Yading Big Kora - trekking in June 2016

They say you should never go back, but after a bit of thought I've decided to revisit Yading and do the outer kora of the three peaks again. I did it in 2010 (as you can see at this blog entry with photos) but I've always wanted to go back and 'do it properly'. The reason being is that on my first circuit we did it in a rushed way, taking five days to do what should have taken seven or eight. Part of the problem was that we were trekking blind, into unknown territory without decent maps and thus reliant on local guides to show us the way. They insisted on haring round the circuit - and they didn't even know the way too well themselves. We had some great weather but were too knackered and worried about minor hassles (such as our guides not having brought any shelter and having to sit round a fire all night on the mountainside)  to really make the most of the trek. This time around I'm going to take it 'easy' (relatively speaking) and go more slowly. This time I have the advantage of knowing the way and knowing the problems and the unknowns .. so I can focus on what I want to do, at my own pace. I also have the advantage of much better mapping via Google Earth, which now provides ridiculously detailed topographical info for the whole circuit. On our previous circuit we had only vague outlines of the mountains to guide us.

So my plan is to hike around the three peaks in mid June. I'm going to do the full seven passes over about eight days, so this will mean carrying a lot of gear to be self sufficient (there are no villages or shops en route, it's all up in the mountains). That means a tent, cooking gear and food for seven days. I hope to hire some local guides to carry my pack - if I can find them. May-June is the season when locals go fossicking for chongtsao fungus - a lucrative herbal remedy, and most of them are not willing to give up a week of their time to carry backs round the hills for 300 yuan a day. I'm not that fit, but I still reckon I can get my pack over the passes if need be and if I take it slow.

So if you're in the Sichuan area in June and are up to the challenge, let me know at: beijingweek-at -gmail.com

Here's my itinerary:

Day 1. Yading village-Chonggu monastery, ascend to below the First Pass, where there is a crude stone shelter in a hollow. Great views of Shenrezig.
Day 2. Shelter - First Pass - Chanadorje glacier.
The slog up to the first and highest pass is across some bleak rocks. The descent is equally bleak at first, but grand scenery. There is a small 'village' of temporary shelters at the bottom of the valley where Tibetans camp to pick the fungus worm chongtsao. From here you descend into a steep forested valley and turn 90 degrees left to hike up to a magnificent open space with awesome views of the south face of Chandorje, where there are great spots to camp.
Day 3. Over the Second Pass into a steep valley around the back of Chanadorje that leads up to a daunting rock wall. This is not as bad as it looks can be scrambled up to cross the Third Pass, known as Yaka. Best to camp before crossing the pass as the next day is a long one.
Day 4. Over the Third Pass and descend round the back of Jambeyang, over a scree slope and to the edge of yet another sunken valley, where you turn into a spectacular ampitheatre below the south west face and glaciers of Jambeyang. Good camping spot.
Day 5. Tough day, following the 'cliff walk' beneath the rock face to reach a shoulder that marks the Fourth Pass, where you turn north. Up a rocky bleak valley in the shadow of Jambeyang, many alpine lakes, then cross a small pass to descend to a grassy clearing where you can camp at 'Rock's rock' - a massive cube of rock where explorer Joseph Rock once camped.
Day 6. A gentle ascent to the Fifth Pass, where you gain views of Shenrezig, and descend steeply to Snake Lake. Can camp on the shore or ascend to the Sixth Pass, below Shenrezig - this is where many day trekkers walk up to from Chonggu monastery so you are back on the beaten track. Descend to tarn and shelter.
Day 7. Final day, on the route of the mini-kora, descend through woods round the back of Shenrezig and then up to the Seventh Pass. Long descent to Chonggu monastery.

[Might do a detour to some alpine lakes at this point to make it an eight day trip]

Chanadorje 夏诺多吉 Yading

This is the rarely seen south face of Chanadorje, Yading, with glacier field.

Muli kid

In the kitchen at Muli monastery, about 15 years ago. Taken with the cloudy lens on my old Leica M3 film camera.

