WildChina explorer Jeff Fuchs will speak at the Beijing Bookworm this Friday, September 9th at 7:30pm about his travels with the WildChina Explorer Grant 2011!

Please Note: Tickets are CNY 50 and can be purchased at the door.

The following is an excerpt from Jeff Fuchs’ Tea and Mountain Journals, a blog by explorer, photographer and writer Jeff Fuchs.  Jeff is the 2011 recipient of WildChina’s Explorer Grant.  He and friend Michael Kleinwort are currently traveling through unknown portions of the Tsalam route in Qinghai. Below is the last piece from their journey…

Early morning wind upon an Amne Machin ridge

An avalanche’s disintegrating power has rearranged the land in front of us. A brutal black surge of turned earth, stones and newly formed shaped forms that stretch kilometres across the valley. It has only served to enhance in many ways an already formidable scene. Five years earlier Amne Machin released a colossal chunk of itself upon the land below and we are now grinding our way over this ‘reconstructed’ surface. We, for the first time on this portion of our journey, are steadily descending and with this knowledge comes an exhausted nostalgia and a twinge of sadness – we are exiting the main protective body of the Amne Machin range which fades to our right. ‘Civilization’ is coming closer step by step, though admittedly we still have much distance to cover…Michael is feeling this glumness as well. I am doing everything in my limited mental powers to stay in each progressive moment and not to let the mind jump ahead out of the now. I keep wondering at how we came to this point, where we are about to end….

Our caravan making its way out of the main Nom'sho valley

The yaks seem impatient to get home pushing ahead, as strong and steady as ever. Peaks become rounded hills, and the snowline dissipates as we continue. We are descending through a valley that splits the highlands and even the air around us is somehow diminishing in power.

Our stout mates for the entire trip - no better transport method, anywhere

Michael sitting for the first time in a week something other than frozen ground

We are both silent, and I feel in me a longing to bolt back into the mountains’ sanctity. A last night spent in the village with locals and a huge meal….tomorrow begins for us the slow and inevitable return to the provincial capital of Xining and a number of thermoses of tea to throw back, just to stay sane.

Jeffers trying very hard to remain seated indoors...the urge to bolt was only kept down by the mug of tea in hand

 

The following is an excerpt from Jeff Fuchs’ Tea and Mountain Journals, a blog by explorer, photographer and writer Jeff Fuchs.  Jeff is the 2011 recipient of WildChina’s Explorer Grant.  He and friend Michael Kleinwort are currently traveling through unknown portions of the Tsalam route in Qinghai.

Below is an update from their journey…

Amye Maqen (Amne Machin, Anye Machin) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amne_Machin>, the stout, the muscular, and for much of time, the utterly hidden from the outside world…our first glimpse of it is of a snow capped wonder that appears far closer than it is. There seem to be as many ways of spelling it as their are potential descriptives. Neither wind blown sand nor a haze can obscure its brilliant bulk. It seems to hang from the sky as we come in from the northwest towards the makeshift town at its base, Xiadawu (or in the more flavoured local Tibetan ‘Da’wurr’ – ‘Place that is difficult for horses’). In Joseph Rock’s accounts of the mountain and bandit ridden regions back in 1930 he estimated the broad peaks of Amne Machin to be 30,000 feet, a guess that was later proven to be 3,000 metres off.

The Amne Machin range itself is an eastern extension of the greater Kunlun Mountain range, one of Asia’s longest most legend laden mountain chains. Located in the Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture it is here that the Yellow River (so named because of wind-blown loess that is carried in from Central Asia) rises before winding eastward. At its rounded and almost friendly white peaks it achieves just over 6,200 metres.

Mountains cannot be compared to other of their kind in my eyes. Mountains are landscapes, heaps of stone and snow unto themselves and each has their own thin-aired identity. Sacred to the Golog (Golok) nomads, Amne Machin is almost directly due east of our pristine salt lake near Mado (Mardo) that we’ve most recently left. It also lies on the route that nomads from southwest took to access their precious salt. Few nomadic caravans would pass up the chance to visit and circumambulate the sacred Amne Machin range while undertaking a perilous journey to source salt. Ever practical, the Tibetan traders saw the value of doing both trade for a revered commodity and a little cleansing of past ills.

