yak! yak!

An early morning bus left the station in Kanding and started its climb up the mountains. By the time the sun was rising, we were surrounded by the most amazing scenery of snowy mountains. And in a little while, as we climbed higher and higher, we passed the line of snow ourselves and were travelling through winter wonderland. Majestetic, beautiful - but very very cold when you are travelling on a bus with no heating!! The whole way we were travelling in a high altitude, a sign by the roadside declared that at that point we were at 4300 m! The road took us through Tibetan villages, mountains and grasslands.

After about 3 hours on the bus, we arrirrived in the small Tibetan village of Tagong. It's truly like a different country here, with different environment, different houses, a completely different culture, people look different... and no use of my Chinese skills here, only a very few people in the village could speak a few words of Chinese, otherwise it was Tibetan all over.

The village consisted of the main street, some side alleys and a big lamasery at the end of the street. Behind it opened wide grasslands, with snowy mountains in the horizon. And the best way to get around in the grasslands: horses. And so we, too, climbed on a couple of horses, and took a little tour of the area. Which I can still feel as I sit down here in the chair...ummm...

Later on, when the sun was blazing and had transformed the frozen climate into a rather hot one, we went for a little walk on the hills near the village. It's funny how the altitude affects you, even after just a minute of climbing uphill, our hearts were pounding - thum, thum, thum.

Up on the hillside, a few tents were pitched, housing some Tibetan families. Their dogs announced our arrival, and a woman wearing traditional clothes stepped out from the nearest tent. I went over to say hello, and she beckoned to me, inviting us inside. So we went, and sat on little cushions on the floor, while she was busy tending to her big iron pot over the fire. In it, some yak milk was heating up, which we had the pleasure of waching her turn into fresh yak milk cheese in just a few minutes' time. And we got the first tasters ;) mmmm

Her son, 14, also came in, and could speak a little Chinese. So there we sat, nice and warm by the blazing fire, drinking yak butter milk tea, only changing a few simple words.

Later on in the village, after visiting the lamasery and spinning a couple of hundred prayer wheels, we must have walked the main street up and down several times, as there wasn't much else to do. The local men were mostly true cowboys, bug and stong and wearing real cowboy hats and cool shades. I also experienced some of their cowboy mentality, as I was propositioned to in a..ummm...rude way, which definitely required no shared language. Ehm.

Originally we were planning on staying the night in the village, sleeping in one of the villagers' homes, but we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to get back to Kanding, as we really weren't prepared for a night in freezing temperatures with no heating in the house. Unfortunately, this decision was made after all the minibuses and buses had already gone for the day. But we managed to get a ride in a car with a monk, which was supposed to take us to the next village just in time for the last bus to Kanding.

But things don't always go as you plan, and so after a half an hour's drive, our tire went flat and we were stuck pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The men in our car very in a very masculine manner proceded to replace the flat tire with the spare that we luckily had - until they found out that the spare was flat, too. And no decent pump to be found anywhere nearby. After a lot of hullabaloo, we managed to get a ride in a van, but arrived in the village miserably late, having missed the bus. By this time, it was getting dark and the drivers hanging around with their cars were not too happy to take us for the normal prices. We hgad shared the first ride with a young cowboy guy (hat and all), who had been to Tagong to sell some yaks. Now he was determined to find a decent-priced ride for us, otherwise we'd stay the night there, at his friend's house. But in the end we got a ride, for just 10 yuan over the normal price, and arrived in Kanding not all that late. However, we passed the cowboy's offer for a night out dancing in Kanding (however interesting that might have been), and here we are again at the little inn, with the idea to head out of the Tibetan areas today...

And, yaks, yaks everywhere!

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