Black-necked cranes

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I had the opportunity to visit the Black-Necked Crane Information Centre while I was touring Bhutan. While there I realised that I have had the opportunity to see these birds at both ends of their migration route - from Tibet in the summer, over the Himalayas (at very great altitude), to Bhutan in the winter.

In the first pictures they are in Tibet feeding up in late summer in preparation for their migration southwards. Those in the snow are late leavers from Tibet, with winter just around the corner.

The last pictures show the only crane in Bhutan while I was there. All the other birds would have been in Tibet for the summer.

The bird in Bhutan is a rather sad story. It was injured by a feral dog, and has had to be retained in an enclosure, while it heals. The bird has been in its enclose for nearly two years. My guess was that it has healed, but is unlikely ever to be able to fly (you can see that the injury to its left wing is extensive, and seems to have set badly), and so will not be released to the wild.

These cranes are sociable animals and use the crane dance for mating, but also for all sorts of social interactions in groups of up to a dozen. While, like most wild birds, they can be frightened by humans near by, there is some evidence that they recognise men in the Bhutanese national costume, and are less scared by such individuals. This individual bird seems to have adapted somewhat to its living conditions, and will tolerate humans at fairly close quarters. It also, on occasion, does the crane dance when there are people there. I was very fortunate, that it did the dance for me.

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Birds of China

I was very pleased today, to identify the three birds I took photos of while in China. All three are exotic birds as far as I am concerned, and, with the aid of a friend, I not only tracked down all three, but found that one of them is a rarity even in China, its main place of origin.

sooty-headed bulbul
aka golden-vented bulbul, Pycnonotus aurigaster german, Turdus aurigaster, 白喉红臀鹎

This bird was in the bush just by the entrance to the hotel, as we were leaving DeRong. It was far less perturbed by our presence than we were, trying as we were to arrange luggage, and who went where in what car. This is a common bird in these parts apparently.

The adult has black head, chin and nape with short crest,  brown upper-parts with white rump, and white underparts. Juvenile resembles adult but has browner head and paler vent. 19-21 cm long.

It is found in China, and throughout south-eastern Asia. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests.

Kessler's thrush
aka white-backed thrush, Przewalski's Thrush, Turdus kessleri, 棕背鸫

Kessler's thrush
aka white-backed thrush, Przewalski's Thrush, Turdus kessleri, 棕背鸫

These two birds (male top, juvenile bottom) were foraging in the planted strip between a busy road and its pavement. They were just round the corner from the hotel we were staying at in Ganzi.

This bird is found in central China. Its natural habitats are temperate forests and temperate shrubland. It was sufficiently large, (28cm) that initially I thought it was a corvid, and spent some time looking through the lists of such birds as are found in China.

Blyth's kingfisher
aka great blue kingfisher, Alcedo hercules, Alcedo grandes

This is the surprise bonus in my photos. This kingfisher, originating in Yunnan, but found also in Vietnam and Myanmar. In China, the species is estimated to have fewer than 100 breeding pairs. It is thus not only an exotic (as far as I am concerned) but a rare exotic. In spite of it being described as a shy bird, I saw it in a very large, and densely populated People's Park in central Chengdu. I was just sitting by a stream, with my camera to hand, and I looked up, and there it was.

It has deep rufous underparts with a blackish blue breast patch, and brilliant cobalt blue or azure upperparts, tinged with purple. The wings are a dark blackish green, with blue speckles and tips to some of the feathers. The bill of the male is entirely black, while the female has a dark red lower mandible. Its size is 22-23cm.

The species feeds on fish and insects it catches by diving in water bodies. Unlike other Alcedo kingfishers, Blyth's kingfisher dives from a shrub close above the water, rather than from an exposed vantage point. The species is presumed not to migrate. It is described as a shy bird.

 Frequents small rivers and waterways in evergreen forest, hilly regions, or deep ravines. It is sometimes found near streams near well-wooded farmland. Its elevational range is chiefly between 400 and 1,000m above sea level, extending to a minimum of 200m and a maximum of 1,200m.

Tibet 2016 - High Himalayas

2016-10-15 Xigaze to Everest National Park, elevations up to 5253m

that's not a pass - THIS is a pass!

We travelled from Xigatse to Basum today. Basum is within the Mt. Oomolangma National Park (Mt Everest). En route we passed over several high passes: Tsou La pass (4530m); Gyatso La (5253m), which gave the first glimpse of the high himalayas; and Kya Wu Lha pass (5202m), the first sight of Everest and other major peaks.  Basum is a small Tibetan village (4370m) only 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Everest Base Camp. We stayed with a local Tibetan family in their traditional home.

The peaks shown in this gallery include five of the top 15 highest peaks in the world. The first 14 of these are all over 8000m. On a clear day, which we had, they combine and conspire to provide opportunities for photographs that almost take themselves.

Tibet 2016 - Xigaze

2016-10-14 Xigaze, Tashilumpo monastery, elevation 3917m

At last the opportunity to complete a kora. The circuit at Tashilumpo monastery is quite long, and involves quite a lot of climbing. It is a very attractive route and it was very good weather, so altogether an excellent day. The rest of the party did only half the circuit, and then left to go through the walking street and markets in the town centre. I carried on to complete the circuit, and for most of this part of the route, I was accompanied by the goat pictured here. We were both doing our thing, and keeping our distance - as far as possible - but also aware of each other, and covering the same ground. A friendly companion.

Tibet 2016 - Potala palace

2016-10-11 Lhasa, Potala palace, elevation 3658m

I was rather disappointed to find that we ended up doing only half of the kora of the Potala. I would like to have done the entire circuit. The rushing through the Potala that is now mandatory provides the reasons I dislike the current tourist setup. It means that explanations from your guides are gabbled; they find it difficult to repeat stuff that for those that haven't heard; and there's a pressure to move on, move on, move on, the whole time. I was surprised that we did not go up to the roof. Previously, I remember going up to the roof. Just as well I I've got pictures from there many years ago.. This time, it was just through the main Potala rooms and then back down to kora or sighting spots. We did go to a little lake at the back of the Potala with some very good views of it which I haven't seen before.

Jompa is a fantastic guide. She helped me with what portion of the kora we did. Of course, the fact that I, a foreigner, and obviously a tourist, with caucasian hair colour, western dress, but having a mala and doing mantras was an instant passport to family groups, particularly those headed by a matriarch, as most were. They asked me what I was doing; asked Jampa what I was doing; and the general reaction was 'oh he's a foreigner, how can  he know about this stuff'.  It wass quite fascinating, and it happened five or six times. One notable encounter was where the woman of the family, while carrying a balloon and toy in one hand, and her mala in the other, showed me how to use a mala, and how to do mantras, properly. Using the mala involves rolling the bead inwards over the finger with the thumb. This is its use, whichever hand is used. The woman was very insistant, and would not leave it until I had demonstrated that my mastery was complete. All in all a quite wonderful time. I just wish it had been complete.

So far this time I've done kora round Johang, kora round Sera monastery, and half kora round Potala. I did feel I was starting to get into the mantra a little in the third and last of these koras.

Tibet 2016 - Lhasa

2016-10-10 Lhasa, Sara monastery, elevation 3681m

Shrine at holy spring, Sara monastery kora

We visited Jokhang temple today. Very unusually it was closed to pilgrims. This meant that we could see what the inside of the temple was like. In the past it has been impossible to move inside the temple without elbows in every part of ones anatomy. The space and time available was unprecedented in the experience of those of us who had visited there before (including Jamin, our tour leader).

We went on to Zhanghung monastery, also in the old town of Lhasa. Like every nunnery I have encountered, the immediate sensation on walking into it was that of joy and quiet happiness. Most of the nuns we saw were writing prayers, and bundling already written prayers into prayer wheels. Being here provided a point of real stillness during the day. Thoroughly enjoyable.

