Next destination on the list ... Jiaying (甲应村)

Having viewed the magnificant Kawakarpo (Mt Meili) from the east like most people, I've always been curious to see what it's western face would be like. A look on Google Maps suggested it would be possible to get views of the west face and its glaciers from a tiny hamlet called Jiaying (type in 甲应村 to search), accessible by a rough track from Chawalong. It was next on my list of place to explore, but it looks like the village has  now had an upgraded road put in and is receiving a increasing stream of visitors arriving by 4WD and motrobike. 

With just a handful of Tibetan houses, I bet the locals are now a bit jaded by the attention they are getting from outsiders. But I suppose tourism and homestays are being promoted by the Nujiang government as part of poverty alleviation, so good luck to them.  Wish I'd got to see it before the pandemic ...

Here's one of the many videos now popping up on Bilibili.

Here's another. Some very slick outdoors lifestyle productions going on here. 

And this one gives you a full view of the epic exposed road track along and over the ridge to get to Jiaying from near the Tangdu La north of Chawalong:

And finally Esther, here's a map view, looking over the Nujiang from west to east, showing [in green, lower section] where the trail goes from Chawalong. You can see my previous travels along the Kawakarpo Kora marked in red. Of course this is all just across the border from Yunnan in Tibet so out of bounds to big noses. In the good old days of few visitors you could sneak through at night on a hired motorbike, but now they've put a big police checkpoint at Quju and you have very little chance of getting past that.

A few years ago I had the idea of trekking through to Jiaying round an old herder's track just above the treeline from the Sho La (also marked in green, top) - I found a few Chinese hiker accounts of it and it sounded very hairy, remote and exposed. Would take about three days. Epic.