This mountain that has long played a role in local nomad’s worship of the divine, has withstood weathering seasons and has become more iconic in the eyes of men over time. The fact that it lies as a northwest-southeast diagonal throughway for traders only increases the curiosity for Michael and I. How much is left in memory and physicality of the salt route legacy? How much of any trade route – seldom acknowledged, documented or discussed – will survive? It is in this way that these journeys and explorations are truly ‘exploratory’ with nothing being guaranteed.

The town of Xiadawu, sits in a small cupped valley and is a dusty mess of pool tables, remarkably shabby huts and a main square of errant apathetic dogs that have forgotten their roles. Xiadawu’s decrepit appearance serves as an entry to something far greater than itself, Amne Machin, which erupts to the east. Flowing west out of the mountains past the town, the swerving breadth of the Nam Chu (Nam River) wanders through, over and around valleys in a never-ending search.

Namchu (Nam River)

Our host, Tsering, is to be found out of town – it is he who will arrange our kora/ circumambulation around the great mountain. The ‘kora’ or counterclockwise circumambulation literally refers to a pilgrimage. For many eastern religions this act is believed to be a physical way to cleanse or clear away one’s past sins.

If in fact this is the case it may well take a few more than one rotation for Michael and I to wipe our collective slates clean.

Around us the landscape ripples with Spring’s pending arrival – ridges verging on going from ochre to green. Still though, the high peaks remind in a glance that up here at over 4,000 metres winter isn’t really ever truly ‘over’.

Our host Tsering tells us that, yes, the salt traders came through here as part of their annual travels – more specifically nomadic traders, who, coming from further east, would add the kora of the mountain to their travels to the salt lakes. A kind of double-pronged travel plan: salt for need and profit, kora for life-cleansing benefits.

———-

The following is an excerpt from Jeff Fuchs’ Tea and Mountain Journals, a blog by explorer, photographer and writer Jeff Fuchs.  Jeff is the 2011 recipient of WildChina’s Explorer Grant.  He and friend Michael Kleinwort are currently traveling through unknown portions of the Tsalam route in Qinghai.

Below is a tale from this journey…

———-

May 4, 2011

Sun (neema in Tibetan) blasts into the day as we wake to a reckless blue sky and a wind that hums. Snow capped peaks shimmer on the horizon and wind whips smoke and sand into mini-tornadoes.

All of Mother Nature’s elements are on display today in a show of force, and Michael and I both feel this bodes well for the journey. The city of Maqen (3700 metres) scatters for cover from winds that rip down the main street daring any to test it. Eyes burn from the suns rays and all of the goodies that the wind picks up and throws.

Much of expeditions or indeed any travel, involves waiting. Waiting for weather, for the right guides, for the correct directions…in this case we are waiting for word of our team, one member in particular, who can add a rare perspective on our journey.

One of my great desires is finally confirmed beyond a doubt today as we are greeted with the welcome news that one of the last of the Salt Road traders will in fact travel with us as our unofficial guide. Up until now this has been a slight question mark because of his health and age, but his desire has and is strong to accompany us. In his seventies, he and he alone, it seems, knows the ancient Salt Road portion that passes through the nomadic lands and that which we seek to travel. There is only one condition to him joining us and that is that he has a horse to ride during the journey. In his almost apologetic words, “my body, though once strong, is no longer capable of walking the route”. We are delighted as much of the younger generation has no idea of the Tsalam (Salt Road), and sadly seem to care less, and with him we are sure to get tidbits, tales and that crucial must, an innate knowledge gained from actually travelling the route.

Today I am also issued another warning about wolves. “They are out in great numbers in recent years, and they are far smarter than you”, a local tells me directly. I’ve no doubt about his information, as years back in this region I was to witness a site that remains in my memory bank still. Trekking through a remote portion near Golok, a friend and I watched a pack numbering almost two-dozen strong, rip into a flock of sheep with an efficient ferocity that was riveting. The act that unfolded was both brutal and impressive in both strategy and execution.