This afternoon we are going to Sera. As I have visited Sera many times before, and have got multiple hundred photos of the debating there, I'm going to do kora round Sara. Jamin, the tour leader, has arranged for another guide for me. This guide, Jompa, proved to be a very good guide. I have only ever had one guide who was better - in Mongolia. Both shared some characteristics: female; young; very, very knowledgable about their subject; and able to cover ground, uphill and on the level, like a mountain goat. Jompa is very knowledgable about Buddhism. She showed me the holy spring at the back of the monastery. I made offerings at the spring. This was a bit of a complicated affair to get to the place where the water came out. I had to crawl under two very large, but very low branches of trees, and over slippery stones. Then it was quite an elaborate ritual of getting water from the spring; straining it into a container; then moving over to the little shrine (to one of the Taras); and putting some water into each of the offering bowls that were there; then washing face and hands; and having water poured over my head - and boy was it cold. It was very touching. It confirmed my view that Jamin had selected Jompa very well indeed. So we did kora and then she showed me into some parts of the monastery. These included some parts which were not part of the standard tour as I remember it. In talking about Buddhism, she reinforced my view that it is better to be selective about one chooses to believe in.

Start of the trip

2016-10-08T11:11 Chengdu elevation 501m

I went back to the station for some photos that I forgot to take yesterday. Back to the hostel, and after a light meal, over to the hotel to meet the rest of the party. The hotel is very grand - five star plus. In some places, the design got in the way of function. It took me two or three minutes to work out which tap was which and a further two or three minutes to work out how to switch the water flow from the bath to the shower head. Apart from that, very good. Met up with the tour leader and much of the rest of the group at 16:30. We had a meet and greet session, introductions, and an initial talk on what we are going to do over the next month, then off to a meal in the hotel. I was in bed by 19:30 and asleep within about 10 minutes, which is unusual for me. I slept straight through until about 01:30, woke up, had something to drink, went back to bed, and then woke up intermitently up to 05:30, breakfast, and down to the bus to go to the airport.

Back in China

2016-10-08T11:11 Chengdu 

Sim's hostel courtyard, Chengdu, Sichuan province, PRC

You may not realise it, but now is early October last year. These are details of my last trip to Tibet. It is four months later than the actual event, as I had multiple computer problems, and could not publish anything in the interval. Now everything is working, I am publishing my notes and photos taken during the trip.

I flew out to Chengdu a couple of days before I was due to meet the rest of the party. The flight itself was about as good as long haul flights can be. I had plenty of reading material - a stack of New Scientist, and Amateur Photographer, together with a mass of reading material on my Kindle. During the night though, my Kindle had a catastrophic encounter with the edge of a locker. It came out shaped like a pretzel. I had to junk it completely. 

In one way this is not a major problem. I can reproduce what was on the machine when I get back to the U.K. It rather dents my capacities over the next month. Even if I can get a replacement in China, I will not be able to use Facebook, Google or Amazon,all of which will be unavailable behind the Great Chinese Firewall. The one thing that I'm going to have to make some effort to reinstate, is all my Chinese language dictionaries, translator and character recognizer. As I'm on an organized tour, led by people who are English speakers this will not matter for the duration of the trip.

The really aggravating thing is that I was intending to use my Kindle as a half way stage in backing up my photos from my camera to portable hard disk. This is now impossible so I may just have to be careful to ensure that I've always got two copies of every photo on different storage media.

I got to Chengdu, took a taxi to Sim's, the hostel I'm staying at tonight. I then went for a walk to the main Chengdu railway station to pick up the tickets I'd ordered for use later on in the month. Then to the nearest Bank of China, to pick up a bit more money, and back to the hostel to flake out.

I had forgotten that 100% of the motor cycles and scooters, and about 20% of cars in Chengdu are electric. This means that they have, as if they needed it, an additional excuse to use their horns, but it also means they can creep up to within about 3" of you before using them. This makes crossing some of the road junctions very interesting, to put it mildly.

Tibet 2016 - Everest base camp

Tibet 2016 - Everest base camp

2016-10-16 Basrum, Rongbuk monastery, and Everest base camp. Elevations around 5000m.
This continues my record of my trip to Tibet in 2016.

Alpine choughs over the Himalayas

We left the home stay in Basrum, in order to be at Rongbuk monastery in time to be able to photograph sunrise on Everest. While I have obtained some good photos of Everest, none of the ones at dawn were adequate, mostly due to my messing up the HDR sequences of photos I took.

Rongbuk monastery claims to be the highest one in the world. I am not sure of this as the one in the northeast of Ladakh claims to be at about 5500m. Some of the party presented offerings at the monastery, and received blessings. 

Then on to base camp. En-route and on arrival, there were magnificent views of the Himalayas, including six over 8000m, and 40 over 7000m. The weather was glorious. At the camp, there were large numbers of corvidae. With information and subsequent research, I found these were alpine choughs - the yellow billed chough. Although they are called alpine choughs, they have two sub-species, one with a range covering southern Europe through to Iran, while the other is found in the Himalayas. The bird found in the UK is the red-billed chough, also known as a chough, or a Cornish chough, is mainly found in the Himalayas, thus ensuring maximum confusion.

The other photographic opportunity was watching a toddler, wielding a broom the same size as herself. She was learning household jobs by trying to sweep Everest base camp - a Sisyphean task.

More photos can be found in this gallery.

The Liberty Bell March

When I arrived at Chengdu, I was intent on going onto New Zealand. So naturally I started investigating air tickets on the internet. I soon determined that Air New Zealand (ANZ) could give me all I needed, so I booked a ticket with them. This was when the fun started.

[If any of the timings seem odd, it is probably because they are. There was so much going on, over a short period, that I am not sure I got the sequence of events correct.]

