Kangding, China
(sorry, lots of pictures because it’s so pretty)
Up early for a short drive to Tagong, at 3800m altitude. I took a minibus and it seemed like every 15 minutes we had a ‘photo stop’. Yes the scenery was nice but I didn’t want to get out of the warm car all the time into the cold morning altitude air! We passed snow-capped mountains, grassland hills peppered with grazing yaks, and more Tibetan decorations including mantras carved into the hills in white. We stopped at a Tibetan house for some yak milk yogurt – after pretty much no dairy for 5 months this was heaven to me, and spurred my yak-yogurt addiction in Tagong (I spent a lot of money on yogurt there!). So the Tibetans are pretty well-off; they make their money from selling yak products like the milk, meat and hair. They never kill the yaks, but only use their meat if they die naturally or by an ‘accident’ – whether that be from wolves, old age, or just if they are fighting with each other and one of them kills the other. There are so many yaks that they have no shortage of meat even without killing them. The Tibetans take Buddhism a lot more seriously than the Chinese, and they won’t kill any living things. In fact their prayers are often to help all living things (as opposed to the Chinese prayers which tend to be ‘I want… I want…’). The food in Tibet is also very different. Lots of dairy which is great, yak meat, lots of carbohydrates, not too many vegetables though. So I arrived in Tagong and found a Tibetan household to stay in. They have lots of guestrooms now and I was happy to find a lot of other travellers in Tagong, from all over the world. Despite this, the place wasn’t at all touristy. The guesthouse was just lovely – unbelievably colourful, with paintings and decorations everywhere in my dorm room, even the ceiling. There was a big table downstairs with bread and tea. And only £2.50 a night!
We headed to a nearby café for lunch, which is run by a Czech guy so he gave us lots of advice on hikes and things to see. Tagong is basically a very small town (only one street) surrounded by grasslands, monasteries, yaks and nomad tents (the nomads follow the yak herds around in the summer months and so stay in tents by the yaks). This café is the main traveller hang-out of the town and I found myself there for most meals and in the evenings. They served really good Tibetan food as well as Western favourites like tomato soup and hot chocolate!
The first day after lunch I went for a walk with a Swiss couple, around the nearby hills. We came across a Tibetan family who were hanging out in the grass enjoying the sunshine. The dad was napping under a propped-up umbrella, and the children were in a pop-up tent doing some homework with tutoring from an older sister. They didn’t speak much Mandarin and we didn’t speak any Tibetan but we managed to understand a few things from hand gestures. One of the kids made bracelets for us out of the flowers, and they were interested in our cameras. After hanging out in the grass with them for a while, we walked on up a big hill, which was very difficult at altitude! Great views from the top of endless grassland and distant mountains.
The next day, along with a group from my dorm, I walked a couple of hours to get to a big annual horse racing festival across the hills. We were lucky that this was on while we were in Tagong! There were so many people there, racing across the grasslands on their motorbikes, shouting and chanting, and many Tibetan tents selling food. Horse racing is a big part of Tibetan tradition and it happens in all the towns along the highway. Some people had come all the way from Chengdu to see this big one in Tagong! All the horses were very dressed up and decorated. Before the race started everyone crowded around in a circle while the horses were paraded around, and prayer ‘confetti’ with mantras and pictures of horses on were thrown around. One of them landed on me, maybe that’s good luck. Then everyone started making their way up the hill, so we followed. After a while of waiting we wondered what was going on, then found out the horses were already racing – the race is all the way from Tagong itself! I got out my binoculars and after a while could see the horses in the distance. They came up the hill opposite us and everyone started whooping and cheering. A black horse won the race. Apparently people pay a lot of money to enter this race, but the prize if you win is also a lot of money (30,000RMB I think). Because of the religion, it’s not really the done thing to bet on a horse if you are not in the race, but it is a very big event nonetheless. After the race there was some crazy activity where the men on the horses would run from one point to another and try and pick things off the ground whilst on the horse! And then it started to rain and get really cold so the fun was over.