Michael and I are urged in the bright rays of the sun this morning to visit the local monastery, which sits as a tribute to another traveler: a monk who traipsed all over the Tibetan Plateau by foot with little more than a bag of tsampa (ground barley), some butter and a bit of tea (which of course set him high in my books).

We are told that to begin our journey through these stoic and staggering landscapes we should visit and appease the local deities and pay a gentle homage to the lands and beliefs that we now find ourselves. I’ve long felt that these little gestures set something in the mind at peace, a kind of genuflection of respect to local forces, however secular or otherworldly they might be.

The monastery is more a series of small monasteries sitting at the north end of town, stupas, and flat-topped homes. All of this surrounds a huge mound of dirt hectares in size, which still now, is only now rediscovering life after a brutal winter. Prayer flags (loong da) cover the entire northwest face, flapping and billowing in winds that gain strength the higher we ascend.

————

For the full post, please visit http://www.tea-and-mountain-journals.com/

The following is an introduction to Jeff Fuchs’ Tea and Mountain Journals, a blog by explorer, photographer and writer Jeff Fuchs.  Jeff is the 2011 recipient of WildChina’s Explorer Grant.  He and friend Michael Kleinwort are currently traveling through unknown portions of the Tsalam route in Qinghai.

Below is an announcement about their journey…

The Route of White Gold

When: May, 2011

Who: Jeff Fuchs, Michael Kleinwort

Where: Southern Qinghai (Amdo)

One of the ancient world’s great and unheralded trade routes was the eastern Himalayas’ Tsalam, or Salt Road. Known to many Tibetans as “The route of white gold”, much of its desiccated remains rest at close to 4 km in the sky upon the eastern Himalayan Plateau.

Traversing some of the planet’s most remote and daunting terrain, the Tsalam passed through the snowy homeland of the fierce Golok nomads, notorious wolf packs and beneath the sacred Amye Maqen mountain range of southern Qinghai province (Amdo). Largely forgotten it remains culturally, historically and geographically one of the least documented portions on earth. The memories of a few traders carry on its almost fabled tale.

The route itself has never before been acknowledged (nor travelled) by westerners, and much like the Tea Horse Road, the last remaining traders who traveled its length are passing away and with them too, the memories of what for many was the only access path into the daunting nomadic lands.

Leading the expedition and transcribing the tale of Tsalam will be myself, with English entrepreneur and endurance athlete Michael Kleinwort joining me. Along with local nomadic guides and the odd mule, our “0 carbon footprint team” will attempt to travel the most isolated and unknown portion of the route – a remote nomadic portion from Honkor to the Maqu area.

The expedition in May of 2011 will be done entirely by foot and will access many of the last nomadic traders to document their precious recollections of travel along the Tsalam. The expedition is another of the ancient Himalayan trade routes I hope to re-expose to some light. Articles in select publications will appear upon completion of the journey.

Jeff Fuchs

Lubden & Michael Kleinwort

———-

Unfortunate travel news out of Tibet: foreign travelers are not being allowed into Tibet this month and no clear timetable for when they will be allowed back into the region has been given.

The AFP received this news from the Xizang Tourist General Company as shown here. The most recent block on foreign travelers comes on the third anniversary of the pre-Olympic anti-government riots that took place in Lhasa and other Tibetan regions in March 2008. Foreign travelers were kept out of Tibet for a year after the riots.

Given the already substantial logistical challenges of planning a journey to Tibet, unclear government policies are enough to make some travelers give up on their dreams of traveling to the ‘roof of the world’ to experience its breathtaking landscapes and understand its people.

But there is more to “Tibet” than what is contained by the autonomous region called Tibet. Northwest Yunnan, western Sichuan and much of Qinghai are historically, physically and culturally part of what was once the kingdom of Tibet and is now occasionally referred to as ‘Greater Tibet’.

Traditional Tibetan lifestyles can still be viewed in destinations such as Shangri-la, Kangding and Yushu, and the sacred snow-capped peaks of Meili and Minya Gongga rival all but a handful of the mountains found within Tibet proper in terms of altitude or awe-inspiring size. Yunnan – especially our award-winning Songtsam Circuit – and Sichuan not only have beautiful and authentic Tibetan regions, they are also home to a mindblowing variety of topography, climate and cultures.

