Maoist, Mobs & Traffic Jams

We boarded the bus in Chitwan at 9am for our six hour ride back to Kathmandu. The first three hours were smooth sailing and we were right on time. Then the bus stopped. Stopped for longer, then the motor switched off.

"Maoists have created a road block ahead, there's a 30km traffic jam. It's best you go get some food and water in the town we just passed" announced the bus attendant. Claire and I hopped off the bus in the middle of nowhere and quickly purchased a few samosas and bottles of water. The novel experience of being caught up in Nepal's political maelstrom was interesting for the first half-hour, but when the engine started again after 2.5 hours we were pleased to be on our way again.

The bus began to roll, and then stopped, again, 500m's down the road. Again the engine was switched off, I think I groaned as I wondered what'd happened to the negotiations that had opened the road for 5 minutes. But this time the problem was different. One of the lead buses, perhaps in a hurry to get to Kathmandu had knocked down a child, and whilst the kid was ok (so I was told) the villagers had formed a mob and trashed the bus which was now blocking the road. We again dismounted the bus for what turned out to be a second 2.5 hour wait.

Finally, the bus began to roll towards Kathmandu again, and as we passed the nearby town we could see the wreck of the bus - smashed windows and blackened insides and all.

As the entire day's traffic moved towards Kathmandu it was of course slowed and as night fell we were a long way from our guesthouse. About 8.30pm we finally got to our guesthouse, about 5.5 hours late. We relayed our story to the proprietors, who nodded and said "Yes, it happens all the time in Nepal."

Rhinos

We've spent our first week in Nepal and taken in quite a bit.

The first few days were spent in Kathmandu taking some of the local sites, including the Durba (Palace) square and its temples and the nearby town of Patan, also for temple viewing. I'd put up a picture, but we forgot to take the camera on both trips (yes, boneheads both of us).

After that we went to Chitwan national park in search of the endangered black rhino. When we arrived it was raining, and continued to rain the entire next day and night - hence we cancelled our planned walk in the morning and decided to take an elephant in the morning as well as in the afternoon as planned.

In still pouring rain our elephant took off (well, lumbered anyway) and after three hours in the rain and forest we'd managed to see two deers, two boars and two pheasants; not exactly what we were looking for. Soaked to the bone we deliberated all day as to whether we'd cancel the afternoon trip, but finally pragmatism took us once again onto the elephants back. On our second attempt, success - we saw four of the rhinos including a juvenile. Feeling quite like David Attenborough we returned to the hotel with gigantic smiles.

Mt Everest for Breakfast

Claire & I flew from Chengdu, China to Kathmandu via Lhasa, and the view outside was spectacular - we passed the Himalayas on a blue skied day and were able to see the summit of Mt Everest. It was something that I never thought I'd see.

Front Row

Front row, right on the half-way line. That's where our tickets were for the Australia v Canada clash in the Women's Football World Cup. That's right - Claire & I had timed our city and date to perfection (a complete fluke) so that our last night in China coincided with the soccer - we got our tickets a week ago and have had World Cup Fever ever since.

A typhoon in Shanghai prevented the corresponding group fixture occurring, and hence a delay in the Australia match for 24 hours - about 7 hours after we land in Kathmandu. Reluctantly we gave our prime tickets to some other patrons that could afford the delay and trudged away from stadium.

The third disappointment caused by weather - the closure Tiger Leaping Gorge and lack of views from Mt Emei Shan's summit - completed the triumvirate, and hopefully accords us a clear run in Nepal.

We fly to Kathmandu tomorrow for a very different month to the time we've spent in Asia.

Sichuan Style

Since leaving Kunming on the 11th we've been based in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, and making day trips in Sichuan and beyond (Xian for the Terracotta Warriors).

First up was Chengu's Panda Breeding Centre - home to about 60 pandas. Arriving at 7.30 to see the feeding time (apparently after feeding they just sleep all day) our first sighting was at the adult enclosure. Four pandas sat around chewing bamboo, watching the tourists and looking for all money like four guys sitting on the couch watching football and drinking beer. They also happened to look like four guys in panda suits sitting eating bamboo shoots for the tourists. The next viewing was the new born cubs, sleeping in their incubators and encouraging much cooing from the passing tourists.