1. I booked and paid for my air ticket with one of my currency cards, which left this card with only a small balance on it.I loaded up my currency cards from my current account, using online banking to effect the transfer. I had set up this type of transfer a while ago, and it went through smoothly.
2. As I knew that this transfer would leave my current account overdrawn, I went to transfer funds from my savings account to the current account. This is when I first encountered the problems that National Westminster were having with their systems. I don't know exactly where in their cycle of problems I hit, but it must have been fairly early on. I could not transfer monies between accounts; I could not get confirmation (from the bank) as to whether ANZ had been paid or not; and could not get confirmation that the transfer to the currency card had worked. 
3. I checked out that I did not require a visa for New Zealand. On a British passport, one can stay for up to six months in New Zealand without a visa. 
4. I received an email from ANZ stating that they had been unable to accept my booking, because one of their partner flights (the first leg of my flight from Chengdu to Shanghai on an Air China plane) could not be booked. They advised that they had not taken any money from my currency card; had not made the booking; and asked me to contact them via a telephone number in New Zealand to sort out the situation. 
5. Searching the ANZ web site, booking site, and any other place I thought there might be information, provided me with only one contact option - a URL designed to notify ANZ of problems with their web site - so a webmaster's address, rather than a ticketing address. I sent off an email, and very quickly got back an automated response saying that due to the volume of business (and the low priority of a webmaster's site compared to a booking site) any response was likely to take at least 72 hours. This was not useful given that I wanted to travel within 48 hours. 
6. At this point, I enlisted the help of the hostel's travel desk - who were superb throughout the whole of this tiresome series of events. They suggested that they book a flight (for 27th June) with Air Southern China (ASC), through their normal ticketing arrangements. This seemed reasonable, as it provided them with business, and consequent commission; provided me with a solution, at a cost less than I had been able to manage myself. The only draw back was that I would have to pay cash for the air ticket - the normal way of doing such transactions in China. 
7. Drawing sufficient money to pay for this air ticket left my currency card balance at almost zero. Trying again to transfer monies I could neither transfer monies between my accounts, nor transfer monies onto my currency card. However, I had my airticket, with ASC, from Chengdu to Guangzhou, and then on from their to Auckland. 
8. It was at this point that I received a further email from ANZ stating that they had received my email concerning the problem; had managed to sort out my booking; had debited my currency card with the cost of the flight; and issued my e-ticket. So now I had two valid air tickets to New Zealand, on the 25th via Shanghai and the 26th via Guangzhou; I had paid for two tickets on my currency card - so I assumed this was overdrawn (a state of affairs that should not happen - there is no provision for credit on these cards. I was unable to transfer monies between my accounts to regularise the situation. 
9. I tried to contact National Westminster by phone (they do, under normal circumstances, provide a reverse charge number for account holders abroad in this type of situation). This is when I found that the hostel's Skype phone was being blocked by the Great Firewall of China - a not unusual situation. As far as they could tell it was likely to take 2-3 days to resume normal service. Their other phone set up for international calls (normal international calls) was not working either. On those days it appeared that the authorities in China did not want anybody making international calls out of Chengdu. 
10. As my final throw of the dice, I found a Shanghai help desk number for ANZ, and rang them. After ringing for a very long time (certainly over an hour - I know this because I was using the ticket desks' phone, blocking 50% of their calls, and was very conscious of how long I was on the phone) it got transferred to a real live New Zealander (I assume, from the conversation, that she was in New Zealand; that the call had been transferred there; and she was in an office based customer service area). To my relief, she took full details; understood the position; and assured me that she would reverse the whole situation - ticket issue, charging, ticket booking; as if it had never taken place. The only fly in the ointment was that the refund of monies would take about five days. 
11. Time zones started to show their effect. The person I was dealing with in New Zealand was working office hours (09:00-17:30) in New Zealand, which was five hours ahead of my time. The help desk in Shanghai was operating on the same time as me. The extended branch openings that National Westminster had put in place to try and alleviate problems were on the Sunday, and into the early evening UK time - seven hours behind my time. 
12. So the only thing I now had to do was obtain sufficient monies in Rmb to pay for the three days I was going to remain in China. I ended up doing this on my current account debit card - thus putting it even further into the red (or so I believed - in reality, down the line, the situation was rather better than this, but I did not know it at the time). Everything looked hunky dory. I had a full day free before my travels. I had a valid air ticket. My financial situation was unknown in detail, and was giving me some concern, but not too much because I was due a refund from ANZ, even if the timing was a little off. 
13. So on the 26th I got up late, as I knew I would be travelling for 20 hours or more, had a late breakfast, and took the (pre-arranged through the ticket desk in the hostel) hire car to the airport. Got there nice and early. Had a little difficulty, though not too bad, because this was the first time I have started off an international flight with a purely domestic leg. This meant I had to check in at the domestic desk, and would have to check in again, at the international desk, in Guangzhou. Not a real problem, once I knew what to do, but it did take me a little while to sort out what I needed to do. 
14. The flight was substantially delayed, but because there was so much slack in my itinerary, this was not an issue. I finally took off round about six o'clock in the evening, for a two and a half hour flight. 
15. Arrived at Guangzhou airport to find that it is huge - it took me 25 minutes to walk from the domestic arrivals area to the international check in desk. So I joined the very slow moving check in queue. There were only three desks open, and it took me until 22:30 to reach the front of the queue. My flight was due to leave at 00:30 so time was starting to get short but still not an issue. 
16. At the checkout I was asked for my passport as normal. Then I was asked for my ticket from New Zealand. It turned out that although I did not require a visa, I needed to have evidence that I would be leaving New Zealand. I had missed this requirement, and it had not been brought to my attention by any of the bodies involved in the ticket sale. It quickly became evident that without such a ticket I would not be allowed onto the plane. 
17. I then tried to purchase an air ticket. To quote Gerard Hoffnung, in the Bricklayer's sicknote piece, "at this point I may have lost my presence of mind because I let go of the rope" - or rather, I did not think of the obvious way out of this - to get the cheapest ticket I could from New Zealand (to say Australia). I was over focussed on getting a return ticket to somewhere - Guangzhou, London, Bangkok, or Chengdu. Anyway, I am not sure that this would have solved the problem. There were actually two interlinked problems - I had to get a ticket from New Zealand and had to purchase it before loading terminated on the 00:30 flight. I also had to get evidence that I had got such a flight to the check in desk in order to be able to check in to the flight to New Zealand. 
18. All the ticket desks in the airport were closed. The business centre was closed. All the airline desks were closed, except one for ASC domestic flights only. The staff on this desk were Chinese only speakers, but were able to let me have the phone number of the English speaking ASC help desk. Checking all this out involved traipsing from end to end of the airport, while the minutes were ticking away. During this process I attracted the attention of a senior airport manager, who did try to assist me in meeting the conditions of the flight I had booked. 
19. Eventually the only was left for me was to contact the ASC help desk to see if I could purchase a ticket (remembering that all my credit, currency and debit cards were in an unknown situation). I spent about 50 minutes on the phone to them (at a cost I later learnt of £150, because I had lost my international SIM card, and was forced to make this phone call on my UK domestic SIM). The problem was that they could sell me a ticket, but they had no way to demonstrate this to New Zealand immigration, via the Guangzhou check in desk, in the time available. At 00:15 I finally conceded defeat, and realised I would not catch the NZ plane. 
20. The airport senior manager, who had been keeping an eye on me during this phone call, suggested, at this point, that I go to one of the airport hotels for the night, returning at 06:30 when the ticket desks would be open. I agreed, and he arranged a complementary transfer to the hotel, and confirmation that the hotel could take me, and sent me on my way. 
21. At the hotel I had to draw more money out of their ATM - on an already depleted currency card - and had to pay cash for the room. The good point was that it was a four star business hotel, but it only cost 480 yuan - about £48. 
22. Once in my room I could do some thinking and sorting out. In view of the facts that: my visa only had about six days to run at this point, and it would take a minimum of five days to renew it; that I would need another air ticket even if I carried onto New Zealand; that the only sure way I had of paying for a ticket was my savings account debit card, which was about the fourth layer of financial contingency planning I had made, and certainly the penultimate; that I knew I could certainly get into the UK without problem; and that I had valid return ticket from London to Bangkok that I knew I could use if relevant on the 9th July; I decided to fly back to the UK. 
23. So at 06:00 I left the hotel to return to the airport, went straight to the now open ticket desk; purchased a ticket for London and joined the flight for takeoff at 09:00. Twelve and a half hours later I arrived back in London, sailed through the luggage and immigration formalities and caught the bus to Milton Keynes at 17:30. I had originally been going to treat myself to one night's stay in a good hotel, but all the hotels round Heathrow had Olympic fever - the cheapest quote I had for a single room for one night without breakfast was £380. 
24. Stayed in a motel for a couple of nights, sorted myself out. I started the process of trying to get a refund on my ASC ticket to New Zealand. Both ASC and Guangzhou airport had suggested that I should be able to get a refund. They also suggested that the only way of getting a refund was via the original ticket agency that sold me the ticket, in Chengdu, and that I would only get a refund in cash. I contacted the hostel I had stayed at and who had arranged my ticket. They have confirmed that a refund is available of about 3000Rmb - or two thirds of the actual ticket price, without any refund of any part of the taxes on the ticket. All that now remains is for them to find some way of remitting the monies to me - which is itself difficult. 

