Our two-week journey through the Kham region of eastern Tibet was great fun but also quite an endurance test, so we approached the trip north from Songpan to the northern city of Lanzhou with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. The route would take us through more high altitude Tibetan territory with a good smattering of very holy monasteries and scenic hikes. In the event, the experience the second time around was missing something - perhaps it was the group we'd been with in Kham; but anyway to be perfectly honest by the time we reached Xiahe, home to one of the six most important monasteries in Tibetan Buddhism, we couldn't wait to get back down to lowland Han China - the real thing.
From Songpan we took an early morning bus, past an accident involving another bus and what looked alarmingly like a petrol tanker, to a village called Langmusi, perched at 3600m right on the border between Sichuan and its northern neighbour Gansu province. It was a beautiful journey across a huge flat plateau, ringed on all sides by distant snowy mountains. Langmusi itself was in an attractive setting, with craggy bare cliffs on one side and a forested mountain on the other. It was just a shame that the clouds were so low and visibility not that good. Still, the next morning we set off at a brisk pace to climb to the top of the craggy cliffs, which the English-speaking Tibetan at our hotel had said was one of the easiest walks. The brisk pace lasted until the first uphill slope. It took us a good half day to get up and down, and from a starting altitude of 3600m it was hard going. But, as you may be tired of reading, the 360-degree views from the top made all the effort worth the while.
There were plenty of the usual Tibetan characters in town, although perhaps without the flair of the Litang locals.
The following day we woke up to snow (in late May!), which made my sunburnt neck from the previous day's hike seem a little weird. It was time to move on, although not before another delicious homemade apple pie at a famous (on the China backpacker grapevine anyway) Westerner cafe called Lesha's. I must say the huge yak burgers (McYak Attack) were a little overrated though - and no one challenged me to a Big Yak-off. Very disappointing.
Arriving in Xiahe early evening, I had a quick look at the huge monastery complex, which takes up half the town. It looked fascinating - loads of Tibetan pilgrims and locals milling around, praying, spinning prayer wheels, selling roadside snacks, sitting on donkey-drawn carts. So much was going on that you could wander around and observe fairly anonymously, which is quite an unusual feeling anywhere in China.
But the next morning, for whatever reason, travel fatigue had set in, and I longed for a more familiar setting with more familiar faces. After this long in China, a normal Chinese town or city would actually have fitted the bill nicely. I'd started to find the Tibetan way of life dirty, cold, uncomfortable, and rather pointless in its incredible religiosity. I sat for about half an hour and watched pilgrims walking around the perimeter of the monastery complex, spinning the prayer wheels which almost completely encircle it. Some of the more pious pilgrims were undertaking the circuit not merely by walking and spinning prayer wheels, but by shuffling sideways facing inwards towards the monastery, and at each step prostrating themselves fully, forehead, chest and knees in the dust - all the way around the complex. One man, who I assumed to be in his twenties but later realised was more like 50, was circuiting the monastery at a rate of two foot-widths per prostration (his own two feet, not 24 inches). In 30 minutes I watched him move about 20 metres clockwise around the perimeter. It would take over an hour to walk at a decent speed right around the monastery (I meant to do it but in the end couldn't be bothered), so for this pilgrim to complete his torturous, dusty circuit would surely take all day.
The man in the middle, lying down, is the incredibly devout pilgrim in question
I found myself feeling very sorry for him, and hoping that the circuit was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, which would give him a great sense of achievement on completion. But what if he did this regularly, even (surely not) every day? I couldn't understand how someone could believe that this was what they needed to do with their life. It seemed like a horrible form of self-punishment. What did he think would happen to him if he didn't spend his hours, days, throwing himself at the dust? Why should any higher power or being look favourably on what to me seemed a complete waste of time and energy? (You might say that, being a Buddhist, he wasn't worshipping anyone or anything, but simply trying to attain enlightenment through a pure life. But from what I've read, Tibetan Buddhists do indeed worship a large number of gods.)
I wondered what he was thinking when the walking worshippers overtook him, and even the exciting moment (well, period) when two people prostrating themselves at shoulder-width intervals raced past him. Did he look down on these heathens, who obviously didn't know that Buddha and co. required six-inch intervals rather than triple that? Did he feel pity and a desire to help them find the way? Or was the pain in his back, knees and arms too great to notice them at all?
Yes, mixed with my feelings of pity for these devout souls was a little contempt, I admit. I regret that - after all who am I to say that I'm right and they're wrong. But as I said, I woke up seriously jaded from the whole travel thing - on another day I might have found the spectacle fascinating and even moving.
I had a couple of run-ins in the monastery itself which didn't help my feeling. First, a stern monk with good English told me I had done something very bad for my life when I was apparently standing in the wrong place at the wrong time in one of the temples, despite the fact that I was no more than three yards from two separate groups of European tourists. I didn't appreciate the threat implicit in his words - I had obviously meant no disrespect. Then, walking around the edge of the complex, three young boys came up to me smiling and, I assume, asking for sweets. I smiled back, but because I didn't have anything for them, they started jabbing me then chucking little stones at me. They were only little so it's not that it was threatening, but all I could do was walk away and wonder why the adults around them didn't do more to stop them harrassing me.
What I was missing about Han China was the friendliness and innocence. Yes, often the Chinese stare at you, but if you smile they usually give you a wide grin in return, and there's nothing threatening whatsoever about their curiosity. Some Tibetans, who for a start are much bigger and look a lot harder than the Chinese, seem more suspicious than curious, and as a result I sometimes felt that my presence was not welcome. Of course, considering their recent history, the Tibetans have more reason than most to distrust outsiders. And I must say I rarely got that unwelcome feeling on our first trip through Tibetan land, so it may have been more down to my own feeling of not belonging than from the locals.
Monks' footwear at Labrang Monastery at Xiahe
One of the many beautiful temples
Anyway, I was ready to get down to Lanzhou, back to warm weather, meat other than yak, and - finally - the rail network! It had been two and a half months of bouncing along in buses with my knees too near my chest since our last train ride, from Guizhou into Yunnan.
Faye and the very speedy Yellow River in Lanzhou
...and yet another cracking Chinese meal
