It was a cosy little room with a sloped wall on one side as it nestled the roofline, and consisted of a large double bed, a television, a corner couch and a large, clean bathroom. With the sunshine filtering through lace curtains, I was sold.

The little hotel didn’t eventuate to be the perfect haven after all. It later turned out that the room I had been given failed to extract any water, cold or hot, from the plumbing system. I was shifted to another room downstairs, which charged a higher rate simply due to an increased size despite having identical amenities. I am still unsure as to whether this was a ploy to extort more money from me. They did charge me a lesser rate than the one they claimed to usually charge for the room, however. In any case it was still around my budget and became my home for nearly a week. The attendants were nice enough, however they seemed all too eager to ask for money from me, often even before check out time. On a couple of occasions the other tenants were also rather raucous, which kept me awake on a couple of nights. The television, too, had terrible reception, though it was a treat to be able to view a few games of the UEFA cup, despite it being through the haze of a fuzzy screen.

That week was like a metamorphosis, emerging from a private hell into paradise. The same process that accompanied my escape to Tian Chi untangled the knots of stress and anger that had twisted my mind, body and soul in China. The age old quip that everything is relative rang only too true in Bishkek. Whilst I later met others who were frustrated at being in Bishkek (and I contend these frustrations had little to do with Bishkek and more to do with the bureaucracies of foreign countries, particularly China), achieving things in Bishkek compared to China was like stepping into a crisp clear mountain stream after wading through a pestilence infected swamp. And this included a tortuous procedure to acquire a single-entry visa to Kazakhstan that involved four visits to the embassy over a week to finally obtain the visa, one of which was like tussling in a rugby scrum for two and a half hours.

It is extremely difficult to pin down the exact cause of my frustration with China, and equally exactly what it is about Bishkek that enabled a relaxed smile to re-enter my complexion in the city. The Lonely Planet describes Bishkek as ‘green’, both as a literal and metaphorical depiction. Maybe it was the leafy streets, miskept and in disrepair, but beautiful with the warm summer sunshine filtering through the splayed leaves of oaks, birch trees, poplars and an assortment of other northern hemisphere plants with which I was unfamiliar. Maybe it was the little blue-eyed blonde-haired Russian girl who was playing innocently in the quiet street on which I was staying, or the feeling of harmony at seeing Kyrgyz and Russians side by side in all affairs and businesses. Perhaps it was the feeling of getting closer to my Slavic roots, with wisened Russian babushka asking me for the time, then smiling warmly at my niet paruski as I showed them my watch.

Most definitely the ability to get things done had major implications. The brick wall of obstinacy that I encountered in China disappeared in Bishkek. Despite being able to speak a little Chinese, most people refused to try to understand you as you negotiated through the quagmire of travelling through China. Anything that was easily slipped into the too hard basket, a rather expansive vesicle, was done so quickly and promptly ignored or forgotten. The Chinese appear to have an aversion to effort, particularly if it involves thinking beyond the square, or outside their routine. Coupled with a blatant disconcern for their fellow beings, particularly foreigners, this resulted in many frustrations. I came to Kyrgyzstan with no Russian skills except the ability to read Cyrillic. This has made no difference. Pigeon English, hand signals, tracing numbers on palms or dashboards for taxi fares and other prices have all enabled me to get by with little hassle. People have been willing to communicate.

I have been able to access my blog, email and communicate on Facebook without running the risk that the various functions may be disabled or interfered with. The internet café I have been frequenting has a printer connected to it’s system. I could easily acquire a sim card here if I needed to, that would operate throughout the country. I was able to acquire decent antibiotics that worked and from a pharmacy that was not obsessed with selling me quack potions for sexual function. I was able to obtain a visa, which admittedly was more hassle than what it would have been in China, but which was not fraught with unexpected twists and turns. I was able to obtain a reasonably priced flight, pay without difficulty, and not have to orienteer through half the city to find an agent that was happy to help me. All the ATMs I have tried have operated satisfactorily, and I have not had to run around the city in the early morning prior to leaving on a bus trying to find an ATM that had money and would accept my card. I have even had the luxury of being able to obtain US dollars from ATMs!

Whilst Bishkek and Kyrgyzstan in general still suffers from crazy drivers with a frequent disregard for road rules, the very occasional crooked cop, a general decay that plagues everything and can sometimes manifest itself as a lower level of hygiene than in the West, and an apparent but not widespread disregard for the consequences of discarding refuse, there is still a sense of order and decorum that permeates life. I received the shock of my life when, after four months of negotiating the dangerous thoroughfares of Asian cities, a car actually stopped for me at a pedestrian crossing. People will rise from their seats for females, the elderly, the infirmed or the pregnant. There is an etiquette of politeness, and rather than hard-earned familiarity (or rather an attitude of ‘if you can offer me something, I’ll be nice to you with a slimy grin’), there is a presumed level of respect at the commencement of any exchange.

Despite a lack of money in all activities, there is a respect and care taken in everything that is done. Whilst the fight against decomposition appears to be a losing battle, the people in Kyrgyzstan still fight the brave fight. Despite a structure built in 1947 and a garden that displays more weeds than interesting specimens, the staff (presumably underpaid employees or volunteers) of the botanic gardens in Bishkek still try to nurture whatever order that nature will allow in the large green complex. I noticed the greenhouse looked as if it was struggling to stay upright and was heated by the oil heaters found in old European houses: the bananas had consequently suffered from frosts during the last winter. The unusually harsh season had also claimed their only two Eucalyptus species, and the kindly coordinator, happy to speak to a travelling botanist from distant lands, forlornly pointed to a pile of timber claiming ‘at least it smells nice when it burns’. Houses have fences repainted every summer, people attempt to reconstruct decaying assemblies, and small gardens display roses the likes of which I have never seen.

Bishkek is not heaven, however. The lethal combination of a downtrodden economy, inflation, and inherited Russian pride and vodka can make for a volatile mix. Twice I have been confronted in broad daylight by drunk youths looking for a biff: both times they were easily ignored with a disinterested look. Drunk Russians are often helped on their way by local Kyrgyzs and the homeless find refuge in the many parks and can be smelt before they are seen. Whilst you are not constantly seen as a walking dollar sign like many other places I have visited, you are definitely a financial opportunity not to be missed. A recurring misconception that you can afford to throw dollars to every beggar that asks remains in Bishkek: the concept of a budget traveller is not widely understood.

After a week recovering from the stomach bug that I had acquired in Urumqi and a consequent cold attacking a weakened immune system, I shifted to new, cheaper accommodation. I took a taxi with my copious gear to the little blue door in a dirty, whitewashed building. I had the address of the guesthouse, Nomad’s Home, but the house I saw displayed no sign of what business it was offering. I rang the bell. A young girl came to the door and I enquired if this was the guesthouse and whether they had any room. She asked how many nights. I replied a few, keen to display that I was willing to input more than one night’s accommodation. She replied that there was no room. The heat of panic began to rise in me, with the taxi driver looking curiously at the proceedings. I couldn’t afford to stay any longer in the hotel. The girl noticed my discomfort. Eventually, through the girl’s sister over the telephone it was revealed that they had room for me for one night in the dormitory, but a large group would be coming for the following evenings, and I would either have to find alternative accommodation or I could pitch a tent in the back garden. I had been procrastinating for a while as to whether a tent would be a worthwhile investment: the savings I would make coupled with the opportunities it would allow me to explore the vast wildernesses in Kyrgzstan proved convincing arguments.

It turned out that the big group was one of two truckloads of overland travellers who had reached Bishkek from London to find their onward routes blocked. One truck was travelling from London to Beijing, the other London to Australia. One group had acquired Chinese visas, but had been informed that whilst the people could enter, the trucks could not, for whatever obscure reason the bureaucracy had formulated. The other group had not even acquired visas and so would not be able to enter China at all as the government had ceased issuing visas beyond foreigners’ countries of origin. This created a sense of frustration in Bishkek. Along with many others who were trying to obtain visas for onward travel westward or southward to the less hospitable Central Asian nations or northward to Kazakhstan and Russia, the guesthouse in Bishkek acquired the ambiance of a waiting room for travellers accosted by the bureaucratic absurdities of the region.

Whilst I recommend the guesthouse wholeheartedly, with a friendly family running the establishment who were not intent on asking you for payment at every opportunity and indeed refused payment until the final bill required settling, they did appear to struggle to cope with the inevitabilities that accompany accepting so many travellers seeking refuge in one place in such a small space. At one stage there were easily fifty people: the two truckloads and an assortment of independent travellers. The guesthouse has one toilet and one shower, and lines for either of these amenities became the norm. The appearance of several signs asking for quiet after certain hours and a frustration with the amount of refuse and general disorder the tenants left behind, proved that whilst they were happy to accept so many travellers both out of hospitality and for financial gain, they had not thoroughly preconceived the consequences of having so many guests. A similar alternative to Nomad’s would not go astray in Bishkek.

My time in Bishkek was predominantly spent dealing with the many loose ends that China had untied. I also have had to make some dramatic decisions. As this website states, the trip was originally intended as an overland experience from Asia to Europe. There was never any firm time schedule, and when asked how long I would be away, I always answered that it could be two weeks, two months, or two years. The expectation, however, was that the trip would take an approximate 18 months including a half-year stint teaching English in China, with the primary intention of furthering my Chinese language skills rather than any love for teaching. A contract was even signed and sent over the ethernet in Laos confirming these plans. I have reached Central Asia, the crossroads of so many periods in history, at a crossroads of my own. Two flights, both resulting from visa difficulties, have destroyed the overland concept. A third flight from Kazakhstan was imminent. It appeared a flight to Bangkok followed by another stint in Hong Kong trying to obtain working permits for China would be the inevitable outcome of a choice to follow my plan. Weighing the financial pros and cons I realised that the money spent trying to re-enter China would probably outweigh much of any savings I might be able to acquire working in China. The romanticism of staying in China for a prolonged period being thoroughly smashed and a realisation that my desire to acquire Chinese fluency would be a much longer process than I had hoped tipped the scales. I now fly to Warsaw!

