Morning in Laos

Claire has been getting bored with same old same old exotic Laos, so now we’re headed off on a backroads, dirt roads, “shortcut” to the Vietnam border. We’re looking for a branch of the old Ho Che Minh Trail. That was just the thing to get her excited. It has something to do with her being born in Vietnam, and going back. We’ll be in Laos still, but will be asking directions (sound familiar) and using the compass to make decisions. It could be easy. We’ll see.

We’ve enjoyed the last few days following the Mekong south, and seeing the landscape and people change slowly.

Pineapple Breakfast Prepared By this fine Lady

Couple Running Their Nets In A Backwater Of The Mekong

The Broom Lady Begins Her Rounds

She pours out the eggs, scrambles them, pours them back in the shell and then steams them. A lot of work for a hard boiled egg.

This interesting thing about this is there were twice as many people before I took out the camera to video. Chinese do not like to be photographed as a part of a crowd, and yet they always like to be a part of a crowd. I wonder if it has to do with how much they are under surveillance, or think they are?

Misty Morning in Shangri-la (Claire)

We took the recommendation of Bill Weir and Alice and Andoni, cyclists we’d met way back in Almaty in 2005, and took a back road rather than Highway 214 to Tiger Leaping Gorge. We had at least one climb each day, one day we had three climbs totaling about 18 kilometers. The road is now paved except for washouts and we had very light traffic and beautiful views. Villages along the way were full of hard-working but friendly people eager to say “Hello!”. Coming the backway into Tiger Leaping Gorge was more fun because we didn’t feel so much a part of the tourist hordes. The big rock slide blocked vehicle traffic so we had the gorge to ourselves for most of the morning.

Shangri-la Vista

Clothsline in Shangri-la

Plowing with Oxen

Fall Colors in the Mountains of Shangri-la

Nearing Another Pass With Moss Covered Trees

Travertine Pools of Bai Shui Tai

The main reason we went the longer, back way to Lijiang was that I (Claire) wanted to see the travertine terraces at Bai Shui Tai. Unlike at Havasupai, these terraces are perched on a hillside, rather than in a canyon.

Flower in Shangri-la

Dahlias grow everywhere.

Carved Headstones

Village in Shangri-la

The expansive valleys on this route were stunning; deep enough that we couldn’t see all the way to the bottom.

Mountains of Shangri-la

Chili Harvest

View from our $4.20 room

Lunch Time in a Shangri-la Field

All Dressed Up

Haba Snow Mountain

Tiger Leaping Gorge

After the rain in Tiger Leaping Gorge

Las Vegas to Shanghai, luxury hotels, and the no-tell motel in the seedy underbelly of thousands of towns, have expropriated his fiction. Shangri-la is the idea of a magical place where people live long happy lives in perfect bliss. All of these places, even the most plush, fall short of the dream.

Whole countries have laid claim to the title, and all but one are fabrications. James Hilton’s Shangri-La is not in Bhutan, Nepal, or Myanmar, but in China; in Yunnan province of the Tibetan cultural region of the eastern most ranges of the Himalayas. Here the great rivers of Southeast Asia begin with trickles, explode into violent torrent, gather into the mighty forces of nature to embrace one of the most dense populations on Earth, and to eventually braid out across huge fertile deltas from Shanghai to Myanmar.

Misty Morning in Shangri-la (Claire)

Amazingly, Hilton was not a traveler. He got his inspiration from the National Geographic which published the explorations of the botanist, philologist, Joseph F. Rock, who spent years in northern Yunnan. The collection of plants was Rock’s primary mission, but he also documented the local Tibetan cultures. Rock’s plant collections are said to have sparked the, now ubiquitous, exotic garden craze in the United Kingdom and beyond. Hilton grazed from this material the fictional beautiful and perfect place.

Shangri-la, and surrounding mountains, hold most of the minorities of China, and are one of the last holdouts from complete domination by the Han majority.

The unique southerly curve of the Himalayan range at the east end, allows the valleys to funnel warm wet monsoon clouds to extremely high elevations. This makes for a fecundity of plant and animal life found nowhere else in the great stretch of the Himalayan range all the way to Central Asia.

Claire and I crossed the Tien Shan mountains of far western China on our Silk Road Crossing. They are the western ending of the Himalayan range in Central Asia. This trip we hope to cross the far eastern part of the Himalayan range, in our search for the real Shagri-la.

What will we find? Well, as with the Silk Road, fantasy and reality are not the same, but in Asia, reality is always fascinating and alive, always challenging and rewarding.

From Yunnan we plan to ride into Laos, then Vietnam, where Claire was born, Cambodia and end our journey in Thailand, after about four months.

We hope you will come along with us, here on our New Bohemians site as we begin in Chengdu, Sichuan, where the great earthquake devastated the region and killed thousands. From what we know of will and energy of the Chinese, the people are recovering. We hope so. We’ll visit some pandas of course, along with our Lucky, and then attempt the mountains, monsoon snows, and vagaries of Chinese Communist bureaucracy allowing us to make the trip. Wish us well and then bookmark and follow us on our unusual, and no doubt enlightening, quest documented on this site.

We are not the anti-social hedonists many associate with the name Bohemians. Anyone who has followed our adventures knows we don’t avoid challenge or discomfort. We get our high by pushing our bodies and minds in pursuit of creative living, travel, and intimate connection with the World and it’s peoples. That is the New in New Bohemians.

Many people searching for our site found instead a folk rock band, Edie Brickell and The New Bohemians, since they had the .com long before we conceived of a web presence. They’re a laid back group with a great sound and meaningful lyrics you can actually understand. They have an interesting, and long, history, that I may explore in a future post.

With the help of John Hoyle at The Small Webmaster, we have manged to get our site second only to Edie Brickell and The New Bohemians, and are gaining an ever increasing following. We will keep the content fresh and, sometimes at least, exciting. You will find travel narratives from all over the world, and close to home, by tandem bicycle, sailboat, motorhome, Asian trains, an aging Soviet era airliner, and one Lada. There are in excess of 300,000 words and who knows how many pictures, with more to come: Tandem, An American Love Story, Around Australia by Tandem and Cruising the South Pacific with Captain Bligh. Start off with photos of these places on our travel portfolio.

Many people have responded to our newest blogger, Lucky the stuffed panda we rescued. He is coming to life, and will join us on our next adventure, when we ride our tandem, Zippy from Sichuan to Yunnan, China, and into Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. We think his blogs will be an interesting view of his country of origin. He may decide to stay. Who knows? We will be posting our own blogs and perhaps some videos.

We leave in early September for Chengdu, where the recent devastating earthquakes killed thousands. We’ll take Lucky to see his namesakes at the giant panda breeding center. From there we’ll attempt to pedal up over the Tibetan plateau, in search of Shangri-La, and beyond.

We’ll give you another heads-up before we leave. For now, check out our Silk Road Crossing page. It is an exciting preview of the challenges and rewards of independent travel in Asia.

Life it good. Share your thoughts on what your read, and tell us about your adventures.