Dali Cangshan

Here's one I took on the summit ridge above Dali with my Rolleiflex around October/Nov 2012:

Yading - should I go back?

Seriously thinking of going back to do the Yading outer kora again next year (May-June). What do you think? Should I go?

Chanadorje by Rolleiflex/Ektachrome:

Using Google Earth to track [over] development in Yunnan and Sichuan

I've long suspected that there has been a lot of development in the the areas I have revisited in the footsteps of Joseph Rock - but it's always been hard to put a finger on exactly what has changed. Recently I have been browsing some of my former trekking locations using Google Earth's archive feature - this allows you to switch between satellite views from different years.  You can see the changes in the split picture above.

This is just one example of the huge changes in Yunnan: compare the Fei Lai Si viewing area outside Deqin in the decade between 2002 and 2012. I first visited the place in the late 1990s - or was it early noughties:

As the top photo shows, there was already a little viewing area at Fei Lai Si and  line of specially erected stupas from where the Meili Xueshan/ Kawakarpo could be viewed. There wasn't much else there - a couple of shops selling tourist trinkets and a noodle shop, if I remember rightly.

Fast forward to 2012 and Fei Lai Si had grown into a small town with scored of shops, restaurants bars and guesthouses - plus several rather grand hotels. The viewing area had been massively expanded and there was a big wall around it - with a ticket office now charging 70Y admission:

There's quite a few other examples of this kind of massive development. It's sad that some beautiful and quiet places have become over-run with tourists and spoiled by development - but that's the way of the world, I guess. This used to be a quiet road down a forested hillside - now it is lined with bars, shops and hotels:

More Google Earth then-and-now comparisons: Kangding

Yulin, near Kangding, 2002 (top) and 2014 (below)

When I did the trek to Gongga Shan (Minya Konka) in about 1996 the starting point was small village outside of Kangding called Yulin. It was just a few farm buildings along a dirt track about 5km out of town, in a narrow valley. I found a friendly local Tibetan called GerLer who was willing to guide me on the four day round trip to the Konka Gompa monastery.

Yulin was a quiet place with just a few Tibetan stone buildings and some strips of arable land next to a river rushing down from the Minya Konka range. There was a hot spring which had a baths built into a small brick building. That was about it. You can read about my adventures here.

I tried to find the village of Yulin again about three years ago but it had been completely overbuilt with what is now the New Town area of Kangding. It had literally been obliterated. In its place was an array of concrete civic buildings such as Law Courts and local administration buildings, in the usual Chinese government megalomaniac style. You can see in the top photo from Google Earth how the development has spread right up the valley, over what used to be rustic farmland and grazing land.

There was also a huge triple block of 12 storey  condominiums. you can see them in the Google Earth pic, but they don't look as tall on that as they are in real life. The Tibetan farmhouses and fields of old Yulin has just been swept away under roads and concrete. I didn't stick around and I didn't take any photos of the New Yulin. It was ugly.

I'll leave you with a picture of Yulin (looking back towards Kangding) from 1996, before the bulldozers moved in:

Cangshan Dali

No updates for a few months, I know. I've been in Heilongjiang - opposite end of the country from Rock's territory. Here's a picture of the horse pool from the mountains above Dali.

Jambeyang and Chanadorje 夏诺多吉 : by Rolleiflex (Kodak Ektachrome)

Not sure if I've posted this before but here it is: a great picture of the two mountains Jambeyang (left) and Chanadorje. Taken in late may on the third day of the kora around the three Yading peaks. It's taken from the 'cliff walk' just before crossing the high shoulder pass and heading up the Yetchesura valley. It is looking back at the way we have just come, on the right you can see the valley leading down from the Yaka pass and Chanadorje.