The process of travelling back to the lands of my forefathers has obviously now been greatly accelerated. I will be entering my paternal homeland on 28 July at approximately 3.30pm. It has been a dream of mine to travel with my father through Poland, a place I have as yet never visited. He flies to Warsaw, along with my mother, on 29 July. From there we will travel by car for two weeks through Poland and the Czech Republic, fulfilling an aspiration that has been long to come to fruition.

This does not mean that an overland route Asia to Europe, or Europe to Asia has dissipated. I still harbour the dream to travel through Europe, Russia, and into China to see many of the sights I am eager to visit, having missed them in the limited time that the Chinese government allowed me. I also wish to see many things in South-East Asia, including Cambodia and Vietnam which I missed as a result of my urge to head north from Laos.

I came away looking for something. I was unsure what. I knew that I would only find this something on the road, in the surrounds of a foreign environment away from the prying advice of people who harbour preconceptions about my life. It is amongst the mountains of Kyrgyzstan and the leafy streets of decrepit Bishkek, that I have found what I have been searching for. And what was it? Priorities. I needed to understand what is important to me. Where do my values lie? What is it that, with nothing else possible, I refuse to let go? Where, amongst all the intriguing fellow travellers I have met and the confrontations with foreign cultures, do my talents and abilities shine through? What cause incorporates that which I can appreciate and apply myself to? Paring down all the layers of confusion that home brings has been a five-month process rather than the eighteen months I had suspected.

Giving up? Abandoning a long held goal? Succumbing to cowardice at the thought of a road longer than I had suspected? Far from it. All will be revealed, but this blog I suspect will have a longer lifespan than previously expected. I am well and truly infected by the travel bug. However, rather than eating me away from the inside, the virus has mutated my DNA, and has given me wings that I always wanted, and the wisdom to know how to use them. The road is long and I intend to walk it!

Urumqi – Tian Chi II – Urumqi

            The rough track turned onto the concrete path that circuited the lake. They paused in the shade for Will to catch his breath. It had been six days of chronic diarrhoea, the first two coupled with intense nausea and vomiting. He had managed a few bread rolls and two bowls of rice in that time. He could see what were left of his muscles after four months of travel shrinking before his eyes. He was energiless, and everything had become an effort. Despite the illness and several things that needed clearing up back in the city, Will had escaped what had become his private hell to return to the sweet scents, fresh air and wholesomeness of Rashit’s yurts at Tian Chi. As he and Dale, a British traveller he had met in Turpan a few days earlier, had dumped their packs and stretched themselves out in the sunshine, Will could physically feel himself unwind. Knots in his back undid themselves and his hunched, harassed posture became erect. His knitted brow smoothed itself of creases, and a hint of a smile entered the corners of his eyes and mouth. Once again the sweet smell of pollen-laden conifers and the brisk alpine air worked their magic. He even felt he might take on the challenge of a walk the next day in defiance of the disease that plagued him, although this did not eventuate.

            Now, as he caught site of the crumbling concrete structures that resembled fairytale objects like giant mushrooms, tension twanged his muscles. The structures had been placed along the lake edge: ill conceived, poorly finished and blatantly distracting from the epic natural scenery in which they were placed. This was typical of the Chinese attitude to the gems that blessed their country. Rounding the corner, noise also suddenly permeated their consciousness. Music sounded from the lake’s entrance. As they reached its source, it grew into a deafening cacophony of horrid Chinese singing, rasping as the speakers struggled to cope with the volume. Chinese women strutted about on heels of phenomenal height wearing what typical wealthier Chinese women wear: lurid mismatching outfits of tight three-quarter pants and tops revealing horrendous figures coupled with garish jingling bling, overpriced and oversized sunglasses not quite covering the heavy layer of makeup and whitener, accessorised with a sun umbrella resembling a lamp shade and a glaringly coloured mobile phone occasionally blaring some grating ring tone (often in English which, like the slogans on their tops, they would have no idea as to what it would say). Obese, squinting men stepped out of black fake European or Japanese SUVs, but not before loudly clearing their sinuses and spitting in front of everyone. The muscles that had unwound in Will just recoiled.

            From the path a little while back they had spied what had appeared to be rows of Kazakh women lined along the lake edge in traditional, if somewhat too brightly coloured, costumes. It was now revealed that these were in fact racks of replica costumes in a rainbow of fluorescent colours held by Chinese touts for the benefit of Chinese tourists so that they could put on the costumes and have their photo taken in front of the lake panorama. Will fumed. He had not seen one of these tourists bothered to actually walk the lake or up the valley to appreciate the serenity and nature. In fact he wondered why on earth these people actually bothered to make the effort to come. He could guess, though: because it was fashionable, all their friends did it, people said it was something to see, and they could add a few more photos to their album to enrage jealousy in their counterparts. The concrete yurts, the kitsch additions to the scenery, the music, the cable car of hot pink, yellow and baby blue carriages, the dam that looked like a fortress at the headwaters, and the speed boats zipping up and down the lake to destroy the peace all made the place feel like a monster theme park was engulfing the place. Will had asked Rashit whether he thought the road that was been constructed to the lake was a good or bad thing.

            “Good,” he had replied without explanation.

            Will thought that it might encourage business in the short term, but the aspects that attracted so many foreign tourists to the place and enabled people like Will to expound the virtues of the spot to tourists along his travels would slowly be eroded.

            The bus rides home went without hitch, but Will could feel his body twisting with frustration as the taxi pulled up to the hostel that had been his cell for the last few weeks. It had been three weeks of waiting. Firstly, a Chinese visa that took persuading to be extended to 20 days, not the standard 10 they were handing out to most people. Then a refusal at the Kazakhstan embassy to acquire a visa on Will’s other passport, despite having copies of the passport he had used to enter China and his visa, because they wanted to see the original (not that Will could figure out why because it really had nothing to do with them, as the Chinese would take care of him if there was anything wrong in that department). He then discovered that he would require a double entry Kazakh visa and single-entry visa to Kyrgyzstan in order to just complete the trek he wanted to do, as it crossed borders (despite there being no border checkpoints). In order to obtain the Kazakh visa he would require a letter of invitation, for which he would have to wait a week. He decided to acquire a Kyrgyz visa whilst waiting for the letter of invitation. Lucky he did, as the letter, which was meant to arrive on a Monday, only arrived on a Thursday evening. On the Friday Will once again entered the Kazakh embassy, prepared with all the possible documentation he could think of, only to be informed that the embassy could only give out single entry visas. He protested the point, trying to explain that he wanted the visa for a trek in Kazakhstan in which he would be spending a lot of money, but they were obstinate. Will was later informed by the Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through various travel agencies, that this was in fact illegal of them to refuse him. He had thought that they were just being lazy – not knowing what to do with something slightly out of the ordinary. Will replied that he wasn’t exactly in a position to argue, and in fact had run out of time on his Chinese visa: he didn’t trust the embassy to get the passport back to him on the correct date as a Japanese traveller had been misinformed as to his pick up date, and had consequently had to wait a further four days due to a public holiday in the interim. Will didn’t feel like being stranded in China beyond his visa and having to pay some ¥500 a day fine.

So all in all Will had had enough of Urumqi. Coupled with his illness, and a growing rage at the ‘peculiarities’ of the Chinese, he was fed up. Will had been struggling for a while to pinpoint exactly what these peculiarities were. It was not the undercurrent of poverty or the lack of cleanliness – he had been fine with Bangkok and even the most primitive of villages in Laos. It was not the experiences he had had in China – his trips to Songpan and Yushu would remain ingrained in his memory forever. It was something about the people. Will had been a peaceful, open-minded individual before entering China. He was now full of a rage he could not define and complete disrespect for an entire nation.

 

Will started to try and work out what could be possibly causing this attitude. Was it something about the way in which the Chinese were so arrogant about their apparent superiority, whilst not even realising the sorts of practices they performed that were so completely amoral, backward and illogical? Someone said that the Chinese were simply having the industrial revolution that the West had had. Will disagreed. The revolution in Europe and America was fuelled by a fervent desire to progress, and inspired by ingenuity and innovation. China’s ‘revolution’ was built on imitation and appropriating the practices and inventions of others. The Chinese are more than happy to display their Prada sunglasses and Louis Vitton bags, whilst spitting anywhere, not washing their hands after wiping the excrement from their backsides and throwing trash into every corner of their surroundings. They clamber over themselves to slap a superlative such as ‘heavenly’ on a spectacular natural area, whilst plonking hotel complexes within it, dumping truckloads of refuse down its valleys, and damming its watercourses.

Someone else excused their ignorance as a product of the Cultural Revolution. But few Chinese Will had spoken to had even the inclination to have even a sliver of curiosity about the outside world, apart from the tripe fed to them by American record companies or the catalogues of goods in fashion magazines digested by Chinese media from their European counterparts. Most people Will spoke to in China didn’t even know which countries they bordered. Most Chinese couldn’t even grasp a map of their own city in Chinese, let alone a global atlas. And this was another peculiarity: not only did many Chinese not have an interest in the outside world, they had little knowledge of the rest of their own town beyond the general routine of their daily lives. People, when asked about simple things about their city like interesting sites, certain shops, directions etc., would either be unable to offer any help or give incorrect information. They were sheepishly happy to accept the limited and convoluted news reports of what was happening in the rest of their country.

Having said this, the Chinese government holds an insidious tentacle grip on the information its citizens receive. Many sites that Will tried to access were blocked – even Facebook worked only now and then. It is ineffective to communicate between cities as you move, as a mobile bought in one town requires the purchase of a new sim card in another. Not only this, but the government is happy to cut communications if necessary. After the quake, communications in the region shut down. The government reported that this was a direct consequence of the quake, but many people I have spoken to that were in affected areas claim communications ceased some time after the quake actually occurred – somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes. This more likely indicates that the government was figuring out what exactly it wanted to do with the quake in the public arena: use it or make it disappear.

