see the famed corona of the sun peeking around the moon, despite
hiking up a hill early in the morning -well the extra 200m closer to
the sun was never likely to help much. Though the 9 or so of us
created some kind of group atmosphere during the eclipse, in the town
the locals set off fireworks when it went dark and probably had more
fun!
Tagong, the small Tibetan town where we watched the eclipse, 3,000m in
altitude and surrounded by grasslands, had a minimal police presence.
With so few Han Chinese there I suppose there was not much tension.
The other towns and cities with a higher mixture of ethnicities were
different though, with police cars cruising around or parked in
prominent places, after the unrest of last year that spread from Lhasa
to these areas. Sensibly the police kept their distance when a living
buddha, a lama (not the dalai lama of course), came to visit and there
was a procession through town.
The procession involved smoke, some humans dressed up as animals, over
50 horsemen and some 4x4s for the lama and his party. In fact one of
the cars in the party was a sports car (not sure how it fared on the
awful local tracks) and the lead 4x4 carried a monk who jumped out
early to film it all. We looked on, impressed, especially with the
horsemen with their white and gold outfits and swords. We also went
into the monastery where the whole town gathered to sit in the
courtyard to eat and take turns in going into the prayer hall. After
getting sunburnt in the courtyard, enjoying the atmosphere and peaking
into the prayer hall we left and went for a walk.
It had been an interesting experience and more was to come the next
day when we rode a horse to another monastery where the monks were all
kneeling amongst flowers in a square under a tent praying, and it
looked stunning. In fact the morning ride was better than expected: we
trotted a fair bit and even broke into a brief canter to escape a mean
dog who left the tent on the hills with his tibetan nomadic owners to
attack us. Life up there seemed pretty bad and a mean dog seemed as
important to the tibetans as their herd of yak (seems like even the
tibetans have to deal with criminals)... but it was fascinating to
see.
Another 4 hours on a rough road took us to our last destination,
Danba. The roads were all under construction and suffered from the
rain, but the scenery was incredible over the last week or so.
Particularly as we went over 4,000m and past the second-highest
airport in the world that looked out-of-place surrounded by yaks and
grass. We've had to hire minivans often due to a lack of buses, roads
too bad for buses, and the recent decision not to sell bus tickets to
foreigners to go to certain places. We've got to know some fellow
travellers fairly well in these journeys and over meals of yak, and
i've been speaking plenty of chinese whilst struggling to understand
the local dialect when we've found someone who spoke putonghua, rather
than tibetan.
We met some wonderful people running hostels and restaurants in these
small villages; none of whom could speak English so I am not sure how
they manage . 1 restaurant owner was an inspiring woman, who had come
here to find work, alone; her kid and husband in other, separate,
places; she ran the little restaurant all alone doing the ordering,
cooking, cleaning and even providing tourist advice at the same time.
We spent the last 2 days admiring some of the most beautiful villages
in China set in the hills, made of stone and surrounded by 800 year
old 30m high watchtowers that the locals had built all over the area.
In the most beautiful village (according to Chinese National
Geographic in 2005) we found a wonderful hotel with a bar. Inside was
a drunk policeman.(presumably off-duty) with a gun and bullets
attached to the holster... it was 4pm. We left quickly and quietly to
continue admiring the magnificent and massive buildings.
Unfortunately when we arrived back at one hotel at 11.30pm after
dinner, we were told we had to leave before the police came, as we
weren't in a hotel that had a license for foreigners to stay in.
Furious at the hotel manager we had to move, I gave her an earful as
it seemed clear she did this all the time, trying to take in
foreigners illegaly. 2 days later we were angry again when the bus
ticket office told us there might not be a bus leaving the day we
wanted to go and even the bus leaving the day before was likely to
take several hours longer than normal due to the roads which were
affected by rain. It was the "might" that was frustrating. In the end
we decided to hire a taxi for the 9 hour trip only to be told by the
driver he was unable to take us, but his brother would. Then his
brother said the same, so now his friend will take us.... hopefully.
Fingers crossed for tomorrow!
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