I have just revisited the 'lost' mountain of Muti Konka (Chinese: 麦地贡嘎 Maidi Gangga) in Jiulong county (九龙县), Garze, Sichuan, which I first visited in 2004. I wrote a lengthy
At that time there was only a rough road down the Yangwe Kong valley, which we travelled by Landcruiser to Sanyanlong (三岩龙). From there we had to ride horses (mules) to get up the steep hills to Mundon and eventually to the lake at the base of Muti Konka.
Not surprisingly, there have been many developments in the region over the last two decades. On my trip back there in October 2025, I found that there is now a good highway into the Sanyanlong valley, and also now a rough 4WD gravel track that leads up into the hills and eventually to Mundon, via the mountain lake.
I travelled courtesy of botanist Professor Zhu Dan of Sichuan university, who organised the trip with his usual skilled driver Jiang Yong, and accompanied by anthropology expert Professor Wang Liang, of Nantong University.
It took us just over two hours on a smooth tarmac road to get to Sanyanlong, via the Wuxu Hai (伍须海) road - the lake has now been developed as a tourist attraction, with several guesthouses in the village, but the gatehouse to the location appeared to be closed to visitors when we passed. Because it was dark I did not get to see much of the Druderon Pass and Kangwo Shan mountain this time round, but I got good photos on my first trip.
The village Sanyanlong is almost the end of the road before the valley runs down to the Yalong River. It is now a bit more developed that the collection of wooden houses that I saw 20 years ago - there are a few concrete buildings and even blue neon decorated street lamps. Last time I had to lodge with locals but now there is a hotel - the 'Mengdong People's Guesthouse' (猛董家人酒店) - although we opted to stay at a more informal simpler homestay place run by a Pumi family, which had four-people rooms.
The reason for this was that we wanted to keep a low profile in regard to county officials, as my colleagues did not have permission to accompany a foreigner into this area. The ruse did not work because we received a visit from the local cops the next morning after we had finished breakfast, and had to do a bit of explaining as to what we were doing in the valley. It all got sorted amicably after our driver flashed his official-looking badge from the Sichuan government.
We had a late dinner in Sanyanlong and the local people were very friendly, although one bloke was a bit too friendly after having had a bit too much to drink. The locals were mostly Pumi people and they were fascinated to see the photos I had taken twenty years ago - although none remembered seeing me. They recognised my guide/sponsor Wang Qi in the photos and said he had now retired from his official post as head of the education department in Jiulong and had moved to Chengdu. The police we met the next morning also said they knew Wang Qi and even said they would pass on my phone number to him!
The next morning we got in the Landcruiser and set off to try find the new road/track that according to the map would take us up to the mountain. We missed the turnoff on the first attempt, and ended up driving half the way down to the river, until we met a local bloke who told us - among other things - that there was now a ferry service running on the Yalong river between the Sanyanlong valley and Maidilong and Bawolong. He also put us in the right direction for the mountain road, to which we backtracked about a kilometre to a bridge. The road was good tarmac initially, with a series of switchbacks until it reached a ridge. This then led west to the village of Lawaling (which I visited on my previous trip).
After opening a gate across the road, we stopped at the village, but there appeared to be almost nobody around. We found one nice old lady who chatted to us and tried to sell us some songrong mushrooms. There was a great view far down into the canyon to the river from her back yard, similar to a photo taken by Joseph Rock.
Walking further up the road we met a couple of guys sorting potatoes and bits of dried mushroom/fungus, who told us the road was now good to get up to Muti Konka, the lake called Chang Haizi (长海子), and beyond to Mengdong.
Beyond Lawaling the road was just a gravel track and after an hour of twists and turns and a few false trails we arrived at the lake beneath the mountain. On my 2004 visit this had been an idyllic setting of an alpine lake with with blue water reflecting the white snowy peak of the Muti Konka mountain and its ridgeline. There had been just a single stone hut occupied by a family of yak herders. In 2025 there were now a handful of Chinese sightseers who had also arrived by 4WD. This time the weather was cloudy and it was raining, so we had no views of the mountain, or even of the lake. There were now a couple of concrete buildings at the lake, and some construction was going on to build a bigger structure, which I assumed would be a visitor centre.
After dodging a truck delivering some stone materials, we chatted to a local guy who turned out to be the same bloke who had been here 20 years ago. He was wearing one of the traditional Pumi yak-hair smocks, edged with red wool. He said he remembered me from my 2004 visit and remarked that my article and the publicity around it had led to a surge in visitors to the lake, for which he was grateful!
He took us into his 'kitchen' where we sat down to have some butter tea and yak yoghurt. Then I was introduced to his wife who also remembered me from 2004 and pointed out that she was the one in my photos milking a yak!
Since it was raining, we remained in the kitchen for an hour or so, chatting about the changes to the area. The couple told me that they now had a lot of visitors to the lake, who came mostly by 4WD, as there was now a circular circuit road through the mountains, to and from the Jiulong valley road. They said the new construction was for a bigger yak pen, not a guesthouse. We posed for lots of photos and videos and added each other as WeChat friends.
Jiang Yong then drove us up from the lake to Mengdong village, which took about an hour along the new gravel track - a trip we had previously done with horses. It wasn't a great road, but not that bad either. The weather was very cloudy and foggy, and sadly we did not get to see the great clear views over the canyon that I had enjoyed on my previous visit.