The tragedy is that it is this filtered information, copycat culture and inability to communicate that prove the defeat of the Chinese. It is highly effective in allowing the government to maintain a top-down approach to control of a country built for both consumption by it citizens and the consumerist whims of its trading partners. But it does not allow the dissolution of ideas through the population that evolve out of necessity. It does not allow the dissemination of ingenuity and new ways of approaching life issues. It does not allow someone on one side of the country to say: hang on, I’ve got a good idea that could improve our lives, maybe the rest of the country should hear about it? It requires years struggling through the quagmire of procedural bureacracy and corruption before the government desires to fix a systematic problem. It does not allow the people to organise their dissatisfaction and do something about it. In other words, forget Afghanistan, Central Asian autocracies, small one-party states like Laos: China is the enemy of democracy.

The summation of Will’s frustration with China is that the vast majority of Chinese seem to have a complete inability and lack of desire to think. The isolationist attitude is just one aspect of this. But in everyday life, there seems a complete lack of desire to pause for a moment and say: wait a minute, if I did this in another way, and if I could persuade other people to do the same, everyone’s life would be made infinitely easier. As a consequence chaos and inefficiency reign. Take traffic. Whilst insane traffic problems are not uncommon to other Asian centres like Bangkok or Vietnam, China has the infrastructure already in place and reduced traffic density compared to these areas that the problems are solvable, at least if people would obey by some simple rules. A place like Urumqi has quite wide boulevards, an ordered traffic system, for example circuit loops attempt to reduce congestion, and little two-wheeled traffic, which all in all make travelling on the road not so bad. At least, if everyone stuck to rules. But running red lights, a complete disregard for pedestrian traffic, churning up median strips to get to another road, driving on the wrong side of the road, not sticking to lanes, turning left across four lanes, etc. etc. are all common practice. As is the exasperating habit of the Chinese to use their horns every five seconds. And it’s not the chaos that is so painful. In a place like Bangkok it is the sheer density of traffic that makes it so bad, and consequently people do crazy things simply to avoid it. It’s that if only people would pause for two moments and think, hang on, I don’t actually need to be doing this, and if I didn’t everyone would actually get where they want to go much more safely and swiftly.

 

Will woke as Dale shook him awake again. He had snoozed his alarm, despite knowing that he needed to rise in order to catch his plane. The illness and sleepless nights in the stuffy dorm were taking their toll. Fortunately Will had packed and readied himself the evening before, so all that was required was to get dressed, brush teeth and pack the last couple of things into his carry-on luggage. Dale was catching a flight to Kashgar at a similar time so that they had decided to share the taxi fare to the airport. They arrived and the two of them went to the information counter. Dale was instructed to one of the local airline check-in counters, and the pair shook hands and parted company. Will was directed to the China Southern counters. He could not make out which counter he was meant to be attending, so he stood in a line he thought appropriate, hoping it might be correct.

Suddenly Will was approached by a Chinese attendant who spoke rough English and examined his ticket and directed him to a different counter. When he finally got to the counter, the attendant examined his ticket, puzzled. She called the attendant who had initially examined his ticket, who then informed him that he was in fact at the wrong place and asked Will to follow her. He obeyed, annoyed but now not unused to the to-and-fro games that were often played in China when things didn’t go smoothly. The attendant directed him to a set of stairs and informed him that he was ‘required to check in downstairs’. He hauled his bags down to a large foyer. It was dark and empty, with little sign of life. He walked around a little, puzzled as to where he was required to check in, as their was not a soul in sight except for an official. Will examined the signs. He was at the arrival terminal. The departures were upstairs, where he had just come from. The official noticed Will wandering aimlessly around, and approached him, asking him again in rough English as to where he needed to go. Will proffered his ticket. The guard chuckled then pointed out of the building across a carpark to a decrepit looking concrete box with a rusting neon sign atop claiming the destination as ‘Urumqi’. This, apparently, was the international terminal. Will was furious. Like all the problems in the country that required fixing, like all the issues that required the Chinese to exert slightly more effort than is required, to think, to go beyond mediocrity and the mundane routines of their small worlds, Will as a problem had been swept under the carpet, and lead to the dark, empty arrival hall, out of sight and mind.

Will finally stumbled into the foyer of the airport after a young official had asked for his passport, glanced at a nearly blank page and realising he wouldn’t be able to read it anyway, gave it back to Will. Will was exhausted. He paused before the check-in counters to try and eat something before having to lose the food he had brought for breakfast at the customs gate. He ate a dry, sweet bread and drank a little water, and dumped the rest. Time was beginning to tick away, but he was still only there just past the commencement of the check-in time. He joined a queue and waited. Only, the Chinese in the line didn’t make it a queue. They crowded up against the people in front in a disorganised mess. A Russian kept turning and glaring behind him as a Chinese woman constantly unashamedly shoved her trolley against his legs as the line crept forward. The line was reducing painfully slowly, and Will was at the back of it. Many people were being asked to open sealed check-in luggage to check their contents. All sorts of packages were checked and confiscated. Small vials of medicine, probably some poor old Kyrgyz’s vital medication, were poked and unsealed. One Russian woman had a kettle she had bought confiscated. There seemed to be abnormal paranoia. The irony, Will later realised, that he had been allowed on the plane in his carry-on baggage an assortment of items that could have been infinitely more dangerous: two one-litre alloy canisters and a tea flask which were not checked, several batteries that could have been used as a power source for a bomb or could have been detonators in disguise, various powders, pills and potions in his first aid kit, and a mobile phone. Will sighed, another form of Chinese illogic.

 

Snowy peaks rolled away underneath the plane as Will made an attempt at the bread roll, a handful of grape tomatoes and the steamed rice and vegetables in his airplane meal. All he could think about was how glad he was to be leaving China behind. It was sad that a country with so much promise had descended into a nation that was devouring itself, and had the potential to devour the world around it. Will wondered how he would eventually remember China, and wether the incredible experiences he had been blessed with would shine through the muck that had tainted his trip there. Flashes of red-robed monks, smiling Tibetans, Rashit’s friendliness and genuine concern at his illness (he had offered him a homemade Kazakh herbal remedy, which would probably have worked had his illness been simply food poisoning), dramatic scenery and crisp alpine air went through his mind. Hopefully the photos he had taken would remind him forever of these things, and not the frustrations of his visit.

 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the stewardess announced over the PA system, “we are now descending into Bishkek.”

Turpan

            Turpan is not China. China wants it to be China, but Turpan is Uighurstan. There is a dialectic between the image of a Han Chinese, scampering from the heat and punishing sun to the confines of a concrete block of apartments, and the image of the Uighur man, clothed in loose linen shirt and pants and woven skull cap, strolling amongst the yellow rocky hills to his home constructed of the same earth as the surrounds, designed perfectly to maintain what coolness basic design can afford. Turpan is a place that the Han try to conquer, but where the very landscape quietly revolts against their presence.

            I arrived in the evening at around ten Beijing time. I knew that Turpan would be the sort of tourist trap in which a lone traveller such as myself would inevitably become ensnared. The tout who rode me on his motorcycle to a hotel out of town managed to acquire a tidy sum out of me for the tour the next day of a couple of tourist sites, but a sum I budgeted for.

            Turpan is famous for it’s heat – it has the highest recorded temperature in China. It is situated in a region of deserts, and is in a depression known as the Turpan Basin, one of the lowest points in the world. It is an oasis in the midst of a very dry barren land of rocky hills and sandy plains. It has none of the spectacular grandeur of the mountains bordering the Tibetan plateau. It has none of the civilised history, restored for visitors, of other cities in China. Turpan has that sparse, barren aura of a place that has seen the comings and goings of the world, and for a very long time. Xinjiang is famous, like much of Central Asia, for it’s position as a major crossroads for civilisations throughout history. It boasts an impressive diversity of minority groups, from lamist Tibetans to Muslim Uighur to mountain Kazakh families to even remnant Russian populations. The region has the feel of a place where the Han Chinese of the current empire are just another peoples to lay claim to a land that watches civilisations wax and wane, and will always be there, barren and unforgiving.

            A place like Tuyoq, a village on the edge of Turpan, has the stereotypical feel of a place that is ancient. The village is nestled in a small valley that emerges from the hills known as the Flaming Mountains. The houses and streets are built around a network of streams, small canals and sluice gates that direct the precious water falling from the hills. Fields of grape vines, for which Turpan is famous, a well as pagodas and arches covered in vines and knarled old trees provide welcome shade and green the valley amongst the desolate rocky mounds around the village. The builidings are mostly built of mud constructions: yellow earthy structures melding into the landscape. The pale green and white tiles of the mosque are the only structure to stand out looking across Tuyoq. Despite it being a supposed local pilgramage site due to the tomb of the first Muslim Uighur, the town has the pace of a quiet shuffle, walking through the village locals could be seen resting from the hot midday sun in the cool of their homes. There would be the occasional bent old woman casually but skilfully tending the vines. The history comes as you stroll along the boardwalk further into the valley. Up a set of steps, perched against the slope of a hill in a secluded part of the dell, a series of structures appear to be carved into the hillside. These are home to a series of caves consisting of Buddha images. Nearly completely destroyed by the ravages not only of decay, but the indignance of various conquering cultures, these fragments of ancient frescoes reveal the true ancient history of the now fervently Muslim Uighur – they were originally Buddhist.

            It is easy to forget, as a young person whose existence is, even in the context of the human lifecycle, currently still a fleeting spec and has been spent in a politically stable continent that has experienced little conflict, that the current world order is a new concept, and one in constant flux. Such sites as Tuyoq and the Jiaohe ruins remind you that even the supposed epic histories and infallibility of entire faiths are but temporary shifts in human social consciousness. The Jiaohe ruins are the remains of an entire trading city originally devoutly Buddhist: sanctums and monastery buildings and lines of stupas, now crumbling earthen walls, reveal this past. Travelling through such an ethnically diverse region and also coming along the edge of a region where events are taking place that are truly in the spotlight of international current affairs, you realise how fragile the current modes of domination and submission amongst world powers and bordering cultures are.

            So despite the tourist orientation of a town that the Han are trying to subtly permeate, Turpan is worth a visit to remind you that boundaries on a map do not necessarily represent the fluid borders of culture and consciousness that are the true indications of separations, and conjunctions, of humanity.