If you are planning a China trip and want to include a Tibetan experience, keep in mind that what is commonly thought of as “Tibet” extends well beyond the borders of the area that is currently off-limits. For more information about how to visit genuinely Tibetan destinations not covered by the ban, contact us today.

It’s been almost a year since we first spoke with Portrait of an LBX bikers and writers Andy Keller and Evan Villarrubia. We caught up with them this week to talk about their reflections on their trip, which ended on September 13, 2010.

LBX's spectacular campsite in Qinghai province, August 2010 (Photo: Portrait of an LBX)

WildChina Travel: Now that you’ve finished with the trip, how can you define laobaixing? How has your understanding of the term, and the people that define it, expanded, been flipped on its head, morphed, etc.?

Andy Keller: I think laobaixing boils down to a political term, as politics controls so much in China, although it has an economic aspect as well, since politics is so tied to money in China (as with anywhere else). China’s laobaixing make up the vast majority of Chinese people. It’s not just a synonym for “peasant” or “farmer” because it’s not just the people out in the countryside who are laobaixing. Basically, they are the people who have less power in the face of the government.

Evan Villarrubia: All the charm of China has come from individual people, the ones “doing their own thing” in accordance with traditions and their own values — the laobaixing. “New China” has come from outside of the laobaixing.

WCT: Do you still believe that the term laobaixing can define and encompass the people / socioeconomic group that you encountered and interacted with on your trip? Why or why not?

AK: Absolutely. With very few exceptions when we met relatives of friends working in the government or party or big business people, the people we interacted with on the trip were all laobaixing. The number of people without government connections in China is so large that really there’s no way the group of people we interacted with could not almost all be laobaixing.

WCT: What was your greatest surprise on the trip? Your biggest regret?

EV: For me, the biggest surprise was the Tibetan plateau. I had never seen skies like that before, and we never expected how different the people were from anything else we’d encountered. The biggest regret of the trip was not making it to either Hubei or Hunan, two quintessentially Chinese places right in the middle of the country, which our big loop didn’t permit time to visit. This will have to be rectified later.

AK: The biggest surprise for me was discovering just how development and modernity almost always trumped concern for culture, the environment, traditional society, etc. We went into the trip with the impression that with so much good stuff disappearing everyday, people would have to be up in arms about it once we sat down and had honest conversations. By and large though, the people we met were as single-mindedly focused on “development” as the government and were happy to leave tradition, culture and even the natural environment behind for the sake of their concept of modernity.

Despite what you see in the media, most laobaixing are not dowsing themselves in gasoline and lighting themselves on fire on the roofs of their homes as the demolition cranes move in. Most are content to take compensation and move out of their homes, away from the fields, away from their communities and into apartment complexes outside of the city, where the communities and social networks that made traditional China so unique no longer exist.

My biggest regret was definitely the places we didn’t get to see – Hubei, Hunan, Xinjiang, Tibet and pretty much all of Dongbei.

WCT: Which area(s) of China ended up being your favorite? Why?

EV: Yunnan, for natural beauty, colors, extreme cultural variations, food, and tea. You can spend days cruising chilly mountaintop villages above endless rice terraces with the Yi and Hani, and the next day drop into the Dai valleys full of pineapples, coconuts, and wooden stilt homes. As long as you stay off the tourist trail, there’s no end to the surprises.

AK: Ditto.

WCT: What is one piece of advice you would give to travelers who want to experience the ‘real’ side of China?

EV: Stick to the mountains, small roads, and small villages where real culture, real beauty and real people still exist.

Read more of Andy and Evan’s reflections and trip accounts at Portrait of an LBX.

Supplies for The Orphanage School/Rokpa arrives in Yushu
The supplies truck that Europe director Veronique d’Antras had help send out to Yushu has arrived yesterday and goods have been distributed to the Rokpa children. We were told that the excess goods will be distributed to folks in need in the countryside around Yushu. (Note that general Aid and support is yet to reach these areas outside of Yushu Town.)

Tashi returns to Yushu to provide on-the-ground support
Tashi, our former WildChina colleague and studying doctor, is on his way back to Yushu from Shanghai today. WildChina needs someone strong and knowledgeable on the ground to provide comfort, materials, and direct the distribution to our friends in Yushu. He is a true local who knows the place well he is well-placed to assist us in developing an aid process. He will bring whatever he can in terms of medicine and supplies.

