From Shangri-La to the end of Tiger leaping gorge

Hi you all

This time it's me, Kyra, writing. In the end we really took the plane, a nighttrain and a bus to cross China from east to west and arrived in Shangri-La, at 3400 meters altitude. They said, that this is the most Tibetan city you easily can get in without permit. And it was. 34% of the inhabitants are Tibetan, most women wearing the traditional clothing and also the old town looks very different to what we saw so far. The houses are similar to the Swiss chalets, exept of not having doors but carpets instead.

The initial reason for going to Shangri-La was the easy visa extension there, as we read on the internet. Well, the third time (and also third day) we went to the visa extension office, we then definitely were informed that an extension is only possible a week before the old visa expires. No luck for us with that, but Shangri-La never the less was worth a sight. We could easily spend this three days with skating a little bit, walking round the old city, visiting the temple with the biggest prayer wheel on earth (and with no entry fee; unbelievable for China) and eating a lot Tibetan dishes. We found a very cosy Tibetan restaurant (which are always just kind of their living room) that served yak meet, momo and buttertea during rainy afternoons..

On the 9th we then finally started our Chinese leg (which is now said to be more of a pinky toe..). Out of Shangri-La city we skated direction national park. Soon the road started to bend up and down and we felt the thin air at 3500 meters altitude. Super tired (at least me) we put up our tarp, went to sleep after a big pot  of polenta and woke up the next morning in a frozen wonderland with the rising sun making everything glittering. Robert had a mouse trying to climb his feet and haunting him his sleep. But exept of this the night was quiet and warm!

The following days were dominated by walking up passes and breaking them down again. As they were quite steep (we went up to 3700m altitude), we also hitchhiked some parts. While Robert enjoyed the slope as a perfect freeriding occasion, for me it was still a little too steep and I had to tie a stone on my board to help me slowing down. The road was most of the time perfectly paved and with only a few cars. These were honking here too, the first 'tuuuu' for warning that they're passing you, the second for greeting. Once as we were looking for a place to sleep, an old man brought us to a hut. The communication was tricky, first we understood that we're invited to his house including dinner, for what we had to help cutting trees. In the end it was a tree feller hut with a 10kg pack of rice that we could use. He left afterwards and we too, we prefered our tarp to that  sooty hut with a lot of empty beer bottles.

In the end it was tough but the scenery and the weather were breathtaking (but one would never guess this is in China). 

Yesterday we reached the end of Tiger leaping gorge. It took us a long time for this 170 kilometers as the terrain really was not perfect for skating and my bellys troubles slowed us down too. But we surely have now a higher hematocrit and a big love for our fleece trousers that kept us warm during freezing nights.

bye for now,

kyra

From Russia to China

Hi Folks

Sorry! First thing to say is sorry! I had a huge delay since the last blog post, and I am sorry for that. I was a little absorbed by the new Chinese impressions,  and also the internet is heavily censored here. (And slooooow).

The worst blogging fear has come true, and one really is not able to reach blogger from China. Some wise minds have suggested that it would work using a VPN, and it does, but one needs a computer for that (as you know, I am blogging via my mobile phone), and so far most of our hosts did not have a VPN. I try to go around that by sending my blogposts via email to my sister in Switzerland, which will then access my account and post them. But as this is an extra effort in the blogging foodchain, posts still will appear at random points.

So lets start at the beginning. With entering China.

As you know, we accessed China from Russias far east with the bus to Harbin. Judging from how complicated it was to get those bus tickets (absolutely no chance without speaking Russian, we only were able with the help of our local host), I doubt that a great many westerners travel this route. After finding the bus station far out of the city center in a shabby building, we started on a fairly smooth 13 hour long busride, which we mostly spent sleeping. On the border than the suspense if the Russians would let us leave their country (yep, they did) and if the Chinese would let us enter theirs (yep, they did). Chinese customs was interesting though, as first Kyra's migration form was not accepted because it was written in the wrong colour and had to be rewritten, and because our passports were checked by about ten persons each, crowding around them together. In the end I think they were just stoked by the colourfull pages in our passports.

So we are in China now. 

And compared to Russia, this really is the other side of the world. While in Russia I was quite rapidly able to read their lettering and also pick up enough words to eventually get along, there is zero chance to do so in China. This results in what we have come to call "surprise meals", as you go into a restaurant and just randomly point at items in the menu. Then you wait what comes out of the kitchen. We already ate some very very tasty meals like this. First evening the dishes completely consisted of mushrooms. One evening we managed to order both soup with cow stomach and noodles with pigs intestines. Or a dish that contained a whole chicken, including head and feet (not much on them really, taste and feel like meager chickenwings). Even after we  made a point of memorizing the Chinese signs for guts and intestines, we ordered a dish that contained some unidentifiable internal part of a chicken. But irrespective of how funky the dish feels that you get, it is almost always super tasty. Oh man really. The Chinese food we get at home is no comparison. I think we will put on some serious weight here, that we then can use for worse times when skating.