Tian Chi

            It’s called Tian Chi (Heavenly Lake), and it is situated in the Tian Shan (Heavenly Mountains), and the ‘Heavenly’ superlative is by no means an exaggeration – Tian Chi was paradise. A small alpine lake nestled into a valley at 2000m, it’s emerald waters shone against a backdrop of green slopes and snow-capped mountains. And the difference between Tian Chi and Kanas Lake was that I was not on a Chinese tour and could fully enjoy every inch of ground around the lake. I became acquainted with a Tartar Russian by the name of Marsel at the guesthouse in Urumqi, and I made a quick decision to come with him, after deciding against a brief visit to Shanghai. His voracious appetite for scaling any height he saw coupled with my inadequate fitness (thanks SE Asia) nearly killed me, but proved excellent preparation for possible future expeditions into the Tian Shan. It also proved that I had definitely become a mountain goat, and gave me experiences I will never forget.

 

            The trip to Tian Chi began in a similar vein to the trip to Kanas Lake – on a bus being orally accosted by a female Chinese tour guide who, like all the others, also insisted on singing waveringly into the bus PA system (it must be a job prerequisite). The trip also began with the mandatory Chinese tourist extortion – a ¥50 return ticket to the park, that could not be used as a return other than on the day of purchase, a ¥90 entrance fee, and a ¥20 bus fare up the hill to the lake, along the same road as the entrance, just a different bus. But everything started going right when a tanned Kazakh man quietly stole up to me, slipped me his card entitled ‘Rashit’s Yurts’ and mentioned:

“If you are looking for a yurt to stay, you can stay in mine.”

This was all done so surreptitiously that I hardly noticed, beyond the general annoyance at being approached whilst trying to purchase a ticket up the hill, which was something that I had come to dismiss as the background noise of travelling. That was until my friend mentioned that he was the Rashit of Lonely Planet fame. I took more notice. Rashit took the next bus up the hill and motioned that he would meet us at the top. We caught up to him, and decided to follow him through the throng of tourists and yurt touts along the lake to his yurts. I did not realise until later how fortunate this decision was.

Rashit’s yurts are positioned beyond the road, further along the path that circumnavigates the lake, in a secluded re-entrant facing away from the bustle of the lake entrance. After dumping packs and sitting down to a hearty but simple vegetarian lunch I soon realised I was somewhere special. The waning warm spring sunshine glistening through the spruce trees that whispered through the stillness in the alpine breeze and puffed golden pollen; the sweet smell of the conifers and nectar-laden wildflowers; the emerald lake sparkling down the hill; the lungful of clean air I breathed in: all these things invigorated my soul. With a few hours before dinner and nightfall, Marcel and I decided to explore up the hill behind the yurts. We climbed far, nearly reaching the summit of the peak. With each new level the vista widened before us to accommodate the lake hemmed in on two sides by green slopes sharpening to rocky peaks. At the lake’s mouth the waters disappeared around the bustling tourist centre to cascade down to the barren rocky hills and desert-like plain below. At the lake’s head, a wide moraine of grey stones vanished into the valley that contained the river that fed the lake. And beyond the peaks of this valley, a ridge of snow-capped mountains sneaked into view, shining in the sun against the blue sky. Maybe it wasn’t pure accident that my finger fell on the Tian Shan when I closed my eyes and played Russian roulette with a map. I remembered a David Attenborough documentary that featured a segment on the snow leopard, and I would never forget the amazing footage of the leopard sneaking through rocky precipices in the deadening quiet of a snowfall. Despite the sunshine and verdant scenery, the rocky crags and alpine vegetation and above all the quiet and serenity reminded me of that documentary. This was certainly, despite it’s accessability, the edge of wilderness like I had never experienced. I wondered at what the rest of the Tian Shan and its adjacent ranges would hold. Upon descending I told our host:

“Rashit, you live in paradise.”

 

            Marsel and I had spied a couple of routes that looked plausible and interesting. Foremost was an expedition up the river valley that fed the lake. The next day we decided to attempt the expedition. We started late, Mardel having to head back into the tourist village briefly. The Chinese have a preoccupation with trying to control waterways, and this was no exception. After skirting the lake we came to the wide stony delta that poured into the lake. Bulldozers and trucks shifted loads of stones, and a sorting machine noisily broke the serenity. Making our way upriver we discovered a dam in construction. It was at least being built of local stone and looked more like a medieval fortress defence than the horrid concrete structures that plagued rivers in China, and also seemed to be designed for the purpose of flood control rather than hydroelectricity or water storage. However, its necessity was still a mystery. We weaved our way back and forth across the river for a little while, crossing where we could find stones close enough together to jump across or a fallen tree or log placed for locals to cross. We eventually discovered a clear path with a couple of decent bridges. Rashit had mentioned that it was at least 18 hours to the snow line and back.

As the time to return neared, we finally ascended a hill high up into the valley. Before us lay a mountain that stood at the fork of the river. Two valleys, one on either side of the peak, conjoined beneath us to form the river that flowed to the lake. Remnant snow showed stark white along the river, as well as crowning the peak that loomed above. Behind this high summits of dark rock blanketed in snow jutted into view, proclaiming their superiority over the rest of the mountains in the vicinity. We guessed that one of these peaks was Bogda Mountain, the highest peak in this range. We turned to look back down the valley. The lake glistened in the distance, and through the haze, the rocky hills could be seen flattening into the wide dry lands around Urumqi. It was a spectacular panorama. We eyed jealously the mountain at the confluence of the two rivers, imagining the views from that vantage point, salivating at the challenge of climbing the peak. It was as close as we were going to get to the jagged peaks beyond (which, incidentally had only been conquered in the 1980s not due to their height, but due to their daunting near-vertical rocky slopes). We resolved that if we left early enough in the morning we could make it to the base within a few hours, and have time to climb the peak and return before dinner. The challenge had been set.

 

The next morning we set off early, charging along the horse track we had discovered the previous day. We managed to reach the base of the mountain in just over two hours, rather than the four it had taken us the previous day. We stopped by the river in the sunshine as it crept over the peaks and ate some breakfast. The meal consisted of half a loaf of delicious bread each (a rarity in China) given to us by our hosts and freshly baked in a wood oven the day before, a thermos of hot tea and a few odds and ends like biscuits and salted peanuts we had collected ourselves for trekking. Again, the healthy hiking meal, the sunshine, the melting snow rushing over rocks before us, the green slopes, and the sweet scent of an alpine morning all seemed to culminate in bliss. Finishing, we decided to head for a saddle that we had spied the day before in the valley to the right of the mountain. We found a trail that climbed steeply up the right side of the valley and lead to the saddle. We soon discovered that the saddle was not in fact a saddle, but a lump in a valley that climbed and climbed up around the mountain we wished to summit. We walked upwards hoping that we would find a peak, all the while examining the south slope of the mountain for a possible route to its top. Eventually, we got to a peak that commanded a good view of the mountain’s flank. Before us the valley still rose quite steeply, although a snow-capped peak jutted into view. Any route following the valley seemed too long, although the slope of the mountain that loomed before us seemed very steep, particularly at its apex. We decided to attempt the slope, as we spied a possible route.

The day before I had not fitted my shoes before walking, and I had unfortunately developed some nasty blisters on my heels and toes. I was used to blisters and I had patched them up and tightened my boots that morning, but the walking had aggravated them and they had become very sore. Coupled with my deterioration in fitness over the last months, the ascent began to take its toll. A gap constantly widened between Marsel and myself, and Marsel had to stop for me to catch up. As we ascended to the steepest part of the climb, I soon became exhausted. The top of the hill became rocky, and we had to climb with hands and feet through the precipices. Marsel, more surefooted in this situation, soon disappeared over the top. Eventually I came to a gentler slope and looked up to see Marsel standing on the edge of a sharp precipice that overlooked the valley leading to the lake. I caught up to him, glad of the rest after the ascent. The view down the valley was spectacular. The precipice hung vertically out over the steep descent to the confluence of the two rivers at the base of the mountain. To stand on the top of that cliff felt like you were flying above the mountains and vales below, with the river tumbling and winding down to the emerald waters in the distance, and on to the yellow desert farther towards the hazy horizon. The view behind was more daunting. As Marsel had guessed, the ascent was not the mountain we had viewed the day before, just a small southern crag. The rest of the mountain loomed ominously before us.

Sharp rocky cliffs protruded from the steep slopes, and to avoid these we were forced to skirt back along the northern slope, steadily climbing along the steep slope to a more level hump on the side of the mountain. Marsel once again disappeared from view. Finally I reached the plateau and paused to rest, drink the Coke I had been saving for its sugar, and looked out over the view which expanded with every stage of the ascent. The last stage of the mountain climb had arrived with the bulging hump of the mountain sprouting a plug of jagged rocks through some patches of snow at its apex. I found Marsel waiting just beyond a rise. I was exhausted, and every step felt like my feet were made of lead. I was not short of breath, but could not gather the energy to charge on. We made a pact that if we did not see each other on the ascent, we would wait for each other at our previous resting place. Marsel jettisoned over the hill and I was left stumbling up the slope. I had not felt exhaustion like this for a very long time. I had to pause every few steps to regather my energy. I kept checking my watch: time was passing and I would soon not have time to complete the ascent. I finally made it to the rocky plug that was the crown of the mountain. There was still far to go. I had seen Marsel surmount the apex and disappear into the rocks, waving to him as he vanished.

I hate not completing a challenge, and that mountain will probably haunt me to my grave, but I knew in that moment, looking at my watch, gasping for some sort of sustenance, that the mountain had defeated me. At the rate at which I was climbing, the summit would have been at least another hour away, and I knew I would struggle to find the energy to climb it, and that we would need to turn back soon to reach the yurts before dark. I decided to press on for a little more time, climbing steadily as I circled around the south side of the peak to get a better look at the snowy mountains beyond. At that height, there was little sound except the occasional gust of wind whistling through the rocks, the trickling of melting snow descending down unseen streams, and the sound of rocks crunching and slipping under my footsteps. An almost imperceptible sound made me turn my head and look a little way up the slope. Suddenly with a crash of slipping stones a large deer-like animal revealed itself amongst the rocks and bounded out of sight. It scared me as much it seemed to have been startled, as I certainly wasn’t expecting anything beyond the grass line. Finally the clock ticked past three o’clock in the afternoon. I knew it was time to descend. I had spied a gentler descent along the valley in which we had begun our ascent of the mountain, and decided to try to intercept Marsel before he made it to our meeting point. I looked around one last time, took a deep breath of the clean, thin alpine air, and backtracked to the slope Marsel had ascended.

