Another day in the hood. We are really booking – two nights at each spot and a day and a half to see the area. Not too bad, but getting ready for one night stops, which wears after a while.
First stop was a walk around Napahai lake. Funny thing, though, there was no lake! Evidently a 3 year drought has really taken its toll and no lake for the past couple of years. But a lovely walk by farms, out in the fields.
The occasional farmer passes by, and I was fast enough to get this great image:
I was getting into snapping photos of beautifully carved doorways, and seeing one slightly off the path, I walked over to get a better angle. I spy an old woman (and they always have such interesting wrinkled faces around here!) and try to angle so I get the door and her both.
As I’m shooting, she shuffles out and I motion to ask her if I can take her photo. She nods yes; I snap and show her the image.
She laughs and starts jabbering to me. Yikes…Huang! please come over and tell me what she’s saying. Evidently, she wants me to print the picture and give to her because the family has no camera. Huang chats with her some more, and since he passes this way fairly regularly, he promises to drop off the photo (which I will email to him). What a grand experience….interacting with locals in such a spontaneous and person way thrills me more than anything else (like the woman embroiderer a couple of days before).
We move on and it’s interesting to hear that the path we are walking is the same path the KMT used when they were on the Long March and arrived to the area. Enjoyed taking some pictures of the countryside, the interesting drying racks they have for canola, tobacco and turnip greens (the actual turnip and edible part of greens go in the root cellar, this part of the plant is being dried and stored to be stewed up in the winter to feed the yaks).
Speaking of yaks, have I mentioned that that’s an important source of meat up here? Everyone here is of Tibetan heritage, and the music, dancing, etc are all Tibetan. Houses are built with the street level space used for storage and the animals, and the family lives on the second floor. Usually 3 or 4 generations in a house.
After the walk, we are picked up by the van and head into old town. First we visit a square, over which sit two recently built temples and the largest prayer wheel in the world. They look very pretty, and I hike up the steps to visit and snap more pictures:
but not so interested since built to attract more tourists to the area. Several people in our group have a go at the wheel (very heavy, but if you turn 3 revolutions, a lucky number, your prayers will come true). We then have 45 minutes to wander through “old town”, but it’s becoming obvious that if you’ve seen one old town, you’ve seen them all. Built in a very quaint way, and there is definitely the occasional unique crafts stall, but usually mostly the same crap in all of them. In order to take a different route back, Lance and I head to the right, and end up having to walk back on a street populated completely by locals – bingo! We take in the various stores, people and….what’s that? Oooh, the line of people getting steamed buns at this woman’s stall (along with its cleanliness) looks like a good indicator. I tell Lance to cover me, I’m going in, but my guy steps up and makes the purchase of a light and fluffy-looking steamed bun:
I take a bite, and my divining rod senses have triumphed once again. The inside is filled with a slightly sweet mixture of chopped pork onions and something else.
We share and I cackle with delight. We continue our winding path back to the original square, where we meet up with the others, and head off to lunch. A tibetan spot, they are thoughtful enough to request a second floor room for us so as to avoid cigarette smokers. A good sampling, but having had a “bun” start, I try to eat a bit more sensibly. The group and our lunch:
After lunch, we head over to the hotel for a hit-and-run to drop off our gear before the tour continues, and when I walk into our room, I am stunned to see:
Lance ordered them at the front desk as a surprise for me. What a thoughtful guy!
So now it’s time to explore the previously-referenced (and photo posting) Songzanlin Monastery, built in 1769 and home to 700 monks. This monastery has a whole community of people living with in and in the immediately surround environs. One of the most interesting pieces of history is that when Mao and the KMT arrived in Shangri-La (then called Zhongdian), the monks provided them with tons of wheat and other food to fortify them for what was to come. Learned a bit about the man who started the Yellow Hat sect of Buddhism, which has been responsible for strong growth in Buddhist adherents. As we walk up, I see a younger monk greeting two older monks:
After visiting two areas, I used the time when the group visited more to sit outside, enjoy the beautiful weather, and meditate a bit.
After the monastery, we walked back to the hotel, with a lovely stop to tour the house of a local Tibetan family – 5 generations living in the structure. We saw the lower area (I have a better shot of the whole thing, but if you look closely, you can see grandma’s head where she’s sitting just on the other side of the stairs), where they keep their one horse (and evidently, during a very cold winter, they had 70 llamas packed into the courtyard).
We walked up the steps and through an outer room where they were curing all kinds of bacon and meats (and check out the really weird one with teeth – a pig’s head):
and into the wonderful kitchen/family room area. I fell in love with their wood-burning stove that doubled as the cook area.
I’m going to see if I can find one with a similar design for Montana – to heat common room and serve as a back-up system when no propane. We then received permission (because Huang had visited so many times) to enter the family Temple room, where anyone in the family can go and pray anytime. The 86 year-old grandma had as her sole responsibility cleaning the room 3 times/day. Also there were stored the raw materials for making Tibetan prayer flags, something they do on the side to make extra money. We were checking them out, and the old woman’s granddaughter came rushing in from where she was working in the turnip fields. All smiles, she answered our questions and everyone make purchases. Again, it feels so good to purchase items that directly and completely benefit local families.
Back to the hotel with about an hour and a half until we leave for our “farewell” dinner (since Lance and I are peeling off from the others, this is the last evening we will be together). A quick shower, and then we walk over to the spa building for a 45-minute foot massage. I forgot my camera! Won’t do that again. Soaked my feet in an herbal bath, then gently dried, then up onto a curved spa table and covered with a blanket while my little dogs were rubbed and twisted. The best part of the whole thing was the quiet, with meditative flutes and bells in the background. So peaceful and restful.
Back to the room to start gathering things for the transit day tomorrow, then dressed up a bit and met the group for dinner. The sun is just gorgeous and I capture the monastery in some lovely light:
We actually ate at the sister hotel to this one, in a lovely high-beamed room, at a slightly lower table with wooden Tibetan furniture. The meal was definitely a step up from the usual (less oily!), and I finally have returned to a more sane eating routine. No rice for me! Conversation about trip highlights, etc, then the meal is over. I have shared so often the beautiful dishes at the start of the meal that I thought a view of the carnage when all is done might be appropriate:
The van drives us to the other side of town, where we join a couple hundred locals who are listening to Tibetan music through a big loudspeaker and everyone is dancing in big concentric circles. This is some of the dancing I described earlier when talking about the daily routine for many of the retired chinese. Huang tells us his mother’s routine is to leave the house at 6:30, jog for an hour to the park, where she meets her friends to exercise and dance, then back home after a stop in the market for fresh produce, etc (although his family is unusual in that his father cooks), has lunch with his father at about noon thirty, then she visits a friend or two for tea, then dinner with the family and off she goes from 6:30 until 9 to dance. And this dancing goes on pretty much every evening and the amazing thing is that everyone does pretty much the same dance and seems to know which particular dance goes with each song. We are there for about an hour, and during the last song, I was starting to get it! In fact, I realized that my body was getting it a bit better than my mind, so I just went with it. Very fun, somewhat intricate (although first few stanzas start slowly and then tempo cranks up quite a bit). It’s interesting to see the men who are obviously experienced and so smooth, and the teenager/twenty-somethings who have their own hip-hoppy take on it. I have a picture of the scene:
and a fun video:
We all agree it was the perfect end to the day and our time together, and headed back to the hotel to finish packing and prepare for the flight to Guiyong.