China Day 7: The Epic 14-Hour Trek

Up at the crack of dawn to get as far as we can today. Since we are off to a very late start we consider getting to the mountain pass, maybe even Shang YuBeng, the village in the valley, and then turning around and making it back to Shangri-La before the day is out. We can't decide so we figure we'll wait until we get there and see how we are doing on time.

The hike to the mountain pass is tough. It takes us maybe five hours to go from 2650 meters to 3800 meters, and it's a tiring climb. I think I got tired more from being out of shape than from the altitude. I can't imagine what this trek would have been like if I'd have brought my entire 35-lb backpack with me. I'd have died!

Our map indicates it takes four hours from the hot springs to the mountain pass. We take it pretty slow to enjoy the scenery, take a few photos, and stop for tea along the way. Somewhere I heard someone use the word cha for tea, so I ask the woman for cha and hope that it means green tea. Nope. Two cups of yak butter tea coming right up, and two cups of yak butter tea secretly poured out by two Westerners. And by the way, there were at least two if not three guest houses between the hot springs and the mountain pass. Either the people in XiDang just really wanted us to stay there or the Chinese girl mistranslated our question.

A couple of hours pass and we start seeing snow. It's early May so much of it has just begun to melt. I want to make a snowman but all the snow is brown.

We finally make it to the mountain pass and are welcomed by hordes of prayer flags hung from bushes and trees. We walk a little further and rhododendrons are everywhere now too. We're pretty tired and stop at a small shop for a cup of tea (green) for about 20 minutes. There's a great view of the mountains through the trees so we take a few photos as well.

Onwards to Shang YuBeng, about one hour away from where we stopped. We stop for a lunch of noodles, vegetables, and green tea. This isn't Tibet, but you sure wouldn't ever know it. The houses are all in the same Tibetan style, prayer flags are hung over bridges and fly from rooftops, and there is a line of prayer wheels. The people look a bit different than the Chinese -- their skin is darker and more golden, and their faces not quite as round but with more defined features. And they are all so welcoming.

After about an hours rest we decide to keep moving. It's nearly 1:00 by now and our map indicates about six hours to the next guesthouse in NiNong Village. We wander through the fields of Xia YuBeng, the village we ate lunch at, and the next few hours of our trek are along the Salween river, running wild with freshly melted snow from the moutaintops. This part of the trek is difficult -- it's steep and rather than a dirt path we are walking through rocks. It's not good on my legs and the fact that I have been wearing sandals, both flip flops and my Tevas, for the past month has irritated my knee. The trek is a bit tricky but we enjoy it and list of our Top Fives of just about everything before making it to the bridge across the river and stopping for a rest. We have been walking for about nine hours now and both James and I are pretty tired.

Rest for a while and take some photos on the bridge. Onwards we go, and the trek really gets scary. Suddenly we are walking along the edge of a cliff. To my left, a stream about one foot wide and a cliff wall going straight up, often hanging over the river and butting into the trail. To my right, only a few inches between where I place my feet and where the cliff ends, the 200 meter plummet into the Salween below begins. This is the Trail of Death. Nowhere in my travels but here did I ever fear for my life. One false step and I literally would have fallen to my death and would have been washed away by the Salween River. The trail was never more than a foot wide, and at some point there was no trail to speak of at all. A log was placed over a waterfall where the stream fell over the cliff; James took his chances and successfully maintained his balance for about six feet across waterfall. I, on the otherhand, despite the balanced I have developed from years of ballet training, decided that I wasn't going to take such chances with my life and I took of my socks and walked in the stream. And it was cold. As ice. Literally. I felt ice chunks in that stream. But cold feet is certainly better than being dead, yes?

We continued on the Trail of Death for about two hours, myself stopping and crouching down everytime the wind blew so hard it could have knocked me off. We rounded the mountain and were now walking along the Lang Cang River, part of the Mighty Mekong. We come to a village that offers grapes, but we see another less than an hour's walk away so we keep on truckin.

We arrive at the village and they've got no place for us to stay. They tell us to try the next one, about two hours away, so we keep on walking. It's dusk and we calculate our chances of getting stranded on the mountainside overnight. If we can't find a bed soon, it's not looking so good.

Finally, we come across a small village -- it looks as though only one or two families live here. Nobody is around so we wander through the buildings until we find someone. Once we do, they don't speak english (duh), so we play charades for a bit, putting our hands together and resting our heads on them to ask for a bed, and putting our hands towards our mouths with our fingers together to ask for food. They welcome us inside.

I had always wanted to do a homestay, particularly in Laos or Vietnam, but never had the time. Several backpackers had told me they were very touristed and set up more like an exhibit than anything. Most backpackers ate with the family, watched them work for a while, played with the children, and slept in a separate shelter built specifically for tourists. There were often mulitple tourists in the same homestay, sometimes up to 6 or 7. It didn't seem very personal and certainly not very real. But here James and I were, staying with a family, with no other backpackers for miles around. It was a real live homestay.

In the building we stayed in was only husband and wife, plus a cute little puppy and a few chickens that kept wandering into the huge kitchen. The floor was concrete and the ceilings were low. The woman asked us to wash our feet in another room before eating dinner -- I don't think this is customary, I think she was just being kind and assumed our feet were tired from all the walking. They then brought an extra bench from the kitchen into their bedroom so we could watch TV. Oh yea, and the woman was wearing a Volcom hat. Also, I was outside and tried to ask the man where the bathroom was. I had wandered around for a bit trying to find something but had no luck. The man just kinda pointed away from their house, towards the mountain...