I managed to catch up to Marsel, and we descended by the different route. It proved much easier than the way we had climbed the peak, though a less direct route. Looking back occasionally at the mountain, frustration flared a little inside me. I cursed my recent inactivity and the sores that hampered my gait, but took the episode as good training for future forays. Once again, bounding down the mountain amongst green slopes speckled with wildflowers, strolling through the dappled sunshine amongst scented conifers and remnant patches of snow, I could think of no place I would rather be in those moments.

Returning to the yurts, I was shattered. I sat down to the evening meal, which we gulped down greedily, and struggled to rise again. The previous two evenings, Marsel and I had jumped into the freezing waters of the lake to wash off the sweat of the day. The lake was icy, and dark was approaching, but we decided to bathe again. It was the perfect ending to the day, as the sun set on the slopes opposite Rashit’s camp, to refresh after such a long day, and feel healthy again after the grime of Urumqi. Lying down in the beautifully decorated yurt, I quickly fell asleep.

 

The next day Marsel and I took things easy, and decided on completing the loop around the lake. It was still not the easiest of walks – many steps rose and fell over the uneven lake’s edge. We came to a Taoist temple towards the lake’s entrance. Chinese tourists thronged to the temple, taking speed boats from the entrance that occasionally destroyed the tranquillity of the lake. The Chinese are innately lazy, wishing neither to think nor expend any effort if it can be helped, and we were alone on our circumnavigation of the lake. We were eyed with a little curiosity as we stood at the temple entrance, having obviously walked to the tourist spot, not caught the boat across. I wanted to see the interior of the temple, and told Marsel I would meet him at the topmost building. I was not allowed to take photos of the interior, as tourists came in droves to pay money and have their futures read by waiting monks and burn giant incense sticks two metres high. I hung around, trying to observe proceedings, but soon lost interest. It didn’t quite have the same authenticity as my experiences in Yushu!

I climbed the many steps to the topmost building. It was a pavilion that housed a grotto and a Taoist statue. I searched around the building for Marsel, but he was nowhere to be seen. I was puzzled, wondering where he could be, and whether he had descended again to the temple entrance. Looking up at the mountain, this intrigued me, as Marsel and descend are not words I would often use together. I cursed half-heartedly, I knew where Marsel had gone. I began to climb along the slope behind the temple. I soon spied him about halfway up the mountain. We climbed the hill, but like most mountains dicsovered there was more mountain, and that what appeared an apex from below was in fact just the side of the mountain. We followed the slope of the mountain along to a pavilion that overlooked the entrance to the park, resting to take in the panorama looking south, with the lake to our left, the entrance below, and the dry plains stretching to our right.

The stairs in China are a phenomena in themselves. They appear to be constructed by different people, all in the space of ten steps. Their depth and height vary every few steps. Often they are so small, that you struggle to be able to get a foothold on the tread, and find yourself tip-toeing like a ballerina up or down the path. The descent form the pagoda consisted of many steps, and these exemplified my exasperation. Coupled with the fact that no one seemed to use the steps, and hence they remained relatively unmaintained with loose rocks strewn across the steps in some parts as the result of small landslides, the descent down the constructed path felt like the most dangerous thing I had done so far!

 

Returning to the yurts with the waning afternoon, I felt sad to have to leave the next day. With the help of Rashit, we managed to take the local bus back to Fukang, a town about halfway between Tian Chi and Urumqi, and then another bus back to Urumqi. I felt refreshed, but frustrated at having to return to the city, and back to the waiting game for my visas!

Urumqi – Kanas Lake – Urumqi

            As I strolled back from a feed of shashylik, spiced bread and beer, and carrying my wedge of watermelon for desert, I spied a group of teenagers sporting identical t-shirts with big I <heart> China slogans branded in red across the oversized white garments. I admire the country, but I could not agree with them, China is not a place to love. It holds too many disparities, too many unwelcome contrasts, too many uncomfortable realities, both glaring and insidious. China has the precarious feeling of an over-inflated balloon set to burst. There is this constant spine-chilling grating of things that just don’t seem right. This may be a subjective view, but it’s definitely perceptible to many.

            Urumqi is a sprawling city of apartment blocks, “high-tech” industrial quarters that resemble a conglomerate of local mechanics interspersed with pre-war industrial quarters, streets of Chinese fashion houses, and newly planted open green spaces flanked by official buildings of fascist proportions and architecture. It is set against a backdrop of dry rocky hills flanking snaking waterways and a line of impressive mountains in the distance. Like the rest of the engineering and construction works in China, everything appears in a state of constant disrepair, no matter how new and glistening it is. Government buildings, gargantuan structures shining grey and solemn at passers by, are known to be of a much higher construction standard than anything else that is built. One pertinent comment a western reporter made regarding the Sichuan earthquake was that people were muttering why it was that government buildings stood whilst the rest of the city lay as rubble. But even these structures, newly birthed edifices of the new strength of China, reveal crumbling rendering in patches, and missing tiles.

Walking down the street, hotels from a distance sport modern sparkling exteriors. On closer inspection, the shine is peppered by rusting pipes ejecting from walls to the streets below, a film of grime grades down to a general clutter of refuse at ground level, and there may even be the occasional smashed window. One who has travelled in China will also note the interior will generally be dingy, grimy, with spit-greased carpets rubbed bare and coming loose at the edges, and crumbling paintwork. Rooms will generally contain hot water that may be anything from permanently scalding to requiring a day’s preparation to simply permanently chilly, have power points that either spark dangerously or sport no power, and will provide a view of the neighbouring apartment’s utilities. But cities still glitter. There is obviously no shortage of power. Neon lights flash in multitudinous synchronisation hanging off every structure in every street. Cars of European brands that, imported into Western countries remain there the toys of the wealthy, are ubiquitous on Chinese streets.  Certain models are made in Chinese factories, so as to be within reach of this burgeoning middle class of discerning consumption. Like everything else with the stamp ‘Made in China’, the glitter and label cannot always blind enough to conceal the lack of lustre in the finishing, the not-quite seamless joins, and an engine that doesn’t quite purr as croak. Another status symbol is the phone. Even your average stall owner will own a phone that puts my ancient (but, might I add, travel-reliable) Nokia to shame. Cameras with zoom, large screens, gadgetry and features are the norm, and shame on anyone who doesn’t try and keep up with the latest phone trends!

 

However, the contrasts are not always so unwelcome. China is an expansive country, and the range of geographies, topographies, climates and cultures is phenomenal. Having travelled, literally, across the country from its southern shores in Hong Kong to a hill that looked out across the border to Russia and Kazakhstan, its land is awe-inspiring. Travel from Urumqi to Kanas Lake in the most northwestern corner of the country, and the contrast that occurs here is humbling. As you exit the sprawl of Urumqi and speed along the spanking new freeway northwards, you travel through a barren landscape of rolling mounds of rock and sand dotted by tussock grasses. In the background are the peaks of the far arms of the Tian Shan, tiered from the dry slopes of the badlands to craggy snow-covered mountains in the distance. The mountains gradually disappear, though, and a series of flat expanses open before you, separated through the ten-hour bus rise by the rise and fall of lines of hills. Eventually these expanses widen to a basin stretching as far as the eye can see. In the glare of the bare earth and bright blue sky, small structures approach from the horizon. Trees? No, oil wells. The road skirts fields of wells, sprouting from the ground like a forest in the desert. In the largest of these fields wells stretch, literally, to the edge of vision. More rolling rocky hills mark the end of the basin. Then, in one sandy expanse, a series of stratified rock formations appear along the road. These are known as the ‘Ghost Town of the World’ (to the Chinese, who think they are at the centre of the universe, everything is globally superlative in China). The place is given its name because the formations howl with the winds that rake the region and carve the landscape. Gradually, with the ascension of each new line of hills, a greener valley is revealed, until finally one reaches Bu’erjin, and one day’s journey is complete.

Bu’erjin, apparently, sits on the banks of the only river in China to flow to the Arctic. When I visited, it’s muddy waters were swollen with the new snowmelt, and it’s current certainly looked as if it could carry me to the Arctic. Bu’erjin is s a non-descript town, with a faint faux Russian influence. Peaked red roofs and new facades built in some mock Franco-Prussian style and local Kazakhs selling wares and more shashyliks at the tourist markets just off the river bank give the area a strangely un-Chinese feel. But it’s a false sense of individuality, as the distinctly Chinese hotels, shops and signage proclaims. The tourist façade should have warned me of things to come.

Leaving Bu’erjin, the barren landscape returns. However, in the distance a line of peaks, taller, rockier than the rolling hills of the previous day’s valleys, approach. Expectation rises with the incline of the road, as it appears that finally you are approaching the mountains that cradle the infamous Kanas Lake. As the road winds over the summit of the ridge, a spectacular view awaits. Not slopes climbing to the alpine expanse that is the destination of your travels, but a vast verdant plain containing shimmering rivulets that vein the green. A taller, rockier set of mountains looms in the distance, to which the road leads and becomes a faint line as it approaches the base of these hills. The process repeats: a climb into ever steeper mountains, then a decent into an ever more expansive plain. Several times this happens, each mountain range taller, each plain more wide. Finally, a descent brings you to a plain that is so vast you catch your breath as it stretches east and dissolves into an indiscernible blue mist. Across the plain a series of peaks rise and rise, although no snow-capped mountains are visible as yet. The grandeur of the scale of the landscape tells you that now the surrounds of Kanas lake approach. You wind through gentle and green but immense slopes. The views consist of iridescent pastures grazed by all manner of livestock – cows, sheep, horses, goats, camels, interspersed by protruding dark rocks and glistening patches of white snow, yet to melt despite the warming late spring sun. These fields meld into boreal forests of conifers and birch, a patchwork of dark and youthful lime green, respectively.

