Beautiful Kangba 2 

Snow capped mountains in Summer

If you've been reading my Beautful Kangba journey, we were in the town daofu and travelled onto Tagong temple(called little Lhasa). The temple houses a buddhist statue donated by the Chinese Emporer's daughter that is more than 300years old, and covered in gold leaf. It is said that the Emporer sent his daughter on the year's journey to this remote corner of the Sichuan provence to marry a Tibetan King. The temple was set in the large courtyard of a temple surrounds, mostly cobbled stone, and walled. Unlike many other 'over renovated' temples as you travel back further east, the Tagong Temple is not. The Tibetan temples of Sichuan smell like sour milk, and this can be attributed to the dried yak milk sculptures of flowers and small colourful ornaments that decorate the ledges of most of the temples we saw on this journey. The temples are rich in decoration, with not a wall left undecorated-swils, flowers, human and mythc characters, sacred symbols, the knot and swastika compete together in a rich tapestry of colour, smell and quietness. And the entry to such temples demands respect and we started buying the white slk sashes to lay in the temples for respect, religious icons that probably help fund the temple and significant numbers of monks. At this altitude, some of our friends felt ill, and we trndled off to the local hosptal looking for some oxygen relief. Little did we realse that some herbs given as a gift earlier by a monk, may have been the key to relief- but we had passed them onto our Chinese friend, because we had not been sure exactly what they were and didn't like the prospects of possible'please explans' through customs!!
We breakfasted in the early monring streets of Tagong and left on our journey to Knading. We kept getting glances of the spectacular Gang Ga Mountain range, highest mountans in China, and at 4,800m we stopped and took a walk up to a wonderful lookout- the views of the snow capped Gang Ga ranges, the vast open rocky crests, the lines of prayer flags and the bluest of skies held us in awe for some time. I had carried my little disposable 'landscape' camera for just this ocassion, and wasn't disappointed with the shots i took when i got back to Australia and had them developed!! The Gang Ga mountan range reaches up to 7,400m!! My friend remianed qute ill whilst we strolled up to the top of this lookout spot. Later, we descended quickly in our vehicle droppng hundreds of metres, and she came back to life within 20minutes of our descent! Wouldn't wish altutude headaches on anyone.
Kanding is a great town nestled in aganst some spectacular vertical cliff faces. Like many Kangba region towns, there is a rapidly flowing rver through the centre of town, and the lttle shop fronts rise in their earth tones stone, brick and dabbed white paint and timber, generally two storey above the narrow street. We spent the evening at the hot springs at kanding and after gathered for tea, coffee and Baileys at a tea house. One of our friends had purchased some 'antique' fabrics and scrolls, and we gathered around eagerly to hear our Chinese friend explain their value to us. We cold hardly contain ouselves as each precous item was unveiled from its newspaper wrappngs, prices discussed and silence as we waited to hear- ---we could hardly contain ourselves when it was revealed that all were reporductions, grant you with some attempt at 'aging' but we laughed hard and long that evening in amazement at the prices the shop keeper had managed to extort from our friend, and imagning that somewhere in Kanding, that night, a family sat around their tea and discussed how todays' takings would fund another year of schooling for their grand children, or perhaps that new roof or maybe a trip into Chengdu!!