Sunday, May 08, 2005

First stage of the Dokerla (多克拉) trek


dokerla, originally uploaded by mutikonka1.

After we visited Cizhong we walked north for a day along the road towards Deqin that followed the Mekong. We wanted to find the entrance to the Londjre gorge and possibly tackle the Doker La. We found the entrance to the gorge all right [see black and white pic below] but it was over the river and we couldn't get across! There wasn't even a rope bridge - or anyone else there. Instead, we continued on for about 5km to a small village just south of Yunling, where there was a small bridge over the river.

He we crossed, saw the small temple, and hiked up to a small village called Yongju. Here we ran out of steam - it was late in the day and the clouds had completely covered the ridge so we didn't know which way we were going. We stayed the night at a local farm, where the farmer told us the Doker la was compately snowed in for another month [it was mid April]. So reluctantly we turned back the next day and returned to the road, where we caught the daily bus to Deqin.



yetzi
View from the river at about 2000m, looking up towards Yongjiu (永久).

cliffs
A view up to the ridge separating the Mekong and Nujiang, from near Cizhong.

balloon
The good farmer of Yongjiu (永久) who put us up for the night and let us sleep on his floor.

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