Millers in Shanghai: Grant's Interim Trip

Last week I got to go to Yunnan Province here in China for a school trip. I left on Friday and got back Thursday. We flew from Shanghai to Kunming then waited in the airport for three hours while listening to a couple people talk about physics the whole time. It was... great. Then we flew from there to the tiny mountain town of Shangri-la. It isn't the paradise that has been built up by James Hilton's Lost Horizon. It was just a way for the Chinese government to bring tourists into Yunnan Province. The town is like any average small town in the foothills of the Himalayas. That night we went to a small restaurant across the street and had some good Tibetan food.

On Saturday we went to a monastery in the morning. It was massive. We went inside and looked at the paintings and murals that were on the walls. They were pretty impressive. This monastery was a part of the "Yellow-hat sect" of Buddhism.

The Songzanlin Monastery from afar.

Afterwards we went to eat at a restaurant that served us a "hot pot". Basically, you have your own pot of boiling water and you cook what you want. I ate a lot of yak meat and lotus roots. It was good. Then we took a walk through the remains of the old town. It was burnt down in an electrical fire a few years ago. 394 houses were destroyed. In the afternoon, we had the opportunity to help the cousin of one of our guides harvest the barley that was on his farm. We were there for about an hour and a half and we finished the whole field.

We filled up these two trailers and one more.

I got barley everywhere. It was poking me in my shoes, shirt, waistband and many other places. That night we went to a local Tibetan (they are ethnically Tibetan but they live in China, though they consider the land they live in Tibet) families house and ate their food and watched them dance. We were then told to do one of our dances so we did the Macarena. I felt kind of pathetic that this is how we showed our "culture".

The next day we got up and took an hour-long bus ride to the beginning of our trail. It wasn't really much of a trail because it was a small rocky road that led to nomad's houses. We hiked about 4 or 5 hours that day. There were many yaks along the path and I felt like I was in Switzerland because the yaks had bells on their necks and they echoed through the valleys. Horsemen came with us to guide the horses that carried our food. They were very entertaining.

Hiking on the first day.

Two random Tibetan men.

On Monday we got up to start our hike to the Abujee Lake. It took the first half of the day to get there. When we got up to it, it was a lot colder than our 3,300 meter high camp. We had climbed 750 meters in 3 hours. The air was a lot thinner, but also a lot cleaner than Shanghai. The lake was hidden behind many of the hills that led up to the Abujee mountain. It was quite the sight to behold. For lunch we had some strange chicken thing that I didn't dare eating.

Traditional "Thangka" painting.

Our guide, Sonam, with moss on his ears that only grows in areas with 0% pollution

Me at Abujee Lake

The nasty packaged chicken leg that made me want to throw up.

After "lunch" we started heading back down to our camp for that night. It was quite the adventure. Our tough guide, Sonam, would run down the 60 degree slopes to find the trail only to sprint up it again to tell us where to go. He wouldn't even be out of breath. We descended 750 meters in 2 hours. Then walked on flat ground for another hour. It was so great to get to the campsite that day. The views we had from it were really quite impressive.

Abujee Mountain.

The Horsemen were very excited to get there.

That night we had a bonfire and listened to the local Tibetans sing their folk songs. They then listened to us sing very culturally significant songs like "Don't Stop Believing" as made famous by Journey and "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan.

The Tibetan folk song sung by one of the horsemen.

On Tuesday we had a very simple hike back to the bus. It was very relaxing and was a good way to end the hike. That afternoon, we had five hours of free time in the town and we danced with some of the local Tibetans in the main square. It was interesting.