Samdeg to speak with Lama
Samdeg, who lost his mother and sister in the earthquake, has been put in touch with a Lama who is a friend of Veronique’s. We hope that by introducing them, they can find ways to help each other through these tough times.

Without the help of all our friends in Yushu, we would not have had the opportunity or the good fortune to successfully run trips in Qinghai province. They are like family to us, and there is much they can do to help the current situation in Yushu. We need to help them in the hope that they can then help others.

Tashi (扎西) in his native Qinghai Province

Tashi Maqu Dorje is originally from Yushu and is a former WildChina colleague. At the end of 2006, Tashi left WildChina to pursue a medical degree. One of his greatest attributes is his almost native command of the English language.

During the summer of 2007, he was our local trip planner for the Tibetan Grand Horse Racing Festival and luxury camp in Yushu. He worked closely with WildChina Directors Veronique d’Antras, Sunshine Shang and Paul Moreno in making the trip a reality. He put WildChina in touch with the many people, including his family who worked at our camp in Bartang (around 45 kilometers south of Yushu).

Samdeg is a schoolteacher who has been our camp manager in Yushu and helped in the trekking portion of our trip, setting up the remote camp. His relatives had grazing rights to the land where we set up camp, and our camp gear has been stored in his uncles’s house in Bartang for the past two years.

Samdeg’s family had a house in Yushu near the Rokpa-sponsored Orphanage School. He is a very kind, patient and diligent man, making the daily drive to the village school where he teaches. It was because of this that he was not home in the morning of the quake. His late mother and sister were tragically not as lucky, and he is suffering greatly as a result of these two losses.

Niyma Tenzing is the director and manager of the Rokpa Orphanage School in Yushu. He is instrumental in running and maintaining the orphanage, which cares for around 500 children. A number of graduates from the Orphanage School have attained a proficient degree of English at the University of Xining, and some become Tibetan doctors. A number have also returned to Yushu to further expand and run the orpanage’s activities and education.

WildChina deeply thanks our friends, partners, and clients for their continued interest in helping those in need in Yushu, Qinghai province, which was recently hit by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake.

As we have received many emails from past clients and friends asking about the situation, we wanted to provide further on-the-ground news from Yushu.

Our Europe Team Director, Veronique d’Antras, has been at the forefront of WildChina’s efforts to help the people of Yushu. After coordinating a truckload of supplies to be sent to Yushu with Tashi, one of our Yushu partners and a Qinghai native, she hopes that it has arrived. The road from Xining to Yushu – a major route into the Yushu area – was damaged by the earthquake, and traffic has subsequently been delayed.

While there has been an incredible influx of volunteers into the region, there are a few setbacks that are making the distribution of aid more difficult. For one, areas outside of Yushu that were affected by the earthquake are incredibly remote, meaning that rural villagers are still in most need of aid. Furthermore, the Tibetan/Mandarin language barrier, altitude sickness, and cold weather, including snow and hail in the region, has slowed down volunteers. Because of the inclement weather, several aid trucks overturned on the road from Xining to Yushu. Several journalists noted that long lines were forming for food distribution.

A mass prayer ceremony for the victims was held by monks and others in Yushu on April 20th, following the cremation of around 1,000 bodies by the Yushu Tibetan monks on April 17th.

On a positive note, one of our Yushu partners, Samdeg, has been located. He was previously deemed unharmed, but was unreachable for a few days after the earthquake occurred. We are now working with him to set up WildChina tents to provide those in the region with temporary housing

Furthermore, Xinhua reports that post-quake reconstruction has been on the agenda. A reporter learned on Monday, April 19 from the Government of Qinghai Province that the overall objective of reconstruction will be building a high-altitude ecotourism city. (Source: Xinhua, April 19, 2010)

The Chinese government declared a nationwide period of mourning with flags at half mast on Wednesday afternoon, April 21st (Beijing time), to express condolences to earthquake victims. All public entertainment was put on hold. (Source: Guardian UK, April 20, 2010)