Day 70 - Dege, Ganzi

30.09.09

I meet my driver as pre arranged at 7am and after about 15 mins am moved into another minibus which heads off out of town, stopping at a petrol station after about 5 mins. At the station I am moved into yet another car and for some reason I have a bad feeling about this journey, maybe it's just the fact that this third car doesn't have any Buddhist pictures or charms that must have been preventing the previous cars from crashing. All is well for the first 3 hours or so, and then we pull into Manigango, a rough half way point of the journey. It is here that the driver then says he is stopping and asks me for the fare to get here. I explain that I am going to Ganzi and will pay 65Y as pre arranged to get there, the driver doesn't accept this and wants 50Y for getting me here. Eventually the second driver catches up and they have a small dispute and he says he can't take me to Ganzi as his car is full already, he then makes a speedy get away leaving me with this driver and a small crowd who are watching the event like it's the latest episode of EastEnders. To my rescue comes a slightly older driver who I talked to briefly the day before and from what I can make out, he says that as the driver accepted me, he must get me to Ganzi. After around 20 mins of arguing, the driver eventually puts me on a regular bus from Manigango to Ganzi for 35Y and takes the rest of the 30Y as his fare, but he is not happy at all. My helper wears a cowboy hat and a black jacket and maybe it's because he just helped me out, but I think he is damn cool. An end to a sticky situation and I can't thank him enough, but he keeps saying it is all OK and then gets back to his work of trying to find people to take to his next destination. It's nothing to him, but for me the help meant so much.
Once in Ganzi I am determined to find somewhere to stay that has a shower, it's been about 5 days staying in places with nothing but a dodgy toilet and temperamental running water. I find a place near the bus station run by two women and after my bargaining for about 10 mins get it down to 50Y per night. I think the women find me amusing and my negotiation antics seem to be a hit. We sit down together and drink tea and have some sweets and then they even make me a massive dinner. It gets quite funny when the older one tries to set me up with younger one, saying I should take her back to the UK, I manage to avoid this situation, but next they both say they will come to the UK with me, especially after they ask how much a cleaner can earn there (20Y per day in Ganzi and what works out to be about 440Y[min. wage] in the UK)

Day 69 - Dege

29.09.09

I want to try and make it to Baiyu today and as it's quite near I get up late and make it to the bus