Tag Archives: China

A Thorn Tree Grows in Shangri-la
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At one curve in the road, a woman looked up from weeding her small orchard, and let out with an extended soliloquy on our presence, accompanied by a large smile. Her husband, walking in the road, waved us down, and eagerly suggested, in pantomime, the we join him for a rest under a shade tree. He too beamed with joy at the possibility of enjoying our company. We had a difficult (more than we knew) day ahead of us, and I pointed at my wrist and shook my head in denial. He persisted, and we went back and forth, all with smiles.

Finally we waved and pushed off, our 26 inch prayer wheels spinning out thousands of goodwill messages up his mountain; but I think we might have missed the point. The farmer and his wife live Shangri-la, not just in it, but they are Shangri-la. They are poor, but well fed, and the circle of their days allows for a break when tired, a visit with passing strangers, the rhythm of weeding, or wall building when they feel like it, and the song of bird and stream as accompaniment to it all.

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Elation, Pain, Surprise; Part 3, Weary
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With the sky socked in and lots more climbing, we were convinced we’d reached the pass even though neither the Tibetans acknowledged it with prayer flags nor the Chinese marked it with a sign. To us it was a pass, so we took photos, made a video and descended. The snow turned wet and the road muddy and we discovered we had more climbing. This time the pass was marked, with flags in one spot and with an official sign a half kilometer away.

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Elation, Pain, Surprise: Part 2
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Claire: It sounds romantic: going to sleep to the sounds of chanting and waking to the sounds of milking. But these women’s lives are a gritty exsistence that our culture hasn’t known for generations. Hauling wood, water and food up the ladder to the living space, making butter and curds, grinding grain, hand washing clothes, keeping the fire going, cooking… Mundane, routine, weather-dependent, smoke-filled and layered with years of grime. At first, we were both a little uncomfortable with their aboriginal way of life (we even took some Pepto-Bismol as a prophylaxis against any reaction to the yak butter). It’s kind of like going feral in Australia, at first, you try to avoid the bull dust, then you live with it until finally, it becomes your outer layer.

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High Places and Thinking of Food
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We’re getting to the stage where we think about food a lot, and we tried to make a decent dent in the big bucket of rice, but we failed to come close to finishing it. Yes, we’re eating pork now, or any kind of protein for that matter, and we eat whatever vegetables they bring us. At the grocery stores, we study and poke the packages and hope they’ll sustain us through a night of camping. Yogurt and cookies (a whole roll) is a before bed tradition of carbo loading and we even bought Tang for our water bottles tomorrow. Read the rest of this article…

Highest Point: Continued
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Though the mountain was crowded with lots of construction workers, it was somehow comforting to have some of the road crew trying to beckon us over to their fire to warm up. They didn’t seem to understand that our lightweight clothing was plenty for as hard as we were working and we would only cool down if we stopped. Much as we would have liked to have tea and a visit, we had to keep moving.We got many cheers, thumbs up, much misinformation and even a push from two road monitors. Read the rest of this article…

A New High: A Layered Meaning
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Stupa at first pass into Tibetan lands

Creating challenges for ourselves, and facing them together strengthens the bond of our marriage. Couples often allow the romance fade as the years progress. It’s easy to become immersed in career, children, differing interests and circles of friends, and put the partner in a secondary position. We said some vows nearly twenty years ago, and our habit of creating challenges for ourselves, and meeting them as a team, has helped us keep those vows, and kept the romance alive. We may seem crazy, but the rewards of our mutual struggles are great. Read the rest of this article…

Into Tibetan Lands
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The Himalayan foothills are turning vertical and Zippy’s long wheelbase and weight is making it difficult to hold a straight line, especially when a bus screams at us with its ear splitting high pitched horn, and the captain reacts toward the 100 ft. drop off into the river! So far so good, and the old reflexes will soon come back. The first weeks are the hardest, and these mountains are really really hard. We might have kept these mountains for the end of the trip when we are fit, but then the passes are snowed in; there is a typhoon approaching the coast, and we might get it even now. Hope not.

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