The Xian trip is described in the last entry.

A three day trip took in the giant budda in Leshan and Mt Emei Shan. The giant budda certainly is that - it's over 70m's tall and is carved into an alcove on the side of the cliff looking over the nearby river. We got a good view of budda's head, but were daunted by the apparent 4 hour queue of Chinese tour groups to take the down to his feet.

From Leshan it was a short ride to Mt Emei Shan. Emei is a shade over 3000m's high, and amazingly has a stone path and stair case running from it's summit to the bottom, covering about 35kms on the way down. We awoke early on the first day and took the 2 hour bus ride to the cable car near the summit and then squashed into the cable car with several Chinese tour groups to the top. On the summit, the mist and cloud was so thick we could see only several metres in front of us. From there was began to walk the long stone path down. When walked on mountain spurs we could see five mountain ranges to the horizon, and when in the valleys look up steep mountain faces a 1000m's above. We stopped on one cliff edge and looked across a valley to the opposing cliff face, far below we saw a bird of prey circling on the air currents. Six rotations with the updraft carried it passed us and over the mountain top above us.

The first day we walked for nine hours, and very sore came to the monastery we planned to sleep in. Several hundred years old and made of stone and wood the monastery is still an active place of worship. Leaving the shower in the evening I heard a rumbling I took to be a generator, it was actually the Buddhist prayer drums. At 5.30 the following morning we were woken by drumming, singing and chanting.

Walking the second day we took the quickest route to the bus stop, missing a few monasteries we'd planned to visit, due to the pain in our legs. The stone path and steps had taken a toll on our muscles and joints that we hadn't expected. We walked for about 30kms the first day, and descended about 12,000 steps, which proved to be too much. (Estimate: we descended 1700ms, each step is 15cms high).

The walk also provided us with a solitude that we'd forgotten about since arriving in China. The cities are crowded, and the tourist attractions are flooded with Chinese tour groups. On the second day, as we walked from isolation to the bus stop, the population density gradually increased until the monastery near the entrance was swamped by tour groups, those too lazy to take the serene walk on the mountain. We fled the groups and crap souvenirs as quickly as possible and were able to reflect on the joy of walking through the forests without the bustle and hassle.

Aggressive Clay Pots

In a bid to see one of China's big wonders Claire & I flew to Xian to see the Terracotta Warriors. The one-day trip built a lot of expectation, but was worth it. Initially the scale of the site is impressive, thousands of models in their original setting, but what really impressed me was the minutiae of the individual warriors as each is different. Standing in their ranks it's possible to see the varying heights, postures and features of each warrior - most looking humanist and fearsome, though we picked out several that looked stylised and a little surreal in their design.

Five different warriors (ie a general, an archer etc) have been pulled out of the dig-site and placed behind glass allowing you to get within centimetres of them. Up close the detail is even more impressive as you can see the braiding in their hair, buckles on their armor and ruffle in the pleats of their cloaks.

Xian too is a daunting city, the one that most made me feel that I was in a totalitarian state. The buildings are humongous (especially the local government bureaucracy building), the streets are wide, and public spaces are dauntingly large. For the first time I've felt small and isolated in a Chinese city.

From Yunnan to Sichuan

After 5 days in LiJiang (a protracted time due to the closure of close-by Tiger Leaping Gorge) we were glad to head out of the ancient city (approx 800 years old) and the "Disney China" feeling that it can attract. Early in the morning lit-up at night it's very pretty, but otherwise can be extremely full of Chinese tourists and every shop seems to sell the same, cheap crap for tourists to buy. We were glad to end 'musical guesthouses', as every place but the last night had enough of a problem to compel us to move on the next day. The 'highlight' being a quite nice guesthouse which turned out to be across the road from the town's nightclub strip which made sleep impossible. In changing hostels late at night we did, however, manage to sneak a peak in the daggiest clubs and pubs I've seen since Frankston.

From LiJiang a day-long bus ride took us back to Kunming to connect with the train overnight to Chengdu in Sichuan province. The train ride, 16 hours of it all up, was saved by the amazing scenery from the window. We rode along the river for kilometres, with views of dozens of gorges.