So as envisaged by the title of this piece, I ended up back in the UK for at least a few days. I took the opportunity of seeing, or trying to see various friends, doing minor maintenance work on my boat, trying to sort out my financial situation, trying to get a refund on my ticket, and generally tootling about.

Big Bus Journey

I thought I was experienced in Chinese buses - both local, and more importantly, the long distance buses to remote areas. It turned out that I was only just starting to learn about these buses. The journey from Ganzi to Chengdu was the real apprenticeship in such travel.

I had information from a tourist map put together by one of the hostels in Chengdu. This suggested that the trip from Ganzi to Chengdu would be about 10 hours, and that the bus ran at 06:30. I enquired at the hostel I was staying at, and was told where the bus station ticket office was - though the bus station itself was obvious, the ticket office, during most daylight hours was closed, and was completely inconspicuous when shuttered up. The hostel suggested going to the ticekt office at 05:30 to get a ticket to Chengdu. They also suggested that the bus went at 06:30. So up at 05:15 to walk the 400 yards to the bus station. The first snag became apparent very quickly - the shuttering on the hostel was down and locked, and there was nobody around to open it up. The night watchman only emerged to unlock the gate at 06:00 and I arrived at the ticket office about three minutes later. Business at the ticket office was being conducted in Rugby mode - a total scrum of people waving money; shouting out details of the ticket they wanted; pushing; shoving; rushing for a bus once they had a ticket; trying to buy tickets through the ticket office window, and by entering the doorway of the actual ticket office; all this being dealt with by one woman who was selling the tickets. When I finally got to her, and requested my ticket I was informed that there were no more tickets available that day for Chengdu. I was also informed that (after a lot of pantomime and communication difficulties) that to get a ticket for the following day, I should return to the ticket office at 08:30 that day, when it would be open for advance ticket sales.

So I returned to the ticket office at just before 08:30, having got some breakfast in the interim. The ticket office was closed when I arrived back, and the modus operandi was again a scrum - first to get into position for when it did open, and then to get a position in the queue (?) at the ticket window. Fortunately it was the same woman dealing with ticket sales as had been there at 06:00. She recognised me, and I was sufficiently tall and long armed to be able to pay for my ticket over the heads of those who had pushed, sneaked, or insinuated themselves in front of me. So in exchange for my queueing and 280Rmb I now had a ticket for the trip to Chengdu on the following morning - departure time 06:20.

The following day, I again got up at about 05:15, in order to get to the bus station. Again the shuttering was down on the hostel, but now I knew where the nightwatchman slept, and so was able to disturb him and leave the hotel before six. There was a similar scrum this morning, but it did not extend to the bus I was catching. This bus was full, the first time I have been on a completely full bus in China, but it was the most modern bus I have had here. Think National Express coaches of about five years ago - so not bad, just not bang up to date. There was a lot of milling about and placement of luggage, but embussing went fairly smoothly. It was interrupted only by a group of Westeners seeking tickets (though not to Chengdu) in the same manner I had done the previous morning. Eventually the bus left - only 10 minutes late getting going, which again is fairly good.

Though I should have had some inkling that my information was off, based on the total duratation of the journies to Ganzi, my first real indication was leaving Ganzi. The centre of this town is paved, to a fairly high standard. However, as soon as we got out of town we were on Chinese rural, non-improved roads. In this part of the world this means a road that is basically the rock substrate, and can be anything up to half a mile wide. This entire width represents the area that vehicles of all sorts have chosen to use as their road. The road out of Ganzi was in good condition for such roads, and we only saw the result of one mishap - one of the Chinese 22 wheel lorries had managed to put its front two offside wheels deep into a ditch, so the whole lorry was skewed off the road and into the ditch, and would require some heavy traction to extract it. The misstatement in my information started to be noticable when it took the first five hours of driving to reach a paved road. This period included the first two pit stops - which seemed to come at about two hourly intervals, and lasted no more than five minutes.

Eventually we reached paved roads. Unfortunately these were virtually all is a state of being improved, or being under repair. This meant driving through the road works - no namby pamby diversions or alternative routes in China - when there are road works you drive through the actual works. As there had been so much rain, the surface of these road works, churned up by heavy lorries and other large vehicles had turned into a thixotropic mix of mud, water, and general gloop. This had snared two minivan shared taxis - they were both up to their axles in the mud, with passengers disembarked and looking forlorn. Chinese public buses always have a driver's assistant. This is usually a qualified driver, who can act as a relief driver, but whose main function seems to be to act as conductor; general assistant to the driver; and maintenance tasks such as filling up the water tank that provides boiling water on the coaches, when needed. The driver's assistant was called on three times to aid the buses journey through the road works. The first time it was to remove large boulders lying in the road way that threatened to be axle breakers. Next the assistant had to build up a portion of the gloop, to ensure traction, by laying a surface of boulders in the gloop that the bus could use. The final time, he only needed to guide the bus driver's route through a particularly tricky piece of road work and gloop.

After a total of seven hours driving, the bus finally pulled up for the first meal stop of the journey. This meant that it was a place where there were built toilets, and a bus restaurant. These bus restaurants are quite spectacular - they have a seating area, multiple choices of food, all bubbling away in large cauldrons over gas burners, out in the open, though with an awning to protect against the rain. They always seem to be ready to serve the instance a bus pulls in, and they usually serve 90% of the passengers with a good hot meal. They always seem to be run by four or five people, often (I assume) man, wife, child, neice, and A.N.Other. The meal breaks last no longer than 20 minutes. This is sufficient time for the driver and assistant to get a meal; for the assistant to fill up the water tank; and (in this case) for the driver to run one of the wheels up onto a pile of rocks, to conduct a running repair involving a large wrench and a large lump hammer under the bus. I did not want to know what the repair was - ignorance is bliss, so walked away from the bus while this was going on. The altitude must still have been fairly high, as the direct sun was as hot as I have experienced during my trip - to the extent that it was painful to stay out in it for more than a few minutes.

Onwards and onwards. The roads did slowly improve, but it was getting dark before we started encountering roads that were not under repair with any frequency. After 12 hours travel, the driver's assistant took over the driving for a couple of hours. It was at this point I had managed to sort out my Chinese sufficiently to ask how long the journey was scheduled to take - to learn that the scheduled journey time was 20 hours (not the 10 I had believed). Chinese driving regulations obviously prohibited the driver from driving for 20 hours straight - though 12 hours straight; a two hour break; and a further (as it turned out) 7 1/2 hours straight driving were perfectly OK.

During the afternoon and evening we went through several of the places I had passed through on the way to Ganzi. At one of these, on the edge of the sensitive area, the bus entered a garage went up on ramps and was inspected underneath. I had assumed on the outward journey that this was to detect stowaways and people trying to travel in contravention of the authorities prohibitions. Though this was potentially a part of the reason for the inspection, we could see the bus in front of ours going through its inspection. This made it very clear that a substantial part of the reason for the inspection was that it was a mechanical inspection - they were checking that nothing had fallen off, or had come loose during the rougher parts of the trip.

Anyway this is more or less the way that the trip continued - through another meal stop after dark (not sure what time, but it seemed to go dark at about 21:00 hours. Pit stops became less frequent, roads improved and we finally got into Chengdu and 03:30 - about an hour and a half later than the scheduled arrival time.

Then to get a taxi - which was surprisingly easy - and to get to the hostel I had stayed at previously and which I had booked up by email. The only slightly difficult thing was that all Chengdu motorcycles, motorscooters, and power assisted bikes, are all electically driven, and so silent. This is difficult enough to deal with in the day time when you can see them in their masses, but at night they creep up on you - especially as it is common if there is any street lighting at all, for such vehicles to switch off their lights to save battery power.

And so to bed just before four, thinking that at least I had done the most difficult part of my journey, and that I was unlikely to encounter anything anywhere near as difficult. Little did I know.

