A rough ride around China's wild west

GO CHINA:Beautiful mountain scenery, friendly people and interesting local culture made up for the landslides and near misses VERNEY NAYLORexperienced in the area where China borders Tibet

SUDDENLY WE were being bounced about in our seats at the back of the bus and, looking back with a twinge of sadness, I realised that we had turned south, leaving the main road from Chengdu to wind its way west to Lhasa. A year ago we agreed to join a group of 15 alpine plant enthusiasts who planned to drive from western China to Lhasa in Tibet.

But the Chinese government gradually shut off all access by foreigners to Tibet so our route had been changed half a dozen times and ended up being in western Sichuan and northern Yunnan. Both areas are very close to the Tibetan border and have many affinities with the neighbouring culture. Though disappointed not to be entering Tibet, we would be travelling in a wild part of China that not many Westerners get to see, with its mountainous landscape, wonderful wild flowers and friendly people.

We were greeted in Chengdu by our two charming Chinese guides, Carolyn and Reena, who both spoke excellent English. We got straight onto our bus and headed off down the main road to our first stop, Ya’an. It was hot and steamy, and heavy rain in the night had turned the rivers brown.

Next day we were broken-in gently with a visit to the Bifengxia Gorge Panda Breeding station. Apparently it has had some success, as one large compound had several baby pandas playing amongst the trees. The adults each had a large segment of parkland to itself with paths for visitors winding between them.

Heading for Kangding, the countryside was very green and lush with ferns, bamboos, vines, huge trees and rushing torrents of muddy water that would feed eventually into the Yangtse river. It was a long drive with lots of traffic – mainly huge trucks. At one point we entered a long, dark tunnel and ground to a halt in the middle. We were stationary for what seemed like hours but it was probably only half an hour – very claustrophobic!

This was our introduction to Chinese road works, which will be among my abiding memories of the trip. The Chinese government is throwing vast amounts of money into its infrastructure. About 80 per cent of the roads we travelled on seemed to be affected by massive construction: dams for hydro-electric power; tunnels boring through mountains; new roads and bridges; or old roads being repaired. There’s no traffic control, so it’s every driver for himself jostling for position among the working machinery, with many scary overtakings. We were struck by how much manpower was used – and, indeed, womanpower. Women were working alongside the men doing very rough tasks and carrying heavy loads.

As we approached the mountains, so the road climbed up the contours with countless hairpin bends and scarcely any barrier between the outside edge and the void beyond – I couldn’t look out of the window! Electric pylons, too, seemed to reach every valley and “interfered” with many of our photographs of the spectacular scenery! However remote the locations we visited there was power – and coverage for mobile telephones.

We began to see the Tibetan influence at Kangding; the ladies dressed in long pinafore dresses with colourful head bands and we watched as they danced gracefully in huge concentric circles in the evening on the main square. We stayed here for several days, going out each day to flower-filled meadows and mountainsides, photographing and making notes, which we analysed at an evening “plant session”. It is forbidden to collect any plant material, including seeds. Botanical photography was, therefore, vitally important for identification.

The altitude was beginning to affect us – headaches all the time and every step was a real effort. It takes a week or so to acclimatise. One day we drove up towards Kangding’s new airport – at 4,200m apparently the second highest in the world – with mountain ranges stretching away to the distant snowy peak of sacred Mt Yala.

WE WERE SEARCHINGfor flowers on the high grassland areas, but we were not alone – several local Tibetans were digging amongst the grass roots, looking for a particular sort of fungus-infested caterpillar that is used in traditional medicine and forms a very lucrative component of the local economy.

Earlier that day we had had to divert off the road around a small landslide. We were at the crumpled eastern end of the Himalays where the Indian subcontinent is slowly pushing north against the Tibetan Plateau. Earthquakes, hot springs and landslides are common.

We left early for the drive from Kangding to Juilong. There were misty puffs of cloud hanging on the valley sides and people practicing Tai Chi on the square. As we wound our way out of Kangding I noticed an old lady selling radishes on a street corner, black pigs grovelling on a rubbish heap, guard dogs chained to parked trucks, and a man with a veil tending his bees. The crops in the tiny fields were potatoes, broad beans, peas, sweet corn and barley. Higher up we passed a truck overturned on a hairpin bend – probably coming down too fast.