A treasure trove of reading material on Kham and western China

If you are like me and love reading the accounts of explorers in SW China and Tibet I have a nice little resource for your perusal - a whole load of online books by some of the notable names in this field. I'm talking about the likes of Frank Kingdon Ward, Sven Hedin, Ernest Henry Wilson and Eric Teichman. Scans of these old book have been uploaded by someone in India as part of a much wider website on the Himalayas: pahar.in. They are to be found in the Tibet section in that link. I have spent many weekends browsing second hand bookshops looking for many of these books, and now they are all there for the downloading. It takes all the fun out of it really!
I would recommend the book by Nakamura, which has a brief account of th Kawa karpo kora that he did when it was still an unexplored route in 1996 - and some excellent photos (see above).
Well, to accompany this discovery I will also include a photo taken with my Rolleiflex camera on my most recent trip into Tibet - this picture taken from Aben/Abing village (the north end) overlooking an eastern tributary of the Nujiang. It looks a lot wilder than I remember. Enjoy.

P-40 fighter, Kunming, 1944

I haven't posted in a while because i don;t have much to report. Since my last trip to Yunnan in October I have updated a chapter in my e-book about Joseph Rock's expeditions, which is still in the process of being edited by the guys at Camphor Press.
So in the meantime I will post some beautiful colour pictures of wartime Kunming, taken in 1944 for a US air force guy called H. Allen Larsen. He has published many more in a book called China in the Eyes of the Flying Tigers - I bought it at the Flying Tigers Museum in Kunming.
The photos give an impression of what the city would have been like in Rock's time.

Kunming 1944

Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming 1944

Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming canals, 1944

Interesting to see how the canals  - and the centre of Kunming - have changed so much in the last 80 years!.
Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming street scene, 1944

Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming 1944

Photo by H. Allen Larsen - from the book China in the Eyes of the Flying Tigers

Yunnan, 1944

Photo by H. Allen Larsen

Kunming kid, 1944

Photo by H. Allen Larsen

The Doker La pass - then and now (1924 and 2102)

Here's Joseph Rock's picture taken from the Doker La pass looking down the Tibetan side (ie to the west). The pass marks the border between Yunnan and Tibet, and is part of the famous Kawakarpo Kora that circuits the holy mountain of Kawakarpo (Meili Xueshan). I did the kora in 2012 with my two sons, one of whom can be seen in the picture doing the steep descent.

Then and now: Jambeyang, 1927 and 2012

The back of Jambeyang (South east face) as seen on the big kora round the three peaks of Yading.

Then and now: Choni monastery, Gansu

The old Buddhist monastery at Choni, now known as Zhuoni, in Gansu, where Rock wintered before going on his expedition to Amnye Machen.

Mount Chiburongi, near Gongga Shan

This is what you see on the second day walking up from Kangding en route to Gongga Shan

Bahang, Salween valley: 1926 and 2006

The old French missionary church as Bahang is still there. Now it is run by a local priest and the village is called Baihanluo. The local Nu people still drink corn liquor, as described by Joseph Rock. It is no longer such an isolated outpost. Trekkers pass through the village en route to cross the Sila pass to the Mekong. Other visitors drop in from the Nujiang valley by care. And this year a major road will open up connecting the Mekong and Nujiang valleys - it will travel just below Baihanluo.

Radja monastery then-and-now

Joseph Rock visited Radja monastery (also spelt Ragya) in Qinghai in 1926/7. He only intended to use it as a stepping off point to get to Amnye Machen but the stupid bugger tried to go up the Yellow river canyons instead of the nice easy route round the hills to the south. Easy to say that with hindsight, I suppose. Anyway, Rock floundered around in the Yellow river canyons for a week or so before giving up. The only view he got of Amnye Machen was through a telescope from about 70 miles away. You can see the whole new town of Lajia that has sprung up along the riverbank since his visit.

Radja monastery then-and-now

Here's a nice comparison pic of the monastery at Radja (Lajia in Chinese), Qinghai. It sits on the banks of the Yellow river beneath some crazy red cliffs. In this picture it seems like it hasn't changed much, but actually there is quite a large 'new town' to the left of the picture where in Rock's time there were just a couple of houses. I found it to be a very friendly place, probably on account of they don't get many visitors.