Strands of Intensity

Going to Chengdu, and then on deeper into Kham, has substantially changed the nature of my trip. While I was in Xining, I was only nibbling at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Now I have moved on from there, I am seeing more and more of Tibetan culture, tradition, religion, architecture, politics; together with scenery that is just mind blowing. These have provided strands of experience which taken together provide a very intense experience.

The first and most obvious strand is my methods of communication. As I am getting more and more remote, my opportunities for hooking up with the internet are also shrinking. This is not helped by the fact that I have lost my international SIM card, and can think of no way in which a replacement card can be provided to me as I travel. I can now only communicate if there is a free Wifi connection - preferably broad band though this is not essential. In Xining, there were multiple Wifi servers - nearly one for every room. In Chengdu, free broadband wifi was available in all the public areas of the hostel. In Kangding, there was a Wifi broadband in the main public area. In TaGong the only connection available was based on a per megabyte charge, so the owners both had to charge (a fairly substantial 10Rmb per hour) and ensure that the connection was set up by them, and that no pictures, downloads, or videos were accessed. Here in Ganzi there is one place in town (a town of approx 65000) that offers free Wifi - and I am sitting in it, and staying here. Beyond here, I don't think there is a connection, until I retrace some of my future route. If this is correct there will be no more blog entries until I reenter the appropriate area, though I will still be writing them and storing them up for future publication.

Another obvious strand is transportation. The journey from Xining to Chengdu was soft sleeper, taking 27 hours. This is a (reasonably) fast, good quality service, that is efficient and punctual. Onward from Chengdu to Kangding was a nine hour bus journey, reasonably broken into stages by a stop for lunch and toilet purposes. The vast bulk of the trip was on high quality roads - comparable to a good single carriageway A road in the UK. As a result it was fairly quick, not massively uncomfortable, though the seats had been designed by a very perverted sadist. Onward, and downward. The journey to Kangding was a two and a half hour shared minivan cab. These are prevalent in this part of the world. Six of us shared this journey, which was in a newish van in good condition. These vans have six passenger seats, plus the drivers seat, plus a little fold away seat for an occasional seventh passenger. This particular one was comfortable and capable of taking all six of us plus all our luggage. Tagong to Ganzi was a slightly differnt matter. A nine hour journey, arranged by a local hostel owner, six of us tried to hire a van for the journey as we had done for the previous one. The driver agreed to the hire, and we agreed a cost, but the driver reserved the right to fill the seventh seat. In practice this meant that the foreigners had to use the jump seat, because the front passenger seat was reserved for whoever the driver got to fill the space. The minivan that turned up was slightly smaller in all dimensions than the previous one, and it was only with a major effort, and discomfort for the whole journey that we got all the luggage packed into the van. And so we set off. The journey started off crowded, but tolerable. At LuHuo, which is about the half way point, we were informed that that was as far as "our" van was going, and we would have to transfer to another van. This van was definately in much worse repair than any we had used up to that point; was smaller still than the one we had just got out of, and where the same arrangement applied to the jump seat - but this time the jump seat was supported by the internals of a cable reel, and the legs of the person behind it. Then for the latter half of the journey, which was all on roads being upgraded Chinese style. This involved driving through 125Km of road works (no nice diversions, or lanes closed off - you drive through the actual road works). This was ferociously uncomfortable; to the point that I had to stop the van after about three hours because it was so painful.

One of the strands that has changed intensity substantially is awareness of the application of governance in this area. In Xining the worst effects of the control mechanisms were when the regulations changed for getting into the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). Suddenly a lot of backpackers; solo and couples travellers; mixed nationality groups were barred from getting tickets on the railway to travel to the TAR. Add in to this the sight one early morning of a military convoy, consisting of police cars; troop carriers; armoured cars with light cannon; and CCTV vans - vans with at least four cameras mounted on pylons, used when there is a disturbance to identify and control anybody who (in Chinese eyes) might be encouraging a disturbance by photographing it with a long lens, or a video camera. This convoy was obviously going somewhere a long way away. (I learnt later that it was probably joining the three other such convoys present in Lhasa on the day concerned). All in all not a big impact. In Chengdu, again the main impact was on travellers who were being prevented from entering the TAR - this time by air from Chengdu airport. I have an idea that this is the only airport that flies into Lhasa. There was also a response from hostels using notice boards to bring together groups of five plus individuals of the same nationality, to get round the current regulations. By the time I got to Kanding, the specific implications of travel restrictions were becoming visible and important. One of the towns accessible from Kangding is on the main route for travellers heading south. On one day, one of the guests in the hostel I was staying at went to buy a ticket for the following day, with no problem at all. The following day, a couple trying to do the same thing were refused bus tickets at the ticket office, because foreigners were not allowed to visit that town. The owners of the hostel were spending a good deal of time advising people what routes to take, to try and avoid trouble. In TaGong, there was not much overt control in place; except for the armoured column going through (a smaller one than spotted in Xining) at about five in the evening - and they weren't messing. They were travelling fast, and appeared to be going somewhere local. The journey to TaGong was a very different matter. First it was deliberately routed through DaoFu (DaWu) in order to avoid going through DanBa (Rongtrak). DanBa has been a site of several protests, including several immolations. The first check point we came to the driver appeared to lie to get us all through the check point, though in fact he told the police that he was going to the point where we changed cars, because his permits only allowed him to go that far. The second check point was in DaoFu. This is very heavily policed - there are multiple police stations; police staging areas; vehicle yards, where some of the specialist vehicles are stored (armoured cars; CCTV vans; control vans; troop buses); many police; and a checkpoint. Here we were checked thoroughly - our passports taken away and checked for a long time (all except the sole Israli on board, whose passport was returned instantly). We were sitting in the van in the sweltering heat; being captured on CCTV, while the driver was questioned at length (though because this was taking place some way away, they might have been discussing the weather). Scary. Here in Ganzi, all routes out of town have to be checked before they are taken - even if walking to a local monastery - to ensure they are open to foreigners. The hostel I am staying in took it as normal business that foreigners would be "registered" with the police, not in the normal fashion, but by payment to the local police officer.

This has turned out to be much longer than I anticipated, so my next blog will be part two.

All Train Journeys in China Last 24 Hours

Woken by a very loud American making his daily call home earlier than I had expected, but still about 06:30 - 20 minutes before I had to get up anyway. Finished packing, checked out, did my flashcards and waited. Taxi (private hire car) very early drove like a madman through heavy traffic. Through travel validation, with them not having the slightest interest in me. Into the scrum that is a Chinese queue to wait for 3/4 hour for the train to Chengdu.

The train line runs east of Tibetan Plateau and we are heading south. By 16:00 everywhere the train line went was green with lots of trees and lots of crops. The hills still a little mottled.

Train stopping for long periods at important places - Lanzhou - and apparently uninportant ones - such as a platform in a cutting; with no house or buildings visible. It is possible they were changing engines or adding an engine.

Chinese Conspicuous Consumption

There has grown up, in some of the larger cities of China, the practice of hiring fake foreign servants - thus saying "I am so rich, I can afford to employ foreigners to do things for me". This has led to a whole industry of foreigners, mostly students filling these roles; agencies specialising in providing people to fill the jobs; and agents who find people jobs play acting these jobs. Thus if I were signed up with one of these agencies, I might get a call from the agent saying - tonight you are an Indonesian chef. And I would go along to a rich Chinese's party (typically) and play act being an Indonesian chef. Generally, but not always, you need no knowledge of the role being acted. Sometimes though the actor is expected to put on a highly credible performance, and persuade the audience that they are, in my example, a real Indonesian chef. These acting roles pay well enough that if you are a regular on the circuit, you can earn a good living by western standards, let alone Chinese ones. This practice has been spreading westwards (from the capital to the provinces). It has reached Chengdu, but not yet Xining.  It is of course a form of prostitution, but it also strikes me as peculiarly Chinese.