The top of the Zheduo Pass is open, stony and bare – except for the white Buddhist chorten(shrine) surrounded by streamers of brightly coloured prayer flags. It's a windy day and the little fabric squares are flapping wildly and must be sending countless prayers to the heavens. Every pass we cross on the journey is similarly adorned.

Over the other side the Tibetan influence becomes more noticeable. The houses look quite different – large family compounds with elaborately painted doors and windows and walled yards with neatly stacked log piles (it’s very cold here in winter). We passed a yak encampment with a nomad’s black summer tent surrounded by black shaggy beasts. From now on these animals – so evocative of high places – are an almost constant part of the scenery.

The hillsides here are bare except for the smoky purple haze of dwarf rhododendron. We passed painted prayer wheels that are turned by the flow of small streams, and ancient, defensive stone towers. Round one corner we came across a friendly crowd of Tibetans preparing for a horse fair the next day. Their wonderfully decorated tents looked perfectly at home in this lonely valley.

It was raining heavily as we went over another pass and, in front of our eyes, the uphill bank gave way and a torrent of earth and rock boiled across the road. We could go no further. Carolyn phoned the local police who arranged for a bulldozer which came to clear the blockage two hours later. It was dark when we reached our hotel. The police were there waiting to check our passports, after all they had had warning that we were on our way!

We were only allowed to stay in hotels licensed to accommodate foreigners – as this one was. The hotels we stayed in were “the best in the area” – usually with grandiose foyers and fairly simple, but comfortable, rooms. The bathrooms were variable, usually fairly clean and, thank goodness, with Western-style lavatories – although these occasionally leaked. The loos in restaurants were often the hole-in-the-floor type. I remember a public one in one town which was spotlessly clean, white tiled with open stalls, divided by low walls, but it was on a slope and you had to balance over a swiftly running stream!

The next day in Juilong three of us took the day off from botanising to stroll around the town. We visited an immaculate bakery, bought yak horn spoons and turquoise jewellery and ate a deep-fried roast potato presented in a plastic bag from a street stall.

The high point was walking around the market. There was yak meat, live fish, an intriguing array of vegetables (including fern fronds), hardware (mainly copper pots, baskets), chickens in cages, and herbs and spices. One stall had a display of Chinese medicine ingredients and I watched as an elderly lady had her knee treated using massage, a little hammer and a suction disc. We tried to visit the market in each town – you really get the feel of a place by watching people buying and selling.

IN ORDER TO GETto our next base, in Yunnan, we were forced to drive back to Chengdu and fly across the provincial border to Zhongdian (3,000m), now officially called Shangri-la in an effort to boost tourism. We spent two days making use of the nearby cable car to get us high up onto the Shika Shan range. It was cold, wet and windy on the top but beautiful flowers were growing on the limestone outcrops. We walked down across screes and through steep forest.

The road to Hongshan was impassable for our small bus, so we travelled in several jeeps up and over more passes on a narrow unpaved road. This was wild mountainous country with fields of primulas, and yaks scattered across the slopes. We stayed for a couple of days in a newly-built timber lodge next to a small river. Then it was back to the bus on the main road and onto the village of Wengshui for a few days. Here we had a good walk up a wonderful limestone gorge with cliffs so high they nearly hid the sky.

The road to our final destination, Deqen, was almost all road works. The landscape became drier as we approached the Yangtze valley, and although the river here is young, nevertheless it looked powerful as its muddy waters swirled below us in a great loop. On our return journey we found the road blocked by a large landslide. Fortunately, we were able to divert around it, getting back to Zhongdian with some relief, as we had a plane to catch.

We were on our way home after four weeks, exhausted by the high altitude, early starts, long days of rough road travel and long haul flights. But we had been thrilled by the landscapes, beautiful flowers, and fascinating glimpses of another way of life.

Get there

Flights: we flew with KLM (klm.com) from Cork to Chengdu via Amsterdam.

Visa: you need a visa to enter China and you need to be "invited". See the Chinese embassy's website at ie.chineseembassy.org.

Travel company: ours was a privately organised trip but arranged through Yunnan Overseas Travel Corporation which booked hotels and internal flights, arranged guides, drivers and vehicles, and acted as our "inviter" for visas. Its address is East Donfeng Road, Camellia Hotel, Kunming City, Yunnan (tel 00-86-871-3171066 or e-mail ynotcgx@163.com).