The 5000 Project

So, we took a bus to Jiuzhaigou, further north – we saw more earthquake damage on the way but the bus ride was relatively cozy.

Due to arriving just on a chinese holiday (they have them constantly, it seems that government employees are always on holidays while the lesser classes work without rest) we had to settle in a chinese hostel for $8/night for dorm bed. Jiuzhaigou is one of the most active touristy locations in china, known for its perfect blue lakes and picturesque mountains. Unfortunately considering how well known it is, the entry fee is quite steep – $40/day ($60 without a student card) within the national park, outside of the very new town-stead.

The first thing we did was scope out the entrance to see if there is any way to sneak in, from our previous knownledge, with all public services, noone seems to mind if you manage to sneak in – it is pretty much certain that the chinese people never will. Unfortunately for us, we couldn’t find an easy way in, as the entrance covered the narrow opening of the large mountain ravine. We admitted defeat and purchased a ticket the next morning, however before doing so we managed to meet some helpful chinese backpackers who told us that there is a place to stay overnight and get the second night free by staying in a house within a tibetian village that resides within the national park. We jotted down the directions and copied a photo of the house (with chinese characters for the sign) to my new phone, in prep for the following days.

At first, Jiuzhaigou was depressing, a constant line of tour busses drive for 20min packed full of wealthy chinese – we had to take the bus as walking is discouraged from the entrance. At every stop the chinese would run out of the bus, take some photos, and hop back in the next bus. We made it to the middle stop, not far from the tibetian village; we decided it would be best to confirm accommodation before checking out the sights – upon walking to the village, a guard stopped us to check tickets, we later found out that they check only in the early mornings, for the first bus that arrives; we would sleep in the next morning to avoid this unneeded annoyance.

We arrived at the house and were greeted by an old lady who spoke no english, after a few minutes her daughter arrived and asked us if we would like to stay… for a small fee of $13 (however this includes an awesome dinner and breakfast). We accepted politely, trying to hide the urgency in our voices and headed outside to the simply incredible scenery… over the heads of an army of chinese tourists.

We took a bus right to the end of the east path, with the plan of walking all the way back. Discouraged by the frequent small patches of tourists at many stops, we came across an area where there are no stops for about 5km, however the forest path was blocked with a warning sign in chinese characters – we decided to ignore the sign and walk around it, it is difficult to know what it means anyway, when its not in english – perhaps it just had ‘hello’ written on it. That was our story for the authorities anyway.

It wasn’t ‘hello’, parts of the path were unmaintained, most probably because no chinese tourists bothered to walk this far – however the damage was very minor and still quite safe. The walk was very peaceful and scenic, well worth the mild rebalism. Now, its difficult to describe how beautiful this place is, you simply need to check out my flickr, or wait until I update these recent posts with images.

After a few hours of trekking, we came across a few buildings; we approached cautiously, hoping that they may have boiling water for our packet noodles that we carried within our packs for lunch. Two men in camoflaged army attire walked towards us, we were sure that this was not an area where we should be. The main guy, who had a few more insignias on his shoulders than the others, knew quite good english and offered us a drink of water – we took this opportunity to show him our noodles, he got one of his minions to take the noodles and prepare the food for us. There was a table tennis table out in the open, I took a glance at it and the man immediately asked me if i would like a game…. I said yes. We played for a while, everytime the ball missed the table, a soldier would be standing guard at each corner to pick it up and hand it back. It was quite a surreal experience. After eating the noodles and drinking the water, the main guy explained that during the winter they would climb the mountain behind us and collect plants to be used in distilling their own pijoe (~50% alcohol moonshine). We were impressed but still a little WTF about the whole situation, must be a lonely post in the middle of a national park, I assumed that they were there to help rescue tourists who attempt to climb heights without equipment, I’m pretty sure only stupid westerners would do things like that – like for instance, taking a path that has obvious warning signs.

We arrived back at the tibetian house for dinner and had a very comfortable sleep with the sound of heavy rain late at night. In the morning we woke to find that, due to the rain, there was now snow capped on the top of every mountain peak that surrounded the house, a very magical moment.

Making sure that we left after 9am, we attempted to walk back to the entrance, halfway we jumped on a bus knowing that it was too far to walk. We spent another night in the town, then took a bus to Lanzhou the next day.