Mushypea

“You won’t find Shambhala on any map”

And so I set off to find more clues on my quest to learn more about Shambhala.  I ride north west from Lijiang and make my way to the beautiful Lugu lake before crossing over to Sichuan province.  After two days riding in heavy rain I find a sign which says “Welcome to Shangri-La”!  I must say seeing that sign put a smile on my muddy face.  Although I don’t want to drift on to the Shambhala vs Shangri-La debate, I felt for the first time that my search ‘was on’.

With prayer flags fluttering in the wind, I took a couple of photos and headed downhill through coal mining towns, following trucks chugging away on the up hills and grabbing on to the back of one or two of them taking in as much of their exhaust fumes as I could manage.

I’m heading for Muli Dasi, a monastery perched 3000m up from the Litang river.  The rains have made the roads beyond Muli closed to cars and buses – the road is just an oily muddy slick for the 30km leading to Muli.  It’s a long chain-crunching ride with frequent cleaning of my bike chain!

The ride up to Muli Dasi is a back breaking climb but when I arrive I am greeted by young monks all wanting to ride my bike in the monastery court yard.  I am here to meet with a couple of senior Lama, who offer me some advice on Shambhala and I will be sharing some of their views a little later on as the journey progresses.

Lamas at Muli Dasi

Lobsang, a senior Lama who likes mountain bikes (handy), helped me down from Dasi the following morning after a breakfast of Tsampa, yak cheese and butter tea.  The walk down is steep and we are soon joined by several other Lama carrying my bags.  Lobsang offers me a wrist band and tells me to give it to any ghosts I may see on my travels – I think to myself this would have been useful the evening before when my bed was crawling with spiders and centipedes but hold my thoughts.

With wrist band securely fastened and bags clipped on to grub (my bike), I set off in the mud once again, this time heading to Chabu and Yading.  The road (216) is totally washed out and vehicles haven’t been able to get through in weeks.  Google maps shows the road stopping abruptly at Chabu, I wonder why?

Well quite simply there is no “road”.  There is a thin dirt track which is suffering badly from rock and land slides.  The police in Chabu advise me it is too dangerous to go this way to Daocheng and they offer an alternative route, but their route is not on any maps either.  I weigh up my two options and decide to go for the my original route up and over two 4500m passes to Daocheng.  I soon realised what the police men meant when they said the route was dangerous.

Rocks the size of cars (I’m not exaggerating here) have crashed on to the trail rendering the path impassable.  Being on a mountain bike, I can unclip the bags and climb over – sounds easy but with a 2km shear drop to my left it’s terrifying.  The local villagers who clear the rocks are legends. They stop work and help me over the rocks with me gear, all smiles!

In the market town of Chabu a few days earlier I met with a chirpy Lama named Tashi.  Tashi proved to be a good friend and offered me a place to stay when I drop off of the pass in a few days time.  I rolled in at 11 pm four days after meeting him, in darkness, my head torch and moon light leading me to the damp bottom of the valley where I follow a small river.

Tashi’s village is tucked around the side of two beautiful twin mountains, mother mountain and father mountain he calls them.  There is a river running in between them.  Tashi meets me at the bottom of the pass and we walk for just over an hour up hill in a spiral to his village.  It was all very spooky, not knowing where I was going and what would be waiting for me when I got there.  Eventually we arrive at his house, a kind of castle like Tibetan building with three floors.  He opens the large wooden door and I walk in to the dark, my eyes struggling to adjust.  The floor is moving, breathing and squelching.  My eyes adjust and I see pigs suckling, cows shuffling and chickens fluttering their feathers as we disturb their sleep.

I am guided up a steep stair case to an old lady plunging yak butter tea and am offered a bench to sit on in the dark living room.  The only light is from the fire.  Flies buzz around and there is a smell of damp but somehow it all seems so perfect.  Rice is dished up, I eat and become woozy.  The altitude is kicking in and I fall asleep minutes later.

The next day I rest.  I’m shown around the whole village, meeting the village bread maker, Tashi’s brother, sister in law, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews.  I sit under father mountain that afternoon taking some video and writing my diary.  I wonder if this is how James Hilton imagined his Shangri-La?  It kinda fits the bill.  A beautiful village, untraceable by map and road.  There is abundant food growing here, freely available water from down in the valley and of course the village is protected by two beautiful mountains (Hilton only had the one though!).  No money problems because really there is no money, they seem totally self sufficient, occasionally going to the nearest town to trade vegetables, fruit and bread.

Typical Tibetan house living and cooking area

I laugh with Tashi about this idea and he half agrees.  He’s lived here for many years since moving from India and says he is bored with the mountain scenery now – but loves the fact he has his family all around him.  It’s a very poor village, at least in dollar terms.  But somehow I think this place, and the many remote mountain villages like this one, are very wealthy.  The family all eat healthily, they have each other to get through the good times and the bad times.  They have everything they need right here, each other, and they seem very happy with that.

Now, to get to Daocheng – I ask Tashi the best way and how far it is to the top of the pass.  Tashi replies the only road out of here is very different (I think he means difficult).  He suggests a trail he knows but warns it may take many days climbing.  Oh well, my clothes are dry now so I might as well get on with it.

“Oh, Tashi, where do you think Shambhala is” I ask jokingly as I mount my bike.

“It’s in your head” he replies laughing.  I think he might be on to something – but I remember the Lamas comments in Muli Dasi, they say I must head for western Tibet, I may find what I’m looking for there.

First though, I have a gruelling four day journey to Daocheng on a road which doesn’t exist on any map.
View Lijiang > Daocheng in a larger map

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 19:08 and is filed under General and tagged with China, GXR, Kona, mushypea, Ricoh, shambhala. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.