The Wild West (Part 1)

Mention Tibet to any traveller in China, and their eyes will light up. The roof of the world, a mysterious land of grazing yaks, chanting lamas, and plains stretching far into the distance, as endless as the clear sky above...the perfect destination for adventurous travellers. There's only one problem; adventurous travellers rarely have any money, and going to tibet now seems to require a lot of it. Since the government re-opened Tibet to foreigners, their policy has been that they only allow give permits to those travelling with tour groups, where one must pay hundreds of dollars a day for the pleasure of being herded around Lhasa by a person with a flag and megaphone. Like most travellers, when I heard this I gave up, and resigned the dream of travelling to the roof of the world to just another dream...

But there is still a way into Tibet for budget travellers. The Chinese government's cartographers made a slight mistake when drawing the borders of Tibet, seemingly forgetting the entire Eastern third of the Tibetan Plateau. Known to the Tibetan as "Kham", this region has all the yaks, lamas and endless plains one could ever dream of, and is populated almost entirely by ethnic Tibetans, but as far as the government is concerned, this is all part of Sichuan province, not Tibet. The door to Tibet may have been closed for me, but it seems a window has been left open...I meet a travelling companion, Alex, a 22 year-old Chicagoian, and together we pack our bags in Chengdu, and set out along the Sichuan-Tibet highway.

"Welcome to Tibet" says a cowboy-hat-wearing man in the grocery store. After eight hours of clinging perilously to a cliff-face, we have arrived in our first stop in the Wild West, a small town called Kangding, but which this man would probably call by its Tibetan name, Dardo. Is this Tibet? I cannot help but feel that we have indeed entered a very different land. The ambling rivers of Chengdu have given way to the raging, freezing, ice-blue streams making their way back toward civilization, and the dusty hills have given way to towering mountains, stretching high into the clear blue skies above.

Naturally, the first thing we want to do is gaze awe-struck at the scenery, and there is a hill conveniently right next to the town for just this purpose. At the top comes a sign that we are not out of China just yet; a ticket booth on the top of the mountain, demanding an entry fee to access the peak. Fortunately, they offer student admission at a far reduced price. Unfortunately for me though, I have no student card. However, I have the ability to convince her I am a student by other means. When she asks for a student card, I reach into my money belt and pull out my passport. "Here is my student card" I say to her in Chinese. She scrutinizes it closely; yep, it does indeed have a picture of me on it, and a lot of fancy looking holographics. It must be a student card then. Alex is more honest, and gives her his International Student Card, the gold standard of student admission worldwide. She refuses it, and in the end he gets out his passport as well, which seems to satisfy the woman.

Like almost every mountain around here, this mountain has a great religious significance to the local residents, which they have celebrated by dotting the entire area with Tibetan Prayer flags, which seem to be manufactured in their millions. On the top of the mountain, a Chorta (Tibet style Buddhist Stupa) stands majestically, looking out over the mountains above, and the valley below.

And the scenery is not the only thing to get excited about. After all the plastic, disneyland feel of Chinese cultural sites, the Tibetan culture in these parts feels refreshingly authentic, as we discover on our first trip to a Tibetan Lamasery. Instead of shuttle buses running backward and forward, we reach Nanwu temple by foot, following a dusty dirt trail up a hillside, guided by a rusty sign. Instead of the noise of herds of Chinese tourists being led around by a shepherd with a megaphone, we are alone with the silence of the inner sanctum, punctuated only by the gentle chanting of a nun in the corner. Instead of an astronomical entrance fee, we are free to leave a few yuan at the foot of the statue of Maitreya buddha as we quietly take in the statues and murals surrounding us. And instead of bored looking security guards, we are greeted by maroon robed monks, who give a friendly "Tashi Dele!" to the foreigners wandering through their home and temple. Bright blue and green deities smile serenely from the roof high above, and Tibet suddenly doesn't seem so far away after all...

There is more to this region than just the Tibetan culture however. Another civilization, the Qiang, once lived here, and their descendants and the relics they left behind still remain in the villages dotting the hillsides. Danba, a four hour bus ride from Kanding, contains the most stunning of these, a collection of huge, thousand year old watchtowers, and archaeologists have had a merry time trying to figure out why they were built and what purpose they actually served. Getting to these watchtowers is as easy as catching a taxi, so long as you are prepared to accept the blatant extortion of the taxi drivers in these parts, who will ask for 40 yuan to cover the same distance that would cost you 3 yuan in the city. I decide to walk instead, and set off from the edge of the city toward a village some 7kms along the mountain road, eventually reaching the village of Suopo.

The village itself is picture-perfectly rustic, with plenty of mud-brick walls and fortress-like stone buildings, and all the pigs, oxes, winding dirt paths and mountains of corn one could possibly desire. On my way through the village, a small boy with his puppy introduces himself to me. Luckily, he speaks Chinese, as I have no idea how to communicate in the Qiang language used around these parts, and he offers to show me the way to the guard-towers. When we reach the watchtower itself, the boy offers to show me inside. Inside the thousand year old watchtowers? It seems that anything is possible for this young lad, and he and his friends quickly find the guy with the key and show me in.

The inside of the watchtowers is an archaeologist's dream. Every aspect of the watchtowers has been left exactly how it used to be, with floors made of nothing but dirt and hay, ladders consisting of a single log with slits cut into it, and historical relics scattering the floor from place to place. The kids run around the place enthusiastically, climbing up and down the ladders while showing me the sights on all the different floors. Here is the kitchen, with hand-made pottery still lying about like so much rubbish. Here is the bedroom, with the yak-skin blankets still waiting dutifully to be used by the guards. Here is the temple, with six-hundred year old buddhist paintings lining the walls. Here is the watchtower, and the spot where the guards used to sit and while away the night...Using my iPod as a torch, the kids explore some of darker corners in this ancient watchtower for the first time, having the time of their lives. Archaeologists may not know what these towers were originally built for, but I know what they are used for today; this is China's most ancient playground, a maze of ladders, corridors and secret rooms which would keep any child entertained for weeks.

Of course, there is more to our travels in this region than just one amazing adventure after another, and with travelling off the beaten track we inevitably meet the trials that go with it. The first, and most obvious, is the cold. Appropriate clothing helps; after my first day of shivering a lot, I promptly go out and buy a beanie, a scarf, a set of thick thermals, a pair of gloves, a pair of socks so woolly they let off sparks when I turn them inside out, and an animal-hair jacket which smells strongly of yak. The food here also helps; cups of sweet, salty yak butter tea, and bowls filled with tough, chewy yak meat, and plenty of restaurants specializing in Sichuan's most famous dish, tongue-scaldingly spicey hot-pot.

The bus rides are another frequent trial. The "Sichuan-Tibet Highway" is more of a small mountain road than a smooth black freeway, and many parts of the road are potholed beyond recognition. The bus driver does his best to avoid them, swerving this way and that as he rockets around the mountain bends, but when combined with the hairpin turns of the cliff-side road, one has a sure recipe for mass motion-sickness. The people with a window seat vomit out the windows. The ones without a window do so in plastic bags or even just on the floor of the bus, as is the case for the child next to me on one of the trips, forcing me to breath through my mouth for the next few hours. Some of the Tibetans on the bus distract themselves by chanting quietly, whilst the bus driver does so by playing his favourite Chinese techno-pop tracks at full volume. I need nothing to distract myself with, as I am fully preoccupied with the beauty of the mountain scenery drifting by my window, which makes all the chaos inside the bus worthwhile. Each early morning yields another amazing mountain sunrise, and each windy, bumpy, noisy, smelly bus trip is a journey through paradise, taking us further and further into the wonders of the Wild West.