It is in this landscape that you might expect villas of log cabins or even community run yurts or campers pitching tents, snuggling around small communal wood fires or cooking their dinner on gas stoves. Signposts might point the way to trails that wind their way through the mountains to hidden gems and breathtaking viewpoints, a kiosk might appear with advice on how to remain ecologically sustainable in your visit to this pristine wilderness. Facilities, barely perceptible against the backdrop, might exhibit the latest ecological technology. Solar panels and techno-toilets might be the only revelation of civilisation. But This Is China. The gate to the reserve is a glaring concrete building more akin to a highway toll-booth or theme-park gateway, with lanes of entrances. Once inside the park, rows of glistening white buses stand ready to whisk you away to the various lookouts and scenic points along the brand new asphalt road that traverses the park. You get five minutes to snap away at each of these points, before being bundled back into the bus to the next point. The centre of the park is a “village” of snack bars and Kazakh restaurants, all overpriced and all resembling the eastern equivalent of a roadside diner. These are surrounded by the rough log huts of the workers of the park, whose livestock graze some of the slopes, seemingly more out of necessity for the atmosphere than for real agriculture.

Things get worse if you plan to stay the night. Just out of the reserve is a valley, once again a glowing green basin amidst rocky and snow-capped peaks. In this valley, the authorities have decided it is pertinent to build a town of hotels. The multi-storey structures glare stark white against the background. Construction workers dump refuse and wash concrete mixers in the alpine streams, which are rediverted through a series of sewage systems to reappear as streams beneath a concrete bridge built to mimic a rough timber structure. The buildings are not even complete, and already display the decay that plagues the rest of China. Power points hang out of walls on live wires. Render bubbles and peels. Concrete moulds that adorn windows are chipped and crumbling. Even windows remain smashed, opening the new rooms to the elements.

Kanas lake itself is spectacular. Not just for the scenery but because it’s a water body that appears clean. No rubbish bobs up and down on the surface, there appears no human contamination, as the village and hotel complex are downstream beyond the exit of the lake, livestock contamination appears minimal as the slopes around are too steep, and livestock seems limited. All in all, the crystal, chilling waters are almost trustworthy.

The climax of the trip is the climb to the top of the hill that affords spectacular panoramas of the lake and the mountain ranges in which it is nestled. A bus trip brings you almost to the top and this is followed by the slow ascent of 1200 steps to the pagoda that crowns the summit. Plain clothed attendants loiter at strategic points to berate you if you step off the path, all in the name of protecting the fragile alpine ecosystem. I even was nearly chastised for eating a nectarine, because the attendant thought I was about to throw the stone off the path. I felt like saying to the guy, look at the rest of your country, mate, a nectarine stone is the least of your worries. From here the emerald lake snakes out of view around the corner of the mountains. The eye is drawn upward to a prominent white peak in the north, Friendship Peak, the highest point locally at…m. Mountains and valleys stretch into the horizon. The slopes are a patchwork of a flush of green spring growth, yellow and purple wildflowers, and the occasional remnant of white snow.

 

Despite the raucous throng of Chinese tourists, panting at the climb or once recovered snapping away with their phones and cameras, there was a moment of bliss at the top of that hill. The vista opened before me. The brisk alpine air, sweet with the smells of life appreciating the spring, opened my lungs and expanded my chest. I looked back south, down the valley and the river flowing out of Kanas Lake. In that direction lay desert, the greatest mountain range in the world, and beyond that another of the most populous regions in the world, the Indian subcontinent. I looked east. There lay Mongolia, and further south, spread the whole of China, and the route I had traversed to reach this point. West I looked eagerly along valleys, spying snowy summits glistening on and on. There lay Kazakhstan, the country I was desperately trying to reach. After pausing on this view for a while, I turned north. There my eyes rested for a long time. This was possibly the closest I would come for a long time to the ultimate goal of my travels. Just beyond the spires of Friendship Peak lay the Russian border. The wind whipped up, coming in from the peaks to the west as bad weather clouded the horizon. I sighed and turned back into China.

Xining – Yushu – Xining

            Yushu was another Vieng Poukha – one of those experiences that impregnates itself into your memory. Moments flash past in my mind: looking down bustling Uighur streets into a sea of white caps interspersed with donkeys and the occasional scooter, cycle-utility or car trying to squeeze through the throng; the flash of fire from burners flaming huge woks and from braziers roasting shashyliks in the night bazaar in Xining; the rolling chants of monks whose rich red robes are lost in the superior richness of the interiors of a monastery; the wind falling off the Tibetan plateau filling innumerable prayer flags draped across an entire mountain, with snow capped peaks and treeless slopes and plains stretching into the distance. These are the things of the imagination when a traveller daydreams of distant lands.

            After taking the decision to travel with a German couple, Rebecca and Thomas, to Yushu, we travelled from Chengdu to Xining, a direct train ride lasting just over twenty-four hours. Xining is the capital of Qinghai Province, a semi-Uighur province nestled to the east of Xinjiang, to the north of Tibet and Sichuan, and to the west of Gansu and Mongolia. It is a small city, especially by Chinese standards. It is relatively non-descript, set against a backdrop of barren hills and surrounded by large plains and rolling hills of nothingness. For some reason it has a plethora of mid-priced Chinese hotels, all the tallest structures in the city. It was in one of these that we stayed overnight. As we entered the lift and turned towards the closing door, I noticed an illuminated poster of scantily clad women posing provocatively with a giant arrow pointing down some stairs to a basement. This was the first hotel in which I had stayed in China, and this was the first encounter with the infamous Chinese habit of mixing business and pleasure. I wondered whether we would receive the ‘midnight call’ despite there being a female in our group.

            One of the stand-out memories of Xining is the night bazaar in the centre of the city. We walked around many markets, both on our way to and from Yushu. They were fascinating and really had the vibe of a town that was not quite Han dominated. Anyone that has been travelling to some more exotic places will tell you that no photos, no video footage, no descriptions can really capture the essence of an experience. One of the missing ingredients is the smell. Apart from the general smells of a Chinese city’s backstreets, the markets that wound like a maze through the city were a feast for the senses. Freshly baked flatbreads, roasting meats, raw produce, entire stalls of musty mushrooms, fried ingredients, the scent of sweet dried fruits, stalls of dazzling coloured spices wafting enticing odours: these were the smells that culminated in a myriad of sensorial stimulations. Amongst these smells was also the smell of rotting carcass: walking through Xining we managed to stumble across the local pelt market. Bloody furs of yaks and other animals were traded by the locals with a casual exuberance, and under the cover of an open warehouse roof pelts were piled high. The smell was permeating to say the least. Some of the furs looked bloodied and tattered and I hoped they would look more attractive when clean.

            Another missing ingredient is taste. After a while being exposed to mainly Han-style food, I was looking forward to something different. Despite being drawn to baozi for breakfast, in the Uighur streets near our hotel we found plenty of bakeries selling unusual breads, many spiced though lacking either the sweetness of Chinese bread or the saltiness of European loaves. The real feast was at the night bazaar, however. We headed there the night before we left for Yushu, and couldn’t wait to return on our second leg for another bite of fantastic food. It is depressing to see many markets in Asia, particularly China. It is sad to think that the productive capacity of the world goes into producing so much junk, when the efforts of so many could be spent creating many more useful and amazing things, or fixing many of the problems that plague the planet. Rounding a corner of these markets however, a much more amenable sight greeted us. A narrow walkway was lined on either side by stalls cooking up local fare, and behind these rows of tables and chairs served as makeshift restaurants. We strolled up and down the market, spoilt for choice of what we were going to eat. There was everything from fried jaozi and larger fried flat noodle dough with a filling like a crepe, to noodles, langhmian, shashylik, pilaf-style rice, choose-your own kebabs, to single-serving hotpots of ready-to-cook ingredients sitting in a thick cast-iron bowl, to grilled fish and chopped fresh fruit for desert. We decided that a dose of meat was in order and ordered some shashylik (meat on skewers) with some rice and langhmian (an Uighur-style fried noodles). It was a brilliant change and certainly filled us. I had noticed a stall selling some sort of large skewer with a selection of treats coated in toffee. I decided that I couldn’t go past trying it for desert. It is the best desert I have ever tasted. The skewer I purchased had five different treats: a fresh strawberry, a marshmellow-type ingredient, a walnut, a chunk of banana, and a chunk of chocolate. On either side of each of these treats was half a dried strawberry, and all this was coated in a thin layer of crisp toffee. The tartness of the dried strawberry, coupled with the different flavours of the treats, and biting through the crunchy layer of toffee into these soft centres, it was taste of heaven. I am considering heading back to Xining as I write this just so that I can get a another one! Oops, just have to wipe some saliva off the keyboard…

           

            Our introduction to Yushu was an interesting experience in itself, starting with the bus ride there. We purchased our sleeper tickets, and hopped on the bus, only to find our allocated seats didn’t exist. After a frustrated negotiation through broken Chinese with the non-Han driver, he told us to take up positions at the back of the bus. We took some of the top bunks and hoped for the best, ready to fight for our place on the bus. Fortunately nobody challenged us and we settled into our beds. Sleeper bus rides are an uncomfortable experience, but definitely a necessary part of experiencing China. The bus consists of three rows of bunks, two beds high. The upper bunks are better, as you don’t get people’s refuse dropping down from above, or swinging stinky feet in your face. The rows to the side are also better as you can open or close the window as you choose (no, there’s no ventilation or air conditioning). We took up the last two bunks in the centre of the bus, and one bunk to the side. The bunks are small, even for someone gravitationally challenged like myself. A tall person like my companion Thomas had to practically try and sleep in the foetal position, particularly with a bag to try and fit somewhere.