There are of course other things that can act as warning signs when one is in a strange place. One I recently encountered was taking a taxi to a place in Xining. I got into the cab and negotiated the destination. Then I noticed the steel tube behind the passenger side front seat. This tube, apparently was welded to the floor, but was secured to the side of the car using the bolt that holds the seat belt in place. It became evident that this piece of tubing was not only holding the passenger seat in position, but was also holding the side of the car in. There was a gap at the base of the door frame, between the door frame and the floor of the car. And as far as I could gather this was a perfectly legal taxi - his licences were up to date; he was using the meter; and, by Chinese taxi driver standards, was a perfectly competent driver.

The other warning sign I have come across, was in talking to the only Russian traveller I have encountered on my travels. This is a doctor from St Petersberg, of mixed Belarous(?)/Ukranian origins. One of her grandfathers had sought asylum in West Germany; had been enticed back by stories of what was happening to his family; to be slapped into a camp in Siberia for a good number of years. Her parents, her father particularly, had gone through the break up of the Soviet Union, and persecution for being Ukranian. She had encountered difficulties in getting qualifications because of the remnants of the Soviet bureaucracy and its insistence on controlling the exact residence of all its citizens.

So when a person with this background describes Chinese bureaucracy as "without common sense" (incidentally the best definition I have come across of bureaucracy); and describes Chinese control of its subjects (but especially control of people visiting the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR)) as "very Soviet"; I tend to take more notice of her comments than those of some other (particularly American) travellers. This was all prompted by the recent changes to the regulations concerning who can visit the TAR. It has been the case for a long time that to visit the TAR, you need to be a member of a group; have a driver, car, and be part of an organised trip. However, when I set off, a group could consist of one person, though the rule about being a member of an organised trip were taken very seriously. The rules have been changed eight times while I have been in Xining, and now a group has to be of at least five people; and they all have to have the same nationality (or rather the same national passport). This has made it very difficult for backpackers, and independent travellers of all sorts, but doubly so for such a rare traveller as a Russian. She has had to completely alter what she is doing.

It's raining in Xining

Today, like most of the last three days, has seen steady, relentless rain in Xining. It is promised to be much the same for the next few days. I'm not mad keen on cities; Chinese cities especially; and Chinese cities in the rain most particularly. Things can only get better - I start my trek on Monday, and Billy Connelly's proverb will start to come into play - "There's no such thing as bad weather; just inappropriate clothing". I have been warned by someone who lives here, and has travelled fairly extensively in this area, that this trek will be tough - partly because it is still early in the season. I have been thrown by knowledge of the trekking season in Nepal - which is in its prime during May and August. Here, some 1250Km further North, there is still snow on the hills to a comparatively low level - about 5800m. Doing my trek does mean that I won't be publishing anything until at least 2012-06-03. I am currently dividing my luggage into two parts - to take on the trek, and to leave here at the hostel for the duration of the trek. It is looking as though I can exactly split my luggage - so I'll be carrying less than 10.5Kg.

In between the rain I managed, yesterday, to get to the Tibetan Medical Cultural Museum. This is a splendid brand new museum, a fairly long way out of Xining, containing a great deal of the medical aspects of Tibetan culture. It does also hold a new Thangka - the largest in the world. It is 640+m long (for comparison - the Bayeux tapestry is about 70m long), and has to be displayed as a serpentine path, doubling back on itself multiple times. It has been done by some of the world's greatest Thangka painters, and is undoubtedly a masterpiece. It displays the history, chronology, creation myths, religious stories, and many other aspects of Tibetan culture. Walking the Thangka is a slightly frustrating experience - one keeps thinking, somewhere after the half way point "I must be getting very near the end" continually. The creation of the Thangka is very much Chinese inspired and does both have curious omissions and some delightful "Chinglish" in the display captions. The lineage of a certain office contains (to use computer terminology) a "off by one" error, though other comparable lineages are complete. The best display caption was the one describing a panel showing the "38 Dainties". This was curious, because adjacent captions were correct, but this was the only incorrect caption. It should have read of course "38 Deities".

No matter how good a display, and how great the Thangka; nonetheless it is a museum, and a tourist attraction.  I find this very sad, because the contents of the museum are actually very sparse, considering the breadth and width of Tibetan culture. Also, the Chinese have managed (for me) to completely kill the culture in putting it in a museum. The nearest comparison I can think of is Westminster Abbey. This can be considered a museum; it certainly is a major tourist attraction; but the crucial difference is that Westminster Abbey is also still a functioning Christian establishment, fulfilling its original and intended purpose. This keeps it alive, in a way that Buddhism, and Tibetan culture is not within this museum.

It's still raining.

Nature in China is BIG

Today I visited Kanbula National Park, which is a place unlike any I have ever visited before. Although the park itself is very big, the Chinese are busy creating a tourist spot out of the main feature of the park - the geology and the lake. The Chinese have adopted their usual brute force approach to tourism but on this occasion it actually works. The park is about 48 square kilometres and is basically a chunk of mountains surrounding the very large and deep lake. The mountains go straight down to the lake. The basic idea of the tourist spot is to carve a road round the lake, and drive buses round three quarters of the lake, coming down to a boat to cross the lake. The last bit of the road and the boat trip are not yet in place, but are likely to be within weeks. As the mountains plunge straight into the lake, which has been formed by a hydroelectric scheme and dam, that for about 25 years was the largest in China, this means carving the road up and over the mountains. At present the bus journey starts in the car park at an altitude of about 2200 metres. It then goes up and up. The road has 20 kph speed limit signs very frequently. These are redundant given that there is an alpine style 180o turn every 300 metres or so; at the higher levels, the buses engine is labouring due to lack of oxygen; there are multiple minor rockfalls left over from the coming of spring; and the driver has to swing very wide to properly attack the blind bends, and there is some two way traffic.

On the initial part of the journey I had been trying to estimate how high we were, and how high we were getting. My figures were generally higher than those quoted, as I have been able to calibrate my estimates against those in guidebooks. My estimates were based on the apparent distance we had climbed from Xining; the fact that we were higher than most of the surrounding terrain; and we appeared to be reaching the snow line, compared to mountains some distance away. Also at the first stop it appeared that some people were getting breathless on prolonged exertion, though not on minor exertion. Anyway at the first stop, a substantial viewing point, I realised that in getting out of the car I had managed to leave my camera in the car. It had fallen out of my travel bag as I sorted myself out. So all I had was my mobile phone. I had never used this as a camera before. The conditions were so bright that I could see neither the controls for the camera, nor the preview of the picture. So I had to press a few buttons at more or less random and see if I got any pictures, and if any of them were worthwhile. Not an ideal learning opportunity. This is from the mobile phone, but only after considerable manipulation of the colour balance to get it looking approximately like reality. I do think any camera would have had problems with colour balance - the colours were so unusual, and the sun so bright.

The problem with my phone was neither the start nor the end of the problems I encountered on this visit. When I arrived at the ticket office there was some kerfuffle involving my driver and his certification as a guide (either non-existant, or long out of date). As a consequence I was sent from one ticket window to another and back to the first. I still don't know what the exact issue was. Anyway, when they finally came to sell me a ticket, they asked for personal identification - so I produced my passport. On examination of this I got a pensioner's discount of 25% - a reduction from 137Rmb to 102Rmb - a saving of about £3.50, so worth having. However, I am obviously officially old in both England - my bus pass - and China.

Equally, when we got to the viewing spot, there were a whole series of walkways laid out, forming a circle and a natural walk to see the landscape. I walked this circle and returned to the bus. As I got near the bus one of the passengers was urging me to hurry to rejoin the bus. I thought nothing of this and we started off up hill again. However, when we got to the next stopping point, and I was as usual the last to leave the bus, every passenger (and only one of them, the Chinese guide for the Chinese group I was sharing the bus with, had any English) solemnly told me "20 minutes". They had obviously been briefed by the guide, and I had equally obviously overspent my time allotment at the previous stop. I had not been hurrying, nor dawdling, but just completing the circuit at what I thought a reasonable pace, and trying to get my mobile phone work as a camera.

Anyway, back to the colour balance problem. The lake was turquoise and curiously opaque - it was impossible to get any real impression of depth - though I later learnt it is about 32m deep. (Talking of real impression; my current lesson in Mandarin is about real and not real. As one example they use rocking horses, and real horses. So the lesson is very nearly, but not quite, about the  metaphysical value of rocking horse shit.) One of the geological features - called in China red-cloud landforms - are very red. The whole landscape is vibrant with colour, and there is considerable wildlife - most of which I could hear, but not see. In order to get the pictures balanced, I had to add in a lot of green, and some red.

The bus ride continued to higher and higher vantage points, each turn of the road revealing new vistas of geological features, terrain and amazing beauty. We topped out at just over 4000m, where again there was a vantage point.

The hydroelectic scheme, and dam is big - the scheme capacity is 1.25GW. But oddly enough in forming the lake, near the headwaters of the Yellow River, it enhances the landscape, and makes it a very entrancing place indeed. If only all Chinese developments had this effect.

Varying activities

I have been sitting like a lemon in Xining. I had found a really good hostel, where most of the staff spoke good English, and the rest some English; it was cheap enough but with everything I wanted; parks, shops, and the city centre within walking distance; and a constant flow of travellers at least half of whom speak English and a great proportion of whom are really interesting people. So what have I been doing? Not a lot more than if I were sat on my boat in Aylesbury. I have been doing two Chinese lessons a day; meditation; browsing the internet; and visiting places of interest in Xining itself.

The only thing I have been doing that I could not do in the UK is sort out some activities and trips and the next stages of my journey and today was the first fruits of that labour. I hired a car and driver to take me to Shaqing Si (monastery) and to Youning Si. The former is a vast sprawling complex of small buildings and temples, with a few score monks wandering about. The temples of the Youning Si monastery are embedded into the side of a mountain, amid dense green forests. The setting alone creates a spiritual, even mystic, atmosphere. The monks here live seem to live a relatively solitary existence, spending most of their time tending to a single temple, a walk away from any of their peers. There is also a substantial community of nuns based here. I had gone there today because there was supposed to be a puja on. There was certainly something going on - a procession of monks and nuns taking a path up into a wooded hill. They were then chanting their prayers and their practice, but there did not seem to be any communal meditation - everybody seemed to be doing their own practice spread out through the woods. There were probably about 200 people involved. By the time I managed to get to the start of the path they were well under way and there was a sussuration of voices coming from all over the hill side. I did not join them - by the time I reached there they were well distributed and well into their practice. There was one nun on a slight peak who vocally outmatched all the other practitioners put together. She was very loud. As you may be able to see from the photograph she was aware of me taking the picture, even though I was about 3/4 mile away.

In the first monastry, some monks were busy putting out offerings - which obviously consisted of the monks foodstuffs. There were huge baskets of fruit, but more peculiar to a western eye were the cases of pot noodles; the cases of soft drinks; and the cases of some sort of tinned grain.

This trip out did show me some things that are new in China/Tibet and some that are the same. New(ish) vehicles driven by tibetans all seem to have battery powered, gold coloured, prayer wheels on the ledge above the dashboard - this is new, such things were not available when I was last here. They are much more effective than having a working fuel gauge in a car. The majority of cars that regularly go up onto the plateau have been converted to run on gas, and this conversion process seems to mess up the fuel gauge beyond recall. The first quarter of my journey today (of about 280 Km) the fuel gauge's lowest segment was flashing indicating very low on fuel. Then for the second quarter of the journey the gauge (an electronic linear display) was showing no fuel at all in the car. The driver then filled up, and the gauge continued to insist that there was no fuel anywhere on the vehicle. The majority of Chinese lorries are now modern lorries - there are still a few of the old reliable blue lorry with a cab and bonnet, but not many. Parking tickets have come to China - when we returned to the hostel, all the cars on one side of the street had a ticket which in common with all Chinese documents had a large official stamp over part of the ticket. The tractor that lit the fuse of the economic growth of China, is still much in evidence in rural areas. The first monastery I visited, which is exceedingly remote, even by the standards of this region, was the first one I've been too, to have pictures of the Dalai Lama on open display. Normally they are there, but on the inside of a cupboard, or positioned so they can be easily swept up with rubbish if need be.

This trip was also very much among peaks that are above the permanent snow line - one whole line of mountains that must have been about 6300 metres.

I have also sorted out participation in a high elevation trek along part of the Kora route round Amnye Machen. I have only been trying to sort this out since before last September. It finally came together about eight days ago. It is not what I wanted to do, but it is the nearest approximation that I am likely to achieve to what I would really like to do. I have also got a trip out tomorrow to a nature reserve, and I have been sorting out my likely activities after the trek. I am probably going to a place deep in Kham, which I can use as a base to do five or six things. I will then have to get to Kunming (method still not clear) to catch the overnight bus (the train line was washed out in 2002 and has never been replaced) to the Vietnamese border and hence to Hanoi. I'll probably spend a couple of days there before catching the (three day) Hanoi-Saigon train and then spending a couple of days in Saigon. Then onto Cambodia and Thailand and beyond.

Where are your songs, Joni Mitchell, now we need them again (and again)?

This article contains amateur levels of discussion on politics, sociology, philosophy, ecology, futurology, and spirituality (using amateur in the worst possible sense). The reader is warned to have a mental bucket of salt on hand to throw over statements that get too crass, or contentious.

I had arranged with the travel agency upstairs, to make a trip out to visit Qinghai Lake with a driver and car. As we travelled I started to gain some of the intensity of feeling about the area I have previously felt on my earlier trip.

The Qinghai Lake trip was both a disappointment, and a showed me a little more of why I am doing this trip. The lake is one of the world's largest bodies of inland salt water, is one of the largest bird breeding and roosting areas in the world, home to literally billions of birds, is the place where SARS (I think) and H5N1 bird flu (certainly) viruses first made their presence known to humanity. It is a remarkably beautiful place, though like all inland water scapes, can be a bit boring. The best analogy I know to how it looks is Poole Bay, with the cliffs replaced by snow capped mountains. For centuries, at least, it has been one of many profoundly spiritual places for the people of Amdo, and the whole of Tibet.

The Chinese have been expanding their population at a rapid rate over the last century and more and their current path in providing for such an expanding population has been phenomenal economic growth. This in turn has generated a substantial middle class, with both disposable income, some free time, and the ability and willingness to spend money on taking the family out for the weekend or to some tourist attractions. One of the government responses has been to greatly increase tourist services and attractions, in particular within the areas of China that have very low population densities - Qinghai prime among them.

So where I was delivered on my day trip out was the new tourist attraction of Qinghai Lake. In one sense this was fair enough - it was certainly where the vast majority of Chinese visitors would want to end up. It is an important site - it has been nominated a tourist site of national (and international) importance. However, at least in the short term, it is unlikely to become internationally recognised - it is too focused on meeting the needs of the internal Chinese Tourist industry, and the floods of new internal tourists. This is of course sensible for what they are trying to achieve.- all the facilities that can be provided for tourists. These extend to a new dock, and marina. Several really quite large cruising vessels - though all of the "yogurt pot" variety - a term I have taken from the Inland Waterways of the UK, where it is a derogatory term for fibre glass cabin cruisers. The vessels on Qinghai do fit in this category, but some of are very big of their type. Other features are the quad bikes for hire; the tandems for hire; the electric vehicles to ride round the site; and lots and lots of other tourist benefits.