Being cold again after 4 months of 30+degrees heat is NOT fun. I thought northern Sichuan was cold, but it has nothing on this! Tagong was warm in the day but could get really cold at night or if it rained. After the races, I walked to the nearby nunnery which was lovely – the monasteries and nunneries here are like villages; different houses, nuns outside gardening or walking along the road. I asked one nun if I could take a picture of her in the field, instead she walked over to me and seemed to want me to take a selfie of us together! I also visited a temple where there was reindeer randomly. Hitched back to Tagong from the nunnery (hitching is commonplace in the Tibetan villages and very safe especially as most of the people riding around are monks!).
The next day unfortunately the weather was still bad but I decided to go out on a long hike to another monastery. I got out of Tagong through a small village, past a horse field and a temple that was being constructed, when I encountered some angry village-dogs who didn’t want me to pass. Ok fine, I’ll walk back slowly and find another route… suddenly some more dogs heard that these other dogs were barking at me, and started running towards me. I just kept slowly walking back down the road, but soon I was surrounded by dogs barking at me and running along with me, it seemed like they were about to attack and it was so scary! As soon as I was out of the way of the dogs a huge cow with horns started walking towards me and because I was in a scared mood I then thought the cow was going to attack me. Luckily I was OK but it was a close call especially as most of the dogs they have here are huge and you can hardly tell the difference between them and the wolves. Only after I’d got back to the town did I remember the survival tip I learnt in South America – if a dog is about to attack you, bend down and pretend to pick up a rock (or actually pick up a rock, and throw it if necessary) – the dogs know what that gesture means and will back off. Some of the dogs in the grasslands are crazy and there are so many of them, so that’s the last time I go hiking by myself, and now I’m really scared of all the dogs that hang around the towns (the majority of them are fine…).
So instead, I visited the monastery in the square which was lovely as they always are. There was some kind of American Buddhist school going on inside one of the temples which was funny. I definitely think Tibetan Buddhism is more of a religion, with the reciting mantras and praying – in the West we see it as more of a philosophy. You have to be careful when exploring the temples – hats off, shoes off, walk around clockwise. People were doing rituals in one of the temples where they would touch the top of their head against the statues, whilst walking around clockwise.
Afterwards I joined up with an Australian girl, a Spanish lady and a Swiss guy (quite a mix of nationalities!) to go and see a spectacular display of Tibetan religious art, spread out for miles along the side of the road. All along the hills by the river were hundreds and thousands of rocks – whether put there by the monks or created by landslides, I’m not sure. Every single one of these rocks had been carved with Tibetan mantras, and coloured white – the bigger rocks depicted Buddhist deities, carved and painted with many colours. Even the rocks in the river had been decorated! It was quite simply incredible. Apparently every winter, when there is not much to do (they don’t really work here, they just make money off the yak products), the monks will come here and re-do every stone. Talk about dedication (or, as one guy said, ‘a waste of time’. Depends how you look at it I guess…).
It started to rain pretty heavily at this point so we hitched back and I went and lay in bed for a while to get warm. Later on I went for another walk up the nearby hills with some French guys but I started feeling not too good so I went back to bed and had a nap. Woke up later for some momos which are kind of like the Tibetan version of dumplings, filled with yak meat and vegetables. Tasty, but I think I prefer the Chinese version. Tibetan food is very starchy and filling. I met some travellers who had just arrived and carried with them 5 dice for playing Yahtzee. Genius! Why don’t more people carry cards or dice? I love Yahtzee so that was a fun evening.
I would have loved to stay in Tagong longer because it was so beautiful and interesting – possibly my favourite place in China so far. It was like a whole other country and culture, and so quiet, chilled out, green and fresh. Life moved at a leisurely pace. But, I thought I had better get on – the roads can be unpredictable here especially as the weather had been bad, and I didn’t want to get stuck somewhere. My next stop would be Litang which would be my last place in Sichuan.
Liane's Travel Diary 