            The bus trip was relatively uneventful, with a couple of toilet breaks and a dinner stop. We had catered for no food stops, and had stocked up accordingly, so did not have anything to eat at the Tibetan roadside diner. The night was cold: the morning dawned through sheets of ice coating the inside of the windows. We had travelled through passes as high as 4800m. Our immediate neighbours were three nice Tibetan chaps, unfortunately all chain smokers. One fortunately enjoyed a breath of fresh air with his cigarette, and would open the window when he smoked. The others, like the other smokers on the bus, hadn’t heard of passive smoking. I tried to kill time by doing a little Chinese study on the bus, which the neighbours were curious about, sounding out English words as I tried to do the same with the Chinese translations. One incident that I think typifies Chinese attitudes occurred during the night, however. During the night I awoke through my restless sleep to my neighbour rustling around on his bed. His silhouette against the window revealed he had propped himself up into a strange position under the covers. He grunted a couple of times. Through the haze of drowsiness I wondered what on earth he was doing. Suddenly a plastic bag was produced from under the covers containing some brown solids and a yellow liquid. The window was opened, and the contents thrown out the window of the moving bus. My companion had obviously not wanted to wait until the next rest stop.

            We had calculated upon arriving at Yushu at around midday. Suddenly at a stop early that morning everyone started to vacate the bus. I asked the driver whether we had arrived at our destination: it was indeed Yushu. We stumbled out of the bus station and onto the main street. It was not the mountain paradise we were expecting. The place had a strange dirty feel to it. Derelict buildings along the large, busy high street and bland surroundings gave the town a grey downtrodden feel. We looked at our Lonely Planet for accommodation options. Yushu is a two-street town with the main business streets meeting at a T-intersection, and various houses situated in mazes of back alleys. The guide book mentioned a monastery guesthouse beyond the main intersection, with several other options along the way. I imagined a courtyard surrounded by some ancient timber structure housing some old but cosy rooms and monks wondering around the complex. I know my companions had similar ideals running through their minds. We saw none of the other hotels along the way (although later realised we must have been blinded by something because there were plenty to check out along the route) and finally came to the monastery hostel, having been harassed the whole walk by filthy-faced beggar children, monks whose crimson garments were tattered and blackened, and the limbless and elderly.

The monastery guesthouse was situated in a decrepit concrete building four storeys high. We wandered up the stairs and found the little room that served as reception, in which two monks were sitting watching a small television. One monk showed us a couple of rooms, which were clean and decently furnished but severely overpriced. The ‘cheap’ triple room entered through a shaky lock in the door to three single beds of stained sheets in a cold and inhospitable room. The pale grey walls were marked with streaked brown handprints and other signs of wear that had not been removed. The render, like in much of China, was peeling from the walls. The view was a desolate look down upon the backstreets of the town. There was no shower in the building, and we discovered we had to pay for the use of a public shower complex in a hairdresser a few doors down. We inspected the toilet. No white could be seen – the bathroom stank and looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned for a decade, with shit caking the floor and walls around the squat basins. I shuddered. We were exhausted and in no mood to drag our bags around town, so decided to take the room for the night and look for something better later. We at least managed to get the sheets changed, though I slept in my sleeping bag to be comfortable. We managed to find a much more amenable guesthouse down the road at the main intersection that afternoon. It was ¥50 for a double room, rather than the ¥30 we paid for the triple, but I was happy to pay for the clean sheets, solid furniture (including a desk on which I could complete some study) and the freedom of a room to myself. The bathroom, though with three toilets (no cubicles) and no shower once again, also showed some white revealing that at least it was cleaned occasionally.

 

Yushu was the first town where I found my Chinese failed me. Whilst the Uighur in Xining had strong accents, many of the Tibetans and Hui in Yushu did not even speak Putonghua. That night ordering food in a Tibetan restaurant was a struggle, but a monk who spoke a very small amount of English fortunately came to our aid. He was on his way into a town in Sichuan, and we gathered from his description that he had made his way from India through Kathmandu in Nepal and Tibet. He mentioned that it would be worth our while to head up the hill opposite our guesthouse to the monastery and stupa beyond. We thanked him for his advice, and decided that after moving guesthouses we would make that the aim of the following day. It was that night that the earthquake occurred. Although, as many readers might realise, the magnitude of the situation was slow to be revealed, whether this was a result of government censorship or was through an actual misunderstanding of the scale of the tragedy is difficult to tell. We ended up seeing the friendly monk frequently in the town, as the quake had prevented his exit from Yushu. It was a little perturbing but is still unfathomable how close we had come to being in the midst of the quake zone, having been in Songpan days earlier and travelled along the railway north of Chengdu that was now blocked.

 

The climb to the monastery started in the alleys of mud brick and timber houses that crept up the base of the hill opposite the guesthouse. The high drab walls that hid family homes within all had colourful and ornate gates and entrances. Some of these were stunning designs, with bright tones depicting intricate ironwork animals and scenes. We passed a steel framed power line pole that had been covered in prayer flags and converted into a stupa, and eventually reached an open space in the saddle of the hill jutting out over the town and the mountain behind. We paused for a moment, wondering where we were to go next, when a young Tibetan man dressed contemporarily in trousers and a sports jacket approached us. I will call him R as I do not wish to reveal his identity if I can help it. He turned out to be a teacher in Yushu who spoke good English. The Chinese value highly (I am unsure of the reason) a certain fungus that grows in the mountains on the edge of Tibet. It is called ‘caterpillar fungus’ as it strongly resembles a caterpillar on a stalk. R had arrived at his school to find his pupils had disappeared into the mountains to collect the fungus at it was the season for the mushrooms to appear, so he had the day off and had come to the monastery for personal reasons. A lucky coincidence for us.

With his invitation and negotiation we managed to gain entry into the deepest chambers of the monastery, being able to view and photograph the monks in their prayer hall as they prayed communally with the lama. I walk a dangerous line in writing these things on this blog for fear of incriminating anyone, as we discussed several sensitive political issues regarding the current events in Tibet. The monastery had been subject to several conflicts over the centuries. The ruins that capped the hill beside the current monastery dated from the 18^th or 19^th centuries. The Tibetan invasion and Cultural Revolution also took its toll on the monastery. The monastery was home to about five hundred monks of varying ages and stages of religious study. The government had recently put a restriction on the monastery informing them that they were to limit the number of monks to one hundred. The changes were yet to be enforced when we spoke, but the new rules were definitely mentioned with trepidation and an unnamed implication about the possibility of future conflict surrounding the issue.

We made our way to the school where the novices were being taught. A group of young monks were loitering out the front of the classroom when we appeared, and our arrival caused quite a stir. After a few photographs with the kids and their teachers, the crimson-robed students were herded into the classroom, into which we were invited. We ended up staying for quite some time, through R’s translation discussing a range of things. The monks were equally inquisitive, asking pertinent questions about our homelands, our religious views, as well as philosophy and recent history. They were particularly interested in how Buddhism was viewed and practised in our countries, and were fascinated when I mentioned that many westerners in Australia were converting to Buddhism. Possibly the most harrowing question was: “Are you free to practise any religion in your country?” The troops marching up and down the main street in riot gear gave the answer for their own country.

Eventually R had to return to his school and we decided to climb the hills on either side of the monastery. We wandered around the ruins on the hill overlooking the town. The weather was grey and the view bleak but spectacular from that vantage point, with the town nestled amongst the treeless snowy mountains. We also climbed to the stupa high up from the monastery, and gained an even more complete view of the surrounds, with the main roads diverging from the centre of town to the three directions that the mountains allowed. We spied the military base that was the apparent reason for Yushu still being open – there were so many troops already posted in Yushu prior to the uprisings that the monks stood no chance to start with. Rebecca decided to return to the guesthouse to rest, and Thomas and I decided to climb a little higher. A ‘little higher’ ended up being to the snow line. Battling against the gusting wind and incoming sleet we made it as far as we could go without crampons, the ice making things treacherous at the top of the peak. I had not done much exercise in the last few months, and it felt good to be hiking hard in the crisp mountain air. The views were spectacular, taking in Yushu and the surrounding valleys.

 

I could never have imagined the sight that greeted us as we rounded the corner in the monk-driven minibus. Before us an entire valley had been draped in prayer flags, with long wires spanning the gap and flags fluttering in the breeze. Winding around a corner of rock a small row of stupas and small monastery rendered in red appeared. This was the Princess Wancheng temple. Fortunately a couple of devotees had come to worship at the site and we were allowed entrance into the inner sanctum, where a richly covered chamber with a ceiling higher than the room’s width accommodated a beautiful statue carved from the mountain face. The temple is in honour of a Chinese Princess who, on her way to marry a Tibetan king, paused here for a while to reflect and eventually convert to Buddhism. The statue I believe is of a Buddhist deity. Light from a couple of openings sent shafts through the incense smoke to shine on the various figures in the chamber. In front of these, and other images in the outer chamber, the followers prostrated themselves and washed in holy water. Outside we followed the kora which wound its way past the prayer wall and line of stupas up over the side of the hill overlooking the monastery, through the prayer flags and back down to a valley by the stream that ran past the buildings and road. The flags were in a myriad of colours, flapping in the wind that came down off the surrounding mountains.

From this temple we walked a little further down the road and turned onto a dirt track that eventually led to another small monastery. Carved into the rock face of a cliff was a giant depiction of a Buddha. The scene here was less rich – the buildings inside the walls seemed deserted except for several angry looking dogs barking on the ends of chains. Coupled with the vast plain that stretched emptily across to the mountains in the distance, the whole place had a rather desolate feel. We completed the kora here, too, and then turned south along the hills to find the sky burial site that we knew to exist there. Sky burials were the Tibetans’ way of burying their deceased. The body would be placed upon a stone table in the centre of the site and left for the giant vultures and other birds of prey that can be seen circling in the area. The bodies would often be roughly dismembered by the monks prior to being left in order to aid the spread of the carcass by the birds. This was performed so that the deceased’ souls would be taken to heaven. We did not find any evidence of recent ceremonies. Some bones were scattered around the site, but their origin – human or animal – was unclear. The area contained several stupas and stone structures, and prayer flags draped across the power poles. Again fierce dogs drove us away, and we walked down the hill to hitchhike back into town.

