High in the hills on horseback

After tearing ourselves away from the timewarp that was Sim's Cozy hostel in Chengdu, we went back up into the Sichuanese hills, to the north this time. This is the first real change of plan since my first entry on this blog, where I said we'd take the ferry eastwards from Sichuan, along the Yangzi river towards Shanghai. We've since decided that the three-day Yangzi ferry would probably be too full of noisy Chinese tourists with no sense of personal space. And the route north from Sichuan into Gansu province sounded interesting, and the backroads routes we've taken so far have been some of the best things we've done in China. So now the plan is to travel via another ethnically Tibetan region up to the city of Lanzhou, from where we will take the train (woo hoo, no more buses for a while) to Xi'an for the Terracotta Army, then all the way over to Qingdao (home of China's most famous beer, Tsingtao) on the east coast. From there you can take a ferry over to Japan.

Our first stop north of Chengdu was Songpan, ethnically a bit Tibetan but actually 60% Muslim. The done thing in Songpan is to take multi-day horse treks - we decided on a three-day trip up to the so-called Ice Mountain. Usually this trip takes four days and three nights, but a number of people had already booked it for three days (two nights) and we weren't convinced that three nights in a tent at over 3000 metres was all that enticing a prospect.

Our vehicles await, just outside our hostel in Songpan


So three days it was. However, the downside to this was that we spent at least five hours each day in the saddle, and about seven hours on the middle day. Oof. Mind you, the horses had it much worse, lugging our heavy western bodies up incredibly steep mountain paths; towards the end of the second hour of steep climbing on the second day, the horses understandably paused every now and then to catch their breath, and were promptly whipped by any nearby guide and made to continue climbing. Faye felt so bad for her horse that she got off and walked at one point. She soon regretted this when she had to run to catch her steed up and her lungs reminded her angrily that she was at high altitude.

It was all well worth the pain though. The views, especially on the way up to the plateau just underneath Ice Mountain, were fabulous, the group was great fun, and even the camp food was far better than either the Lonely Planet or the Rough Guide had given it credit for.

Developing my bandy-legged swagger


Yes, we all bought the same cowboy hats beforehand. They were only 65p each


We think the ten or so guides all slept under this rudimentary tent. We don't know because we were in bed by nine every night and they got up at the crack of dawn.


On the way up to the Ice Mountain. The horse is probably indifferent to the scenery at this stage.


We (or they) made it! Ice Mountain.


The stragglers


After this brief lunch we had to walk all the way back down. My sympathy for my horse soon faded.


My trusty steed was called Deifu, I think, so I decided to call him Tofu Dave. What a legend!


After seven hours in the saddle, this fireside log may have been the reason for our early night (but not before a stunning rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody)