China Day 6.0: Shangri-La to DeQin

Up and at 'em early in the morning and pack all our things into James' backpack and my daypack, leaving the rest at the hotel until we return the next day. Grab a good seat on the bus and pull out our books and iPods to entertain us for the ride. I'm reading The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga by Deepak Chopra and James has got Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. The bus ride is a bus ride for a while, but a beautiful bus ride. I think I've said this before but sometimes bus rides can be my favorite part of traveling, simply for the scenery. And this scenery is absolutely gorgeous. There are hills and mountains everywhere and a mix of earthy browns and greens.

We make a 30 minute pit stop and hang our legs off a ledge where a woman is tending to a small garden below while we take in the scenery in front of us. We meet some Canadians and talk for a bit. Wander around the area and find some goats along the side of the road, or maybe yak, I can't remember. James befriends one of them.

We hop back on the bus and are in for quite a ride. The road twists and turns and the mountains get higher and higher, the snow more abundant. Pretty soon we're high enough where there's a considerable amount of snow below us as well. Quite a few times I fear for my life as the bus rides so closely to the edge of the road, and it feels as if any second we will plummet into the valley below. Taking this on a motorbike would be dangerous, but truly amazing.

A full six hours after leaving Shangri-La we arrive at the bus stop in DeQin. It is now 1:00 and we had expected to be at the first village on our trek by now. Things aren't looking good as this trek will now take us three days or more rather than the two we had planned.

We look for a taxi or minibus to take us to the village, another two hours from DeQin. We meet a German couple on the bus who we offer a taxi share with, but they have decided to stay in DeQin and do a few other treks. We luck out once again and find a teeny Chinese couple on holiday who are also looking to go to Kawa Karpo, and the girl speaks pretty good English. She finds us a minibus that can leave around 2:00 for a decent price of 120 yuan, split between the four of us. (James and I planned to spend 140 yuan between two.) We jump in and are off to the mountains.