Yading then and now - Rock's rock

This is the then-and-now picture of Rock's rock" - a big boulder embedded in some pasture round the back of Jambeyang. If you do the Yading "Big" Kora you will come across this on the fourth or fifth day (two days from the end of the trek). It's actually only a day's walk from the Five Colours lake/Milk Lake area that most Chinese tourists visit at Yading - but that would mean walking anti-clockwise round the kora and the local Tibetans would not like that.
Joseph Rock described it as a huge lump of schist that had broken off from Jambeyang. It sits in a flat clearing after trekking up the boulders and slabs of the bleak Yetchesura  valley. Nice place to stop for a cuppa or even camp.

Muli monastery - then and now

When I first visited Muli monastery in the mid 90s it was a very remote and unspoilt place. I had to hike over the mountains from Yongning, and it took me two very tough days to get there (I was fit enough and stupid enough to do it solo in those days). I had no proper maps other than Joseph Rock's sketches, and yet I made it in one piece. The huge monastery complex housing thousands of monks that was photographed by Rock was gone, and only a single temple hall had been rebuilt. The setting was still quite spectacular, and I enjoyed my stay there, even though it did have a bit of a tragic and abandoned air about it. I have not been back since, but the recent Google Earth images suggest that more monastery buildings have been rebuilt and there is now a flashy road to the monastery, replacing the primitive gravel track that existed in 1995. There's not much reason to go to Muli - it's a fairly unremarkable monastery in a  dead-end valley. Perhaps that's why it has remained a relatively unspoiled place. You can read about my trip here.

Yongning then and now

Here's a picture of the Zhamei Si monastery at Yongning, just north of Lugu lake. When I visited in the 1990s the monastery had been rebuilt after being destroyed. Most  of the buildings that Rock photographed were gone, but if you look carefully in the picture you can see one of the main temple halls had still survived. I took this picture from the top of a nearby hill that I had climbed out of curiosity - it was only when I later looked at my photo that I realised it had been taken from the same place as Rock's - great minds think alike! This photo was taken en route to Muli monastery, you can read about that trip here.

Konka Gompa then and now

When I went there in 1991, the monastery at Gonga Shan hadn't changed much since Joseph Rock visited it in the late 1920s. The monastery had been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution but had been rebuilt in much the same style and in the same spot. These days (2014) there has been a lot more work done on the Gompa and it looks a bit more flash.

Yading then and now #2

The photo on the left was taken by Joseph Rock in the late 1920s. It shows a Tibetan shrine in the cliffs beneath Mt Chanadorje on a very remote section of the kora (circuit) around the three sacred Konkaling mountains. We stumbled across the same shrine on about the third day of doing the kora in 2011. It is truly in a very remote location, below one of the most difficult pass crossings. It used to be a resting place for Tibetan pilgrims doing the 5-6 day circuit of the mountains. As you can see some of the shrines have been destroyed but others rebuilt in a more haphazard way.

Yading then and now

I'm trying to get a full account published of all my journeys in Rock's footsteps. I have a manuscript that is being edited with a view to online publication as an e-book and available through sources such as Amazon. It would be nice to include some then-and-now photos to compare how the Tibetan borderlands have changed since Rock's visits in 1927. Here's one example:

Ragya monastery then and now

Here are pictures taken by Joseph Rock in 1926 and my own follow-up taken in 2012, of the Ragya (Lajia) monastery in Qinghai, on the banks of the Yellow river. As you can see - not much has changed.

The Mekong, just south of Deqin

This is the view of the river on the road down from Deqin to Cizhong, taken in October 2014. There used to be a very crude and dangerous unsurfaced road cut into the hillside. This has now been replaced with a new two-lane highway, complete with bridges and tunnels. Odd, because there is very little traffic on this road, which eventually goes all the way south to Weixi. Perhaps it will get busier when the short cut to the Nujiang over the Gaoliging mountains is completed.

Kawakarpo Kora: the WiChu (Yuqu, 玉曲) valley

This photo was taken with my Rolleicord and Kodak Ektachrome transparency film on the penultimate day of my trek. This is the view of the descent in to the Yuqu valley from the "Gebu pass", en route to Laide, which is located up a side valley on the other side of the river. Kawakarpo (Meili Xueshan) can be seen at the head of this valley.