Sep 15th 7:16am Kang Ding town
We met up at 6am this morning in order to make the distance today. However, you can never plan for everything: 10 minutes after we left the Kang Ding town center, the highway 318 was completely blocked by the road construction and wont be open until 6pm. We dont want to drive at night – it can get really dangerous on the roads when its dark. We have to take an alternative path which will be through Mugecuo and the roads will be quite challenging. The problem is that we cant take the chance on the gas because there is normally no gas station other than national highway. So we have to fill the gas before we leave Kang Ding and all gas stations here dont open until 8am. Well, we could have slept 2 more hours but who knows.
20:00 Ya Jiang Hotel
We ended up taking the small road – well, its difficult to call it road since it was not paved at all and really difficult to drive on (although Gao said we should be very thankful if there were roads like that in Ali region) through Mugecuo, pass the being-built Kang Ding Airport, climbed the zheduo mountain, through Tang Gong town and back to the Highway 318. So it took us almost 6 hours to drive the original only 60 KM distance on Highway 318. Because of the poor road condition, we were driving mostly at 20KM per hour because we didnt want to kill our brand new Wrangler Rubicon. The upside is that because of the road block, all tour buses and trucks cannot drive on this small road so it was mostly quite empty. Even when we arrived at Ta Gong Town, which normally is quite touristy, there was almost no visitor at all! We really enjoyed that very much!!! The scenery along the route was also breathtaking so it was well worth it.
While we were in the middle of Ta Gong town, Gao saw a beautiful Tibetan girl on the street side so we stopped to have our car washed, hoping to get some pictures from her. They almost dont speak any Mandarin so it was quite difficult to communicate, but they do know the number so that they can get money for pictures – we paid 30 RMB for several shots, same as what we paid to wash the car. But it was worth it. She is probably the most beautiful Tibetan girl that Ive ever seen. Gao told me that there is a small group of Tibetans have Aryan blood and most of them are aristocrats. I believe this girl has some since her skin is just so fair.
While we were very happy about finally getting back on highway 318, we found that we cheered up too early: we ran into the military truck line, about 60 of them, which could be so bad on Chuan Zang Road: the road is so narrow and so dangerous so its difficult to pass especially while there are so many of them. What makes is worse was we were going up the Gaoersi mountain (4117 meter high) so we still had 10 to go at the top. For about one and half hours, we could again, only drove at 20 km/hour.
The landscape and the weather changed dramatically after the second mountain between Kang Ding and Ya Jiang: we are basically in Tibetan habitance. The sky is so blue that you feel so close to heaven – typical Tibetan sky. The grass, the trees, the water just makes you want to sing and to jump. Gao told me this is nothing comparing with what we are going to see in Ali – I just cannot wait!
We arrived in Ya Jiang at around 4 pm, a place we planned to arrive at around 10am this morning:( There is another 137 KM to go to Li Tang but we have to climb another big mountain which will take us at least 4 hours given the condition that everything goes well, which means we will have to drive in the dark. We dont want to do so: it can be very dangerous in the Tibetan region in the dark. There are many robberies, which Gao has encountered several times himself. So we decided to stay overnight in Ya Jiang, a very small local town on the Ya long River, built on the mountain. We took our time to relax and walk around town. Obviously there are not many tourists here since we really caught a lot of attention. I had the best yogurt in my life – fresh Yak yogurt. It was so delicious!
What makes me really happy today was that I almost didn’t feel any discomfort although we were half time over 4000 meter. I was very much worried how my body will behave before so I am satisfied with the condition so far, maybe it’s because of the butter tea I drank last night although I didn’t really like the taste?:)
It seems that everything was not as planned today, but actually made it more fun: this Is what I believe the true fun of a driving trip – full of surprises. We got to see and experience a lot that was not expected – its not important where we reach, but what we experience on the way. Its always about the process, right?