Some were tight, rising vertically from a narrow river to the mountain's zenith. Others were wider, allowing space for a rice paddy either flat or sloping up the mountain side, a living grown, so long as the river maintained its banks. Mist either clung to the gorge sides or else stole the mountain tops in its deep swathe. Down many of the cliffs small streams were busy creating new gorges. My favourite gorges were intimidating. Wide, raging, chocolate rivers, vertical, hard cliffs that I want to call granite but which weren't, and mountain tops lost to the eye in mist. Our buildings and bridges sat over nature, not replacing, engaging or enhancing it.

The Big Disappointment

The bus dropped Claire & I in Qiao Tou after a 2 hour ride through mountains, valleys and over rivers.
"Are you here to walk the Gorge?"
"Yes"
"It's closed"
Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the key attractions that brought us to China, is off-limits. Constant rain in Yunnan over the last week had resulted in a fatal landslide and the closing of TLG. Whilst it's hard to dwell on the disappointment given others lost their lives, the walk was something we were really looking forward to.

Instead we headed back to Li Jiang, the second historic/preserved city in Yunnan we've visited after Dali. Despite trying to re jig our plans it looks like we're stuck here a few days, before continuing with the adventure. The pics are of Li Jiang.

Best Day Yet

Claire & I have just spent our best day of the holiday (i think) in Dali - a historical/preserved city in Yunnan Province. The town is beautiful, and full of buildings that give justification to the cliched motifs of many Chinese restaurants back home - ornate carved doors, swooping tiled roofs and dragons and lions abound.

We awoke late and after wandering around town for breakfast rented bicycles to explore the surrounding countryside. A few kilometres down the road a few frescoes on the side of the buildings attracted us into a small village. The village had cobble-stoned streets, brick buildings dating back hundreds of years and Chinese people dating back nearly a hundred years going about their daily, agricultural lives. Our presence appeared to disturb little, other than to raise hello's and nihou's from the people. We wandered in and out of several similar, small villages which remind me of the farming villages I've visited in Northumberland, UK - except full of Chinese people. This is one of the few experiences I've had on the trip that I felt I could actually see another way of life, unpolluted by tourism.

The whole region holds a very large population of very big, ugly spiders. Around all the fields (corn mostly) they had strung up giant webs, and as the fields and towns blended together, they were throughout the towns too. The power cables provided the basis for giant webs ruling along the roads and overhead containing hundreds of spiders each.

After our ride lunch beckoned and we settled on a dumpling-place run by two very smiling patrons. The dumplings were amazing, better than I've ever eaten before, and had us contemplating whether we should go back for more today or wait till tomorrow.

Finally in the afternoon we strolled into the city's garden, which was the picture book Chinese garden complete with marble bridge. What especially appealed was the use of the garden by the Chinese inhabitants of the town who were playing marjon, chess and drinking tea with their friends.

One One-Party State After Another

Crossing the border from Vietnam into China once again proved the divide that a small river can create. From the Vietnamese side we left behind ramshackle French-colonial buildings and wide streets for Soviet-esque cement buildings hunched over narrow streets in China. Equally, English disappeared but so did the rapid-fire, unsolicited requests to spend money.

Immediately China stood above us, four storeys high and filled with signs indecipherable to us. A short walk took us to the bus station and our transport to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. Unfortunately the only transport option was the 'sleeper bus', 'sleeper' in inverted commas because there wasn't much sleeping done. The sleeper bus is essentially a slightly-tall coach, but instead of seats there's small beds arranged in three rows running the length of the coach, and bunk-bedded two high. At the beginning of the trip the beds seemed just long enough for Claire and I, but shrank the further we got into our 14-hour trip. Whilst the map indicated we'd take a highway to Kunming, the bumping and swaying demonstrated a more circuitous path of 'short-cuts', some of which seemed to take the bus through plowed fields. Anyway, we finally made it to Kunming and fell asleep at the guest house.

The people, too made us instantly feel like we were in China. Very willing to approach us for a chat, Chinese sentences quickly role off their tongue. They have a different attitude too, within 1 hour of being in China we saw our first angry, public dispute and have continued to see them since. Thankfully, however, their attitude towards tourists is much more relaxed. After a month of being cajoled, summoned and pulled by Vietnamese hawkers its a pleasure to just stroll through town without having products thrust in our face. There's far more smiling amongst the Chinese than the Vietnamese.