Ah yeah, skating. I first was a little concerned about the traffic in China, as in its abundance it is even worse than in Russia. But different to Russia, the drivers here at least aknowledge the existence of other, smaller vehicles on the street. This doesn't mean that they would give way, or drive safely, no no, but they at least have the courtesy of honking and then SLOWING DOWN before they pass you. All together it feels a lot better than skating in Russia. I have to admit that we only skated the cities so far, as we have been traveling southwards towards better weather from Harbin on, and just couldn't resist to make a few stops on the way to have a look at the rich Chinese cultural heritage. I think no one can blame us for that. 

Lets go into further detail.

We didn't stop for a long time in Harbin, as we wanted to get south as fast as possible. So we innocently went to the train station after a day with the intention of getting a train to Beijing the same night. Nope. There where seemingly no free seats on trains for the next three days. After some freaking out and with the help of a english speaking ticket vending machine, we learned about the existance of the "hard-seat' class in night trains, which is really a hard and uncomfortable bench. And in this class there were some seats left for the next day. Bought the tickets and re-checked in in the hotel we left a couple of hours ago. The train the next day was a new super highspeed train, fancy on the outside and cramped full on the inside. Altough this was still the most comfortable train journey that we were going to have in China.

In Beijing, honestly, one of the first things we noticed was the smog. It looks like a lovely autumn morning back in Switzerland. Just that the fog stays the whole day and does not smell nice. Some days it was so thick, one could look into the sun without shades. But besides that, this city is awesome. Its like a mesh of super small alleways in which tasty food is sold and fancy-pancy shoppingstreets with skyscrapers. Around Beijing we checked out the Forbidden city, of course, a ocean of tourists and an enormously big, ancient palace. Later we went for a hike on the great wall. But not just a touristy hike for some hours, no, we went for two days along a unrestored part of the wall, and slept in an old watchtower. The view was amazing, and who can say that he slept on the grat wall, he? It wasn't just a simple hike though. The wall was, as mentioned, unrestored, and for the matter of fact, not existing anymore for some parts. Combined with its position on the very top of the mountain ridge, instead of hiking, we were climbing for most parts. We didn't know that there was this amount of serious climbing involved when we started, and of course then only had improper equipment. Honestly, I didn't feel too comfortable in some of the climbs. But we managed, and got rewarded with an awesome and unforgettable experience.

Another uncomfortable night in the train later, we arrived in Xi'an, one of the old starting points of the silk road, and famous for its muslim quarter and the teracotta warriors. We did both. The muslim quarter is like a very colourfull nightmare out of tastes, smells and tourists. Altough the food served looked delicious, the prices were hardcore. But in some side-alleys we found some delicious mutton dumpling soup. The terracotta warriors were very impressive, altough not as impressive as expected. There were more living chinese people than dead terracotta ones.

Again a trainride later, we arrive at the birthplace of both chan buddhism and kung fu. The Shaolin monastery near Zhengzhou, where we spent a night in the Shaolin monastery. Well, not exactly in the monastery, but at least in a youth hostel that was within the temple site. That temple was highly impressive on me. In the floor of one of the halls there are still imprints of monks practicing kung fu... And we entertained the tourists a bit by skating through the temple site...

Right now we are in Shanghai, passing the festivities of the first of October, their national holiday, where about 20% of all Chinese go and travel around the country. And out of a sudden idea, we changed our plans. We thought that while we are already here, we could as well go and skate down from the roof of the world. Yes people, you have read right. We are going to Tibet. As we do lack a Tibet permit, we can not enter the center of the Tibet province, but we can still go to areas which were part of historic Tibet and are now in Yunnan province. The village where we are heading is called Shangri-la... There we will try to extend our visa, in order to have enough time to skate the 1400km southeast from Shangri-la at 3300m altitude down to Nanning at sealevel, our exit point of China. We expect this not also to be super cool, but also to be super cold. 3000m above sea level in October, this will not be the tropics. We stocked up on fleece wear to be warm, let us hope that there will not be to much snow.

As mentioned, the traveling between all those locations was done by overnigth train, where for economic reasons we chose travel on seats instead on bunk beds. Bad decision. Unfortunaltely we bought all the tickets at once and weren't able to change after the first uncomfortable night. But somehow it was also fun, to watch how the chinese travel. They are very creative when it comes to fill a train. And also when it comes to find a place to sleep in this train. Of some passengers we only saw the feet pointing out from under the seats. And apparently it is ok to try a nailcutting set, that the trainclerk wants to sell, by using the little spoon to clean out your ear, then giving it back without buying it (it was hard not to crack from laughter when seeing this). 

Another thing that struck us as being very unusual, is the Chinese attitude towards spitting on the floor. They like it. And they do it. All the time. Everywhere. Even inside buildings. No joke, I think besides honking the most typical noise that one hears outside is a passionate chchchk chchchk sssspt, when they cough up the appropriate portion of slime to be delivered on the street. Very much fun when you hit a fresh one with your wheel, it flips up, and because you have a dropthrough board, lands on your deck/shoe/leg, yum.

Ohh and they are businessmen, all of them. You can almost not walk anywhere without someone trying to sell you something. Everything, actually. Socks, cups, fruits, food, electronics, babyturtles, keychains that contain living fish... You walk by, they get out their best english and shout "hello" and then you start bargaining.

All this together makes for one unique travelling experience, I can't wait to see more of this country. 

Sorry for the delay in blogging folks, I promise that I will do better in the future.

Cheers

Robert