Thursday, January 15, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Will be posting more pics soon
I'm in the middle of scanning 12 rolls of Ektachrome transparencies and 8 rolls of 120 film trannies taken with the Rolleicord. Should be done soon and will start posting about rhe latest trip to Qiunatong and Baihanluo - as mentioned by Rock in his article about the Salween (Nujiang), Mekong and Yangtze valleys, Through the Great River Trenches of Asia in the National Geographic of August 1926.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Christmas Day boozing at Baihanluo
This is more like it. One of the pictures I took using slide film with my ancient (1950s vintage) Rolleicord Vb medium format camera. Look at the detail! This was one of the pictures I took on Christmas day after we hiked up to the Catholic church at Baihanluo and found the whole village celebrating by drinking copious amounts of corn liquor aka shuijiu.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Kangding in winter
[Old pic of minya Konka trip from 1998]
Had a bath yesterday. It was the highlight of my week. Probably the highest altitude bath I've ever had. It was in a hot spring, about five miles out of the mountain town of Kangding, almost 4000m above sea level. I went up there on the bus on Saturday and soon discovered that it was very cold. Nice clear blue skies (unlike smoggy Chengdu) but very very cold. The town is half Chinese and half Tibetan, but everyone regardless of ethnicity was wearing earmuffs and face masks or scarves wrapped around their faces. It was so cold the phlegm had frozen on the pavement.
I'd been here before about five years ago in the spring and started a trek from here, in the foothills above Kangding. So once I'd kitted myself out with some earmuffs and a nice scarf and some long johns, I set off walking up the hill into what had once been a deserted valley and the start of the Minya Konka trek. Last time there's just been a scattered Tibetan village up this valley, a few log cabins. This time I got a bit of a shock because it was full of newly built luxury apartments, all being sold off the plan under the banner "Draw the Elite Card"??? And if you fancy buyng one they start from 4000 kuai a square metre, or about $100k in our money.
Once I got past the fancy real estate block, there was the old village of Yulin, looking quite neglected - but the hot baths were still there. Just a few brick cubicles covered with cheap corrugated green plastic. I paid my 15 kuai and ran the hot water till the bath (about 1m square sunk in thre ground) filled up. And I had a nice 45 minutes soak under the shadow of the 5000m snow peaks of the Minya Konka range. It must have been grannies half price day because the other cubicles seemed to be filled with an old ladies outing up from the town.
After my bath, feeling quite refreshed and a bit less smelly, I traipsed up the rough track through the village - no easy thing as after a few steps I was out of breath because of the altitude. I was looking for the Tibetan guy who'd acted as my guide and horse wrangler on the last trip. But all I found was three blokes holding down a shaved pig in buckets of hot water, ladling steaming water over it and scraping off the last few bits of hair as one of them sharpened his knife. The pig didn't look very happy.
I didn't hang around to watch.
At the top of the next hill I found a Tibetan family in their back yard trying to corral some of their horses into the back of the van with a big stick. I asked about the possibility of trekkking up to the Gongga monastery but I knew the answer before they spoke. The guy said it was possible, but why would anyone want to go at this time of year when the place was barren, the snow thick on the hills and the days so cold and so short it would be hard going? I looked up at the first peak visible, Jiazifeng, and realised this would be as close as I would get ... it was up there some where that the Lonely Planet writer Clem Lindenmayer had died of exposure last year after wandering off the trekking trail and getting stuck in a snow fall. And that was in May. Not a wise idea to try it in this season.
So I headed back down, past the now ex-pig, its belly slit open, past the real estate showroom (no queue), and the long road back down into Kangding.
It seemed like I was the only foreign tourist in town - certainly the only one in the hotel. So as I sat in the cafe on the edge of the town square, drinking lemon tea (I'm off alcohol still - wonder why?)watching the locals doing their Tibetan line dancing at dusk, I decided to try warmer climes - back down to Chengdu and go south.
So this morning at 6am I was down at the bus station in the bitter cold morning, saying farewell to Kangding and its colourful Tibetan cowboys. These guys with wild, sunburnt faces in the chuba capes hanging off the shoulder, the silver daggers concealed within, and many with red wool plaited intheir hair. The Tibetan women all wear the traditional floor length dark cape with a colourful belt and a traditional square-sih hat. It's odd to be standing next to them in the supermarket waiting to pay for your biscuits ...
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Tha happy snapper's 'traveling light' kit for China
This is what I'm taking for my next 4 week winter trip to SW China and Tibet, starting on 12 Dec: Mont Nadgee sleeping bag, about 72 rolls of Ektachrome slide film for Rolleicord and Leicas, plus books, diary, sunies etc. Too much already - I may not bother with the thermarest and bivvy bag. Doesn't include the kit I'll be wearing - ie boots, hat, fleece, raincoat, etc. The plan is to start in kangding and retrace some of the previous routes ans see Minya Konka (Gongga Shan), Mutikonka (Maidi Gangga and Sanyanlong and the Yalong canyon near Jiulong), then on via Muli and Warizhen to to Yading (Konka Risumgompa) and finally down to Lijiang. Plan B is to just go to the Nujiang river again like last year.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Flying the Hump over the Salween valley:1944
This is the hazardous air transport route from India to China made by hundreds of US pilots during WW2, to bring supplies to the KMT government after the Burma Road was overrun by the Japanese. What's the Joseph Rock link? Well, he explored the Salween valley a decade or so before and drew such detailed maps that he was commissioned to develop these into air charts for the US Air Force Transport Command. And that is Mt Kawakarpo (Meili Xue Shan), in the background - as described by Rock in Through the Great River Trenches of Asia (National Geographic magazine1926).
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Jade Dragon Mountain, Lijiang? Photo by a Hump flyer, 1944
Mt Kawakarpo (Meili Xueshan) from the Salween Valley, (the Hump), 1944, originally uploaded by jiulong.
In 1943, Joseph Rock was asked by the US air force to help compile maps of the Gaoligong Mountain area, known as the Hump, over which supply planes were flying in supplies from India to China. Here are some original photos of the Salween canyon and the peaks, by William Vandivert
Stone-Moon Hill, (石月亮 ) Salween Valley, (the Hump), 1944
Original photo by William Vandivert
Here's my pic from ground level:
Mt Kawakarpo (Meili Xueshan) from the Salween Valley, (the Hump), 1944
Mt Kawakarpo (Meili Xueshan) from the Salween Valley, (the Hump), 1944, originally uploaded by jiulong.
Original photo by William Vandivert
Sunday, November 16, 2008
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