<A> Sichuan Highlands

We've been traveling for a few days outside of Chengdu, and have endedup back in the Tibetan highlands of the Sichuan/Gansu provinces. We are now in the Tibetan/Hui Muslim town of Langmusi, and it was not without many hours of traumatic bus riding that we arrived here. From
Chengdu we had to travel three days over land, and the first leg of the trip took us out of idyllic, pristine China and into the ecologically raped, hazy, and dam-riddled China that we hear so much about in the West. For ten hours we passed an endless chain of mountains on which every last tree had been cut down. The earth was
eroded and scorched, and on the highway it was evident that landslides are extremely common, especially now during the rainy season. Of course the dingy wasteland along the highway was given a surreal touch - certain sections along the road were inhabited by carefully groomed gigantic white fluffy yaks covered in ornaments, on which tourists could sit and have their photo taken in front of a mudslide or a hydroelectric dam.

As we sped by these curiosities, our bus driver honked his horn on the average of 250 times a minute. Pierre and I tried to steal bits of conversation between honks but it became exhausting.

The next morning, after staying the night in Songpan we boarded the bus for the Tibetan town of Zoige, another manditory stop on the way to Langmusi (which was where we were ulitmately trying to go.) Pierre couldn't fit in the seats, but the shrimp sitting in the front of the bus refused to trade with him. An old man in a Mao suit and cap insisted on blowing smoke in my face for the entire ride. At first I pointed to the no smoking sign, and when that didn't work, I asked him to kindly open a window which he refused to do. Other people on the bus were getting upset with him, but no one would step forward and confront him (typical for china) My only recourse was to take out my video camera and make a little movie about him and his impolite smoking habits, which didn't stop him from puffing but made him extremely uncomfortable, which of course made me feel much better.

Outside, hundreds of yaks grazing on the plateau, and a few nomads whizzed by. I noticed that many of the nomadic tents had huge billiards tables outside them and wondered if they strapped the pool tables to the yaks when it was time to move. We checked into a trucker's motel in Zoige. The ceiling of our room seemed to be afflicted with leprosy and the communal toilets were
constructed in such a way that no bowel movement would ever be lost or forgotten. Zoige was not a happy place - the town was comprised of new shiny Han style buildings, but the people appeared to be very, very poor. The abundant friendlieness we experienced in Litang was
scarce, and although we met a nice English-speaking Tibetan guy there, many of the locals looked at us skeptically as we passed them on the street.

In the morning we tried to wash up with some of the hot thermos water we'd been given for making tea. We then got back on the bus for the final 4 hour streach to Langmusi. The road was entirely unpaved, and we flew over a foot out of our seats on a few occasions, as the driver gunned it over huge bumps. After a few hours the bus suddenly pulled onto a smooth new highway. After about three minutes of driving on pavement, the bus pulled over at the crossroads of two huge highways and the driver yelled "Langmusi." We were unloaded on the side of the road, in a huge valley surrounded by enormous mountains with no town in sight. The driver gave a vague impression that the town was somewhere to the west, so we set off walking into the valley along the
side of the highway, dragging our packs (we were also back up to an altitude of about 3100m). Luckily a bus full of Tibetans, watermelons and peaches drove by and rescued us, and drove us into the town.

Langmusi's streets were scattered with crimson-robed monks, Hui Muslims, Tibetans in long fur-lined jackets, and small black pigs gleefuly snorfling through the garbage. The buildings were unremarkable, but the surrounding grasslands erupted dramatically into rocky peaks and red jagged cliffs.

We hiked up a nearby hill to the monestary and met a young monk en route who showed us to the sky burial grounds. A tangle of prayer flags were strung at the base of a small hill, and in front of it a smoldering funeral pyre. To the left was a large rectangular area
which is used to hack the bodies into smaller pieces for the vultures. The area was littered with large knives, rubber gloves and the discarded clothes of the deceased. There were also several large concave rocks on which skulls are smashed and the brains mixed with barley. The surrounding fields were scattered with tarps and baskets and bizzare trash including a plastic hospital toilet. At first the human remains were not so apparant. The 'chopping' area was scattered with bits of bone fragment and flesh, but nothing specifically recognizable. However, behind this area down the hill was a gigantic pile of skulls, ribs, spines, femurs, jawbones, pelvises, hair and even a set of false teeth. Huge black flies swarmed about, but to our suprise the stench of death was not present - instead the air was
filled with a pleasant pine scent. On the way back up the hill we came upon an entire body with the long flowing hair of a Tibetan woman, that was in the process of being picked clean by the vultures.

We were struck by how un-macabre and un-horrifying it was to see such a mass of corpses and skeletons. The Tibetans see the feeding of their dead bodies to the vultures as a final act of kindness, and as the ground is usually too hard and rocky to dig up in these areas, the practice has a practical aspect as well. On the way back down the hill towards the monestary we noticed that human remains were scattered everywhere - teeth and bits of jawbone ground into the path, probably dropped by vultures.

The next day we followed the river through a grassland valley filled with beautiful wildflowers - tiny orchids, irises and daisies, and scores of varieties we'd never
seen before. We found our way into a nomadic encampment and asked some of the inhabitants the wherabouts of some Buddhist caves that were supposed to be nearby. They pointed into a nearby gorge and said that we could cut through their camp to get there. As we walked through the camp, an old Tibetan followed us with an utterly perplexed look on her face. We also noticed that two of the gigantic herding mastiffs had taken an offense to us, and were barking and growling.

To our dismay, the dogs were unchained. Tibetan mastiffs are notoriously vicious, and are alowed to roam the grasslands at night, making conditions extremely unsafe. Tibetans traveling long distances through the grasslands carry long poles with large maces attached to
the end to defend themselves against vicious dogs. The dogs followed us out of the camp into the gorge, snarling and growling. We began to hurl rocks at them, but they were undeterred and began to close in. When they were about 15 feet away from us, Pierre threw a big rock as hard as he could at one of them. It grazed the dog's backside and it yelped and ran off, the other dog following. We climbed further into the gorge, but the caves were nowhere to be found. We looked up to see some sheperds on top of the mountain, motioning for us to join
them. After a frantic scramble, we joined them on top of the ridge and they gave us a rhubarb-like reed to eat that was so long and hard that it could simultaneously be used as a snack and a walking stick.

We hiked back toward the town on the ridge, escorted by hundreds of goats. We snuck down the opposite side of the mountain from the camp to avoid the dogs, and began the long trek through the grasslands back to Langmusi. The entire hike was about 20k with lots of climbing, and
we were so tired and hungry when we got back to town that we could barely speak.