BUT - and this is where my head and my heart start to ache - they have turned the whole of Tibetan culture, religion, life style, and farming methods into exhibits in a craft museum. It was this realisation that made me start thinking about what is going on culturally, governmentally, and globally. There is no right or wrong in these situations, but there are only problems arising from the solution virtually the whole of the human race has adopted - growth, both technical and economic; consumerism, the global market place and so on. While these are providing an increased standard of living for huge swathes of the world population there is no clear path forward to prevent the despoliation of the planet. Certainly, the argument of some, to return to a simpler world; a world of less need; and older, simpler, values cannot happen. Who is going to be the one to say "I'll throw away all my comforts, and technological toys - and would YOU mind telling the families in China who work in a factory making the gadgets that they are going to be out of a job". I certainly am not going to say this - though I have simplified my lifestyle considerably by living on a boat; my love of gadgets and communication has been shown by my intent to blog on what I am doing. This has shown me their importance, and I don't want to give up more.

Why all this navel gazing. Simple. In spite of all the tourist developments and clash of different interests: I felt something about this landscape, mountains, lake, every aspect of it, that spoke to me to a degree similar to that I felt when I first visited this part of the world. I have realised that what I feel is a visceral attachment to the actual land. Though Tibetan culture is entrancing, and beautiful; though Tibetan Buddhism is one of the great world resources of spiritual insight and mind training; though the fauna and flora of this part of the world is unique, varied and surviving under unimaginably hostile conditions; these are all icing on the cake; for me what matters is this piece of land. I can only talk in metaphor (not my natural method of description) and only in rather trite metaphor at that. The way it feels is that there is a hole in my heart that is filled when I am in this landscape. When I am not in the landscape the hole is there, but it is barely noticeable - the vast majority of the time totally imperceptible. Moreover, I feel, in the piece that fills that hole, the effects of man on the land as twists at my heartstrings. I feel a part of this land, and this land a part of me. It is natural to feel that I would not mind dying in this land if it were my time to die. If I did die in this land I would like to be returned to the land by having a sky burial - though I understand this is an honour reserved for very enlightened folk, so probably no luck there. (A sky burial, for those unfamiliar with the term, is "burial" by being butchered at a high pass, or high peak, and then the pieces left on poles or rocks to attract and feed the vultures and eagles and other carrion birds).

Of course, all this introspection leaves me with a bit of a puzzle. I have heard of spiritual attachment to the land as part of some of the great reservoirs of spirituality - particularly in shamanic traditions. The well known traditions where this is a substantial part of the tradition are (some) North American Indians; the Maori; and Australian aboriginal tradition. In all commentary I have seen (discounting the 95% that is kooky; or a con; or just plain barking), this part of these traditions is recognised as a corner stone of the tradition. However, it is also described as arising from multi-generational, deep cultural absorption from living within and being part of the landscape, and cannot be transferred or synthetically generated. Nobody can, in this sense, become an Indian, or a Maori, etc. But I am not a Tibetan. I have no Tibetan ancestry (that I know of for at least seven generations). I have no cultural, ethnic, linguistic, educational links of any kind, except those of very recent adoption, with Tibet.

None the less, I assert that I am a part of this land, and this land is part of me.

So what does this great revelation mean? Absolutely nothing. When I am away from this area I never think like this, the concepts are rather shaky. The link has no great cosmic significance. It has no meaning. It does not provide purpose, or meaning to life. It does not affect my behaviour, my ethics, my view of life, the universe, and everything. (Though it has been influential in feeding into my impetus to come on this journey).

But I feel this land.

The Horror! The Horror!

This blog is unsuitable for those of a sensitive disposition. It contains descriptive material that may cause some people to feel actively nauseous, not to say severely ill. You continue at your own risk to health, sanity, and sense of decency.]

Let me paint you a picture of a normal Saturday morning in a large town or city. There are lots of people on the street, some busily doing their necessary weekend shopping; others strolling and doing shopping as a pastime; and some activities have sprung into being precisely because it is the weekend. Oh look - over there somebody is trying to draw attention to a wedding fair. You have those in your country as well, so I expect you have a good idea of the picture I am trying to draw. If you just let me have a peek at your picture.....mmmm..... not exactly what I have in mind.....

[Note to those with cast iron constitutions that have reached this far: I am only describing the on-street advertising designed to draw people into the weddding fair. I am not describing the event itself, as I am either not man enough, or too much a man to venture into such surroundings.]

....Let's see what we can do to adjust your mind to reality. You are imagining a table to hold the leaflets, and a couple of photo stands to hold pictures of the gowns and so on. This really doesn't give us enough scope to draw people in, though the photo stands are a good idea. You were imagining a stand to take 4'x2'6" photos - throw those out and replace them with decent sized stands - 18'x 12' - yes that's about right. Now throw that table out - lets have some really decent infrastructure to support pictures of the fair, and some examples of the merchandise. How about an 25m long double barreled inflatable triumphal arch - yes that's much more like it. Now, we've really got space to hang photos, pictures of the merchandise, samples of the bouquets, example wedding dresses hung in transparent display wardrobes; and pictures of everything on offer in the fair.

...So how are we doing: mmmmm....your picture is still really rather dull isn't it. What's the problem? Oh I see, your imagination is just not up to the task - it's the merchandise - your view of it is boring isn't it (no offence, but you'd never make it in the marketing business). What can we do about your picture - oh you have seen documentaries about Roma weddings, and wedding gear - now that is much more like it - just make it a triple order of gypsy ornamentation on every item - yes much better. Now all we need to do is add a sensible amount of decoration and frills and furbelows, lace and lavender, ruches and revants, sequins, icing, arches of flowers and tucks and twizzles. Now we're getting somewhere - are you sure you don't want some extra lace there? What's that - you are worried about the size of the bouquets - quite right, they are a bit cramped - they are only a couple of feet across - far too small. Throw them out and replace them with those over there that are a reasonable size - yes dustbin lid size is so classy isn't it? And they will allow us to add some more loops of flowers, and lace, and sequins. Do have a bit more decoration on everything - there's no such thing as too little decoration. How about some icing on the bouquets - so elegant?

So what does the picture look like now? I don't know, there is still something amiss with your picture.......let me have a think for a minute.....Oh it's obvious, it's the colour scheme. You in the west think that white is quite a good idea for a wedding. Well it is popular here too, but it is also regarded as the colour of death. So we'll allow you one white dress, but you are going to have to adjust it a bit. How about this black foot wide lace? Yes if we do that as a triple spiral zigzag all the way from the ground to the bust - yes that takes the edge off all that nasty whiteness. As for the rest, well the colour that is lucky is red so everything will have to be red. But don't worry, anywhere in the red spectrum will do nicely, and it does support decoration ever so well. Let's put on some more sequins and lace just to make sure. Now we can do everything in this nice range of analine dyes - acid drop pink; ultra violent purple; silly scarlet; maundering mauve; - what - you want to mix the colours up - oh I'm so glad you're starting to get the idea - yes two pinks, purple, red, and  orange fit so well in the overall oevre don't they........


[This advertisment was visible from about 800m away (a very busy city,divided into city blocks, by road intersection, does tend to break up sight lines). It took about 45s to negotiate just as a pedestrian, and it was visible by osmosis at the back of the neck as I withdrew.]

But I survived

The Horror! The Horror!