Kevin's Yak Jerky

10/27/2002

It was like I was swarmed by a polka band. One guy had an accordian, the other a mandolin and I figured the third was vocals. They had me cornered and were all screaming at me simultaneously to pay the 2 Yuen it cost to be there. 'Oh! I have to pay to be here? No money,' with a shrug. I figured walking around in my swimming trunks like a jackass when it's less than ten degrees outside was helping my case (free laundry and everything got put through). More screaming, this time with tickets being waved in my face. Suddonly all attention is shifted to Jon who is on the other side of the fort wall snapping a picture. Peace for once but I was barely able to take in the view before I heard Jon explode. Apparently he decided to take none of their shit. Time for a quick retreat but Jon was egging them on. 'Commom Jon lets get outta here' as I started to head down the stairs. Jon followed but not before pushing it too far and I saw the accordian guy searching his pocket for something. Made it down the stairs double time but divine intervention instructed me to stop half way and itch my ass. Looked back and all three were lined up on top of the stairs absolutely livid. The accordian guy was spitting at us and grabbing his nuts. We smiled to ourselves and figured this one is for the tourists who don't make it.

Stranded a day in Zhongdian, billed as Shangrali-la. In reality it's a sad example of cookie cutter modernization (Han Chinese) flooding amazing culture (Tibetans) for profit. Stranded because we missed the bus. Figured out a system to catch busses where instead of buying tickets inside the station we wait outside and falg the bus down to cut a deal with the driver. In the end we pay half the ticket price, the driver collects 100% profit and everyone is happy. Unfortunately it's not a bulletproof system since the bus sailed straight past us this time so I don't recommend trying this on bus routes that only run once a day. After swinging at the fences for a while we settled down and decided to spend the day hiking in the hills around town. Fabulous views of the foothills of Tibet with prayer flags at the top of each hill. Jon and I managed to lose each other somewhere in the thick of it all so I headed back to town and stopped at a shanty convienence store for a beer which ended up in an invitation for dinner with a Tibetan family. A delicious five couse meal consisting mainly of spicy vegitables and Yak meat washed down with rice whisky. Spent the evening communicating and smoking a peace pipe with grandpa and ended it off with juinior going buck-wild snapping off pictures as fast as they'd come, a couple of which are of his dad trying to get my camera back.

The other passengers on the bus were a sight seeing tour not in any book. We were on a road to nowhere that turned north (from Zhongdien) off a distant tourist track through the Tibetan regions of western Sichuan. Tibetan men with daggers at their sides and women wearing yak hides made up the other 20 odd passengers, all characters whose appearance spoke volumes. I had prime seating for the show at the back of the bus with the lower ranks of riff-raff. Infront of me an old man with the dark leather skin of a life in the elements took up two seats even though the bus was packed. Nobody tried to sit beside him either out of respect, disrespect or fear. Even though his knuckles had arthritus, his front teeth were rotted out and his grey hair was diappearing his physical presance was huge. He sat silently observing a generation that he didn't understand, including myself, and was bundled in so many layers of clothes that he was sweating bullets and probably enjoying it by rembering the times he was cold. Beside me sat a thirty-something man with a face like an old anvil, the crooked grin of a maniac and the fists of a pro-bruiser. He passed the hours chain-smoking cigarettes out the corner of his mouth, hitting mercylessly on the young girl he was sitting backwards in his seat to harass and howling along with the proud Tibetan music blaring offspeed out of the bus speakers. He was the type of guy that trouble found quickly when he had a few glasses of whisky under his belt and was the first one in the dirt under the bus when the clutch cable went, which happened in the middle of nowhere.

The bus bounced along a dirt track that passed through a region of Tibet annexed by Sichuan when the Chinese overtook Tibet in the 50's. Out the window passed logs with thick layers of frost lying in streams and country so rugged niether tourists or Chinese have invaded. Across the valleys jagged limestone walls and snow peaked mountains soared. The road climbed over 5000m passes and went through high rolling plains that can only be found on the edges of the worlds greatest mountain ranges. Throughout lived tough Tibetan's and the Yaks they hearded and they decorated the highest points of the roads and hills with prayer flags.

We visited thousand year old monastaries that clungs to hillsides with insides painted in fantastic colors depicting Buddha's and Buddhist stories. The monastaries reeked of years of yak-butter candles and incense and the dust shook in the dim light to the rythem of huge drums and monotone chanting the same way it has for the previous 16 incarnations of the head lama.

The people live in three story stone houses with big windows painted in the same bright colors as the monastaries and yak dung pasted allover the outside walls to dry in the sun for the fire. We passed the night sitting around a cast iron stove--the children sitting in the dirt playing games, the women knitting and the men smoking cigarettes and drinking whisky. Outside, in the cold, huge dogs barked in the night and snaped back against their chains when I went near.

I got up with the sun and walked through the village we were staying in watching it come to life. I headed to the edge of the village with the Yaks and their hearders stepping aside for the men on horseback and tractors carrying them off to the hills. Busses in this part of the world are infrequent and follow no set schedule so we took what we could get, sometimes carrying us in directions we didn't expect. The end of the line happened in a town full of freaks with us being the strangest of them all judging by how parents would stop their kids and point us out to them. Near the town we found a hot spring where we rented a room with a pool in it for 10 Yuen an hour and boiled the flesh off our bones. Outside women beat and washed yak hides in the same hot water. _ _ ______________________________________________________ _ _

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