Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Jambeyang and Chanadorje 夏诺多吉 : by Rolleiflex (Kodak Ektachrome)

Not sure if I've posted this before but here it is: a great picture of the two mountains Jambeyang (left) and Chanadorje. Taken in late may on the third day of the kora around the three Yading peaks. It's taken from the 'cliff walk' just before crossing the high shoulder pass and heading up the Yetchesura valley. It is looking back at the way we have just come, on the right you can see the valley leading down from the Yaka pass and Chanadorje.




Tuesday, June 09, 2015

A treasure trove of reading material on Kham and western China


If you are like me and love reading the accounts of explorers in SW China and Tibet I have a nice little resource for your perusal - a whole load of online books by some of the notable names in this field. I'm talking about the likes of Frank Kingdon Ward, Sven Hedin, Ernest Henry Wilson and Eric Teichman. Scans of these old book have been uploaded by someone in India as part of a much wider website on the Himalayas: pahar.in. They are to be found in the Tibet section in that link. I have spent many weekends browsing second hand bookshops looking for many of these books, and now they are all there for the downloading. It takes all the fun out of it really!
I would recommend the book by Nakamura, which has a brief account of th Kawa karpo kora that he did when it was still an unexplored route in 1996 - and some excellent photos (see above).
Well, to accompany this discovery I will also include a photo taken with my Rolleiflex camera on my most recent trip into Tibet - this picture taken from Aben/Abing village (the north end) overlooking an eastern tributary of the Nujiang. It looks a lot wilder than I remember. Enjoy.


Monday, June 08, 2015

P-40 fighter, Kunming, 1944

I haven't posted in a while because i don;t have much to report. Since my last trip to Yunnan in October I have updated a chapter in my e-book about Joseph Rock's expeditions, which is still in the process of being edited by the guys at Camphor Press.
So in the meantime I will post some beautiful colour pictures of wartime Kunming, taken in 1944 for a US air force guy called H. Allen Larsen. He has published many more in a book called China in the Eyes of the Flying Tigers - I bought it at the Flying Tigers Museum in Kunming.
The photos give an impression of what the city would have been like in Rock's time.


Kunming 1944


Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming 1944


Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming canals, 1944


Interesting to see how the canals  - and the centre of Kunming - have changed so much in the last 80 years!.
Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming street scene, 1944


Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming 1944



Photo by H. Allen Larsen - from the book China in the Eyes of the Flying Tigers

Yunnan, 1944


Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming kid, 1944


Photo by H. Allen Larsen