 

There were a couple of sites to visit out of town that required us to find our own transport. The first was a prayer wall or manas a couple of clicks out of town. We began walking, and ended up hailing down the local bus as it passed us. The wall was a combination of a pile of drystone structures around a typically Tibetan sanctum with several stretches of elaborate prayer wheels and stupas. Some of the wheels were monstrous in size and the smaller children and elderly would struggle against the push-beams to get the cylinders moving. What was really fascinating about the complex were the amazing variety of devotees conducting the kora: elderly Tibetan ladies with faces creased and weathered like the surrounding mountains spinning small prayer wheels in their hands, to men with makeshift knee pads and boards on their hands prostrating themselves around the wall, to wealthy Tibetans in clean suits, young and old, conducting the expected devotions.

We had an idea to head to the furthest of the sites, a monastery, from the prayer wall and then making our way back to the other monastery site and eventually back into Yushu. We began trying to hail taxis and negotiating prices with minibus drivers. A young local Tibetan who spoke English at first was friendly and tried to help us, but it soon became clear that all the drivers, including the young Tibetan’s friend who offered us the use of his car, either would refuse to commit to a price prior to leaving or wanted to severely overcharge us. We even began negotiating prices to the closer of the two monasteries, which remained too high or non-committal. Eventually, frustrated, we began walking hoping we might be able to hitch somewhere. Finally one of the minibus drivers at whom I had become very frustrated and wanted to charge us over a hundred yuan for the less that 20km, twenty minute drive to the monastery, took us for twenty yuan to the closer monastery. He proffered his hand as a token of friendship, obviously not wanting to part on bad terms. I felt a little guilty and shook his hand. It was certainly not something a Han Chinese would be concerned with doing.

As we made our way through the monastery complex that was relatively new and clean it appeared absolutely deserted. We finally came to the temple itself where a few young nuns had exited the temple. A large makeshift tent constructed of blue tarpaulins hung over a steel frame stood out the front and several nuns were milling around the entrance. We asked the nuns if it was ok to enter the temple. They indicated that we could enter, but could not take photos. As we entered into the inner sanctum we realised that the entire monastery population as well as many locals had gathered in the sanctum at this time, which accounted for the emptiness outside. The monks, nuns and novices were sitting cross-legged on their benches, engrossed in the ceremony that was proceeding before us. We sat on the floor along one of the walls with the locals who had come to pray.

At first we received coy looks from the locals, curious and slightly suspicious of these foreigners who had come into the temple. Several of the younger novices and nuns gave us sidelong looks accompanied by quiet giggles behind their robes. After sitting for a while, the locals and monks became accustomed to us and realised that we weren’t there just to snap photos but were genuinely interested in the proceedings. They began to ignore us and some of the wisened old devotees who sat spinning their elaborate prayer wheels even gave us a few warm smiles. We stayed in that hall for nearly an hour, just absorbing the proceedings. It soon became clear that we had entered quite an important and special ceremony. Whilst there was little activity it was moving to sit in that dim hall with yak candles giving off a beautiful warm glow and monks serenely shuffling around the hall. The chanting rose and fell in a hypnotic series of prayers. Suddenly a monk dressed in yellow and crimson robes entered, and all rose and either bowed or prostrated themselves before him. This was the apparent reason for the ceremony: a high ranking lama was visiting the monastery. We left soon after, content to let the locals pray in peace.

As we exited a voice from a window in a building up a set of steps called out to us, beckoning us to enter. We climbed up into the room. A couple of sleeping stretchers sat in one corner; in the other by a couple of windows sat the Tibetans who had called out to us. They were surrounded by wood shavings, several tablets of wood and various carving utensils. They were intently carving out the print blocks to make the prayer flags and prayer papers that devotees would throw to the winds. There are many things along my travels that I wish I had had the space to purchase and return home with: none more so than one of these blocks. They were intricate carvings of images of animals surrounded by the inscriptions of Tibetan prayers, produced with the ease of one who had been creating these tablets for a very long time. My companions purchased one, for a high price but happy with this perfect and very genuine souvenir.

We came out of the room and went down the steps. As we passed the bright blue tent we peeked through some cracks in the walls trying to spy what was inside. Countless yak butter candles, burnt to light the way for the souls of the dead as they continue to their next lives, were flickering on tables inside. Suddenly there was a cry followed by a giggle – a nun had snuck up on us and surprised us as we peeked through the cracks. We felt a little guilty but she smiled and beckoned us into the tent. We entered to find tables upon tables of candles, small cups of liquid yak fat with wicks. Nuns wandered around, tending to the flames and refilling cups with liquid fat from a teapot, removing candles that had burnt down to be washed, refilled and relit. We took a couple of photos and thanked the nuns for their hospitality before exiting the stuffy tent. I had wondered why there was a large chunk of tarpaulin flapping in the breeze in the roof of the tent – it was for ventilation from the heat and fumes of the candles.

I felt touched by our experience, and we were quiet in contemplation as we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon walking back to Yushu. We waved to the nuns, who said “Goodbye”, the only other word they knew in English apart from “Hello”. Their smiling faces and the warm expressions of the locals as we left are an image that has burnt itself on my memory. We followed a path that led a gradual descent out of the village and along the line of mountains that created the western boundary of the valley. The trek was long but pleasant; there were clear trails leading the way back to Yushu, with the valley and main road parallel to us down in the valley as we walked. About halfway we spied a throng of schoolchildren exiting a school down in the valley along the main road and making their way up the hill to the village ahead of us. They saw us too, and intercepted us before we got to the houses. They were obsessed with photographs and tussled with each other to ensure they were in the frame. They were friendly children, constantly asking questions in Chinese, some of which I understood and could reply to, many unfortunately I could not comprehend. They led us to a small building in the village, out if which suddenly spilled a classroom full of novices, many of them novice nuns. I felt a little embarrassed at once again interrupting a class, but soon the teacher appeared, eager as her students to have her photograph taken. After countless photos, we decided we had to keep going to reach Yushu before dark. The rest of the trek was uneventful. We came through a village of dour-faced shepherds nodding at our passing. We also spied a few of the giant vultures revered for bringing the dead to the heavens. We got to the prayer wall as rain droplets spattered the road, and jumped on the bus back to Yushu.

 

Yushu had been an intense experience: mostly positive but there had been one scary moment. One of the nights that we were in Yushu I awoke to a commotion outside the door. Down the hall there was some shouting and banging. I took little notice and began to doze off. Suddenly my door shook as someone banged and tried the handle. I sprung awake but froze, my heart thumping in my mouth and my hand clinging to the flick-knife under my pillow. The man on the other side of the door continued to bang and call out something in either Chinese or Tibetan that I couldn’t understand. So many things ran through my mind. I had heard of people in these regions being rudely awakened by Chinese police demanding to know what their intentions were in the politically sensitive regions. The man could have been a thief, hoping I would be stupid enough to open the door so that he could barge in and demand my valuables. I had heard some commotions earlier and in the last night, and so I presumed the guy was probably some drunk Tibetan searching for someone. In any case, he continued to try and break the door down for a good twenty minutes before giving up and continuing to cause a commotion down the hall. I didn’t sleep much that night with every noise and movement beyond my door waking me. I showed my companions the dents in the door that the guy had inflicted, the pair being unaware that it was my door that he had been attacking.

Despite this, as I examine the photos of this leg, it is the flashing crimson robes of the smiling novices, the spectacular mountain scenery of vast valleys flanked by barren snow-capped mountains, the gloomy serene interiors of gilded monasteries and the flapping rainbow strings of prayer flags against a crystal blue alpine sky that will forever remind me of Yushu.

Songpan

            Songpan involved many firsts. It was the first time I had been to such an altitude. It was the first time I had ridden a horse for such a length of time. It was also the first time that peculiar aspects of the Chinese nature first began to itch my sensibilities.

            The greatest memory is the landscape. Whilst New Zealand can claim the title of being the first place I viewed a landscape of such gargantuan proportions, the ranges that lead to the Tibetan plateau are certainly on a scale beyond anything the isle across the Tasman could offer. I also only climbed to a measly 1900m in New Zealand. On the trek to Bing Shan, or Ice Mountain, our final ascent we calculated must have reached at least 4500m. The trek rose from Songpan, already at 2000m and situated amongst some hills dotted with birch trees but obviously having been cleared for pasture, into a steadily more alpine environment and some towering mountains. The photos will speak for themselves. The base camp from which we ascended to the mountain was at 3500m, and as it was early in the season, I awoke to a crisply frozen tent in the morning. The days were pleasant and warm.

            The horse aspect went pretty well without a hitch. I was saddle sore after riding for the couple of days. It was slow going, too. The horses looked underfed and overworked, and were temperamental to say the least. There were some steep, treacherous climbs, too. Ankle-deep mud churned up by the countless hooves plying the trail and slippery scree all on the edge of steep drops into distant valleys made some of the sections a little perturbing. I also learnt that the horses were easily spooked. I was reaching round to take my water from my pack when the horse suddenly bucked past the other horses until I could calm it and get it under control. All this done on one of the above-mentioned paths made for a heart-stopping moment.

            The landscape was not pristine, being the domain of Tibetan herders and a constant flow of travellers. But one particular habit of the Chinese certainly made itself apparent on the trek: a complete disregard for the environment and ignorance about the effects of rubbish on the environment and environmental health. On the bus rides to and from Songpan, besides the systematic destruction of natural water flows by countless hydroelectric dams, mountains of rubbish were seen strewn down waterways and off cliffs. The lady in front of me on the ride back to Chengdu from Songpan had no qualms with wrapping her rubbish up in a plastic bag and tossing it out of the window of the moving bus. On the trek, too, this disregard for the consequences of abandoning refuse was evident. Around the hill from the camping ground a small pile of rubbish was accumulating next to the stream, all this in an otherwise intact natural landscape. I had filled a plastic bottle with water on the return journey to Songpan to ensure I had enough to hydrate me, having not had enough water on the previous day. We left the horses for a stretch as the descent was too steep for them to carry us and luggage. Upon rejoining the horses I searched for my water, which was nowhere in my luggage. I asked the head guide where it could be. He indicated that it had come loose and had been thrown off the edge of the track, which was confirmed by another traveller. Not only was I frustrated that a full bottle had been discarded, which meant that I was once again left without sufficient water, but that the bottle was plastic and was to join the rest of the refuse by the wayside, to spend the next several thousand years finally decaying.