On arriving at Mengdong, we found that it was deserted. The tiny temple was still there, but the previous five or six buildings appeared to have been demolished, and there was nobody present at the one remaining home. There were a couple of out buildings and a couple of temporary marquee-type tents, bit not a single souls at the hamlet that had previously been home to two or three families, including children. We could only speculate that this was simply too remote a spot for subsistence farming. We'd also learned that the school I had previously visited in Sanyanlong had closed, with local children now educated by boarding at ''good' schools in Jiulong, which were able to attract higher quality teachers and have better facilities than the basic place that I'd seen in this remote valley.
With little to see and nobody to talk to, we didn't linger for long at Mengdong. It was about 3pm when we got back in the Landcruiser and crawled and twisted back along the gravel track' over the ridge back to Chang Haizi. We did not stop here on the return trip, but continued on back in the direction of Sanyanlong. We took a couple of wrong turns and had to backtrack until we found the right road, which seemed to be of much poorer quality o the return leg. So it was a relief to regain the tarmac road as we neared Lawaling, and to descend to the Sanyanlong valley and 'speed' back to Jiulong.
No longer worried about the attention of local officials, we checked in to a posh hotel costing 300 yuan a night and had a great hotpot dinner to celebrate our success in getting to the mountain.
Postscript: A few days later when we returned to Chengdu I was amazed and delighted to get a phone call from Lamu, the daughter of Wang Qi. My phone number had been passed on to him by the cops in Sanyanlong, and he had asked his daughter to call me and try arrange a reunion. Fortunately I was able to understand her Mandarin, as she told me how they now had a house in Chengdu, and we arranged to meet up the next afternoon. After adding each other as WeChat contacts, she sent me the details of a cafe in the north west of the city where we arranged to meet up.
It was in a part of the city popular with Amdo Tibetans, because this was where the traditionally tended to arrive in the city from the north west, whereas the other Tibetan quarter in the Wuhou district to the southwest was popular with Kham Tibetans, as this was the direction from which they arrived in Chengdu.
The cafe where we met was popular with young people as a place to get 'da ka' (打卡, checking in) photos for social media. It was full of flowers and fancy decorations, and I was greeted by Lamu accompanied by two younger nieces who sat glued to their phones for much of our time together.
Lamu was recognisable from her photos though she was no longer an awkward teenager but a 40-year old mum of two kids. She spoke very clear Mandarin in a direct, friendly and down-to-earth manner that I remembered from other Tibetans. She also spoke in a confident, informed and concise way that I was familar with from having worked with doctors most of my life.
Back in 2004, Lamu had just started studying at a Chengdu medical school. She told me she had worked as a doctor for a decade after graduating, but had become tired of the constant pressure of the job and the 24/7 'always on call' nature of the medical profession. She had therefore given it up a few years ago to focus instead on setting up a Tibetan-style guesthouse back in her hometown of Jiulong. She showed me some photos and video of the ornate place and invited me to stay there on my next visit.
As we sipped our teas and coffees, she remarked on how time had passed so quickly and she now had a rebellious blue-haired teenage daughter and a headstrong son to deal with. She showed me a lot of family photos on her phone, including many taken on visits to distant Tibetan relatives who lived in places such as Danba and Daocheng. To me these were 'exotic' places on the Tibetan plateau, but to her they were just everyday destinations to catch up with family.
Referring to me as 'Uncle Michael' she insisted that I send her copies of all the photos I had taken on my 2004 trip, and showed them off to her young nieces, pointing out to them the family members who had since died, and how young the others had looked back then.
We sat around and chatted in this way for a couple of hours until she announced that we would be going to dinner with her father and the rest of the family, who she said were very excited at the prospect of meeting me again.
We walked to a nice restaurant about a block away, where I was delighted to meet again with Wang Qi and his wife. He was now in his seventies and much thinner than the teddy-bearish figure who had escorted me to Muti Konka twenty years ago. As we sat down to have a great dinner of chicken hotpot, duck 'wraps', accompanied by a carafe of very drinkable red wine, he told me in his gruff voice that he had suffered from heart disease and had lost weight since having a heart bypass operation a few years ago.
The heart disease had been due to too much eating, drinking and smoking, he told me, and he now led a much healthier lifestyle. Over a couple of hours we discussed what we had been both been doing in the intervening 20 years - he told me about the massive changes in Jiulong, how the town had become modernised and was now firmly on the tourist route thanks to the new highways and tunnels that had cut journey times from places like Chengdu and Kangding. We looked though my photos and he told me what had happened to each of the colourful Tibetan and Pumi characters I had captured with my Olympus XA camera. He said the photos were very precious, and the only record of many of their family members and neighbours.
They also listened with admiration as I told them about my recent bike trip along the Yellow River, praising me for my accomplishment and saying I was fortunate to still be in good health in my sixties.
Wang Qi was a man of few words, and it took his daughter Lamu to get him to open up a bit and expand on several subjects. He told me that our visit to Mengdong was the last time he had visited to his home village, and he confirmed that few if any people remained there. As his daughter remarked, young people just did not want to live that kind of hard and remote lifestyle any more, especially after they had been educated in the 'big city' like Jiulong. They wanted the same as everyone else - nice restaurants and shops, a decent apartment and the latest smartphone - not 'herding cows all day' on a remote hillside.
Lamu also joked that none of them had been good at riding horses and they were not accustomed to living at high altitude, so they were not like the stereotype of traditional Tibetans.
I was sad at the end of the evening when our reunion was over - we said our farewells on the street after taking a few photos together. But at least I now had an invitation to go back and stay in Jiulong again at the new hotel 'next to the lake' that was run by Lamu. Looking back at my photos and journal entries for my 'Muti Konka' trip in 2004, I would never have imagined us meeting up again, nor the massive changes that I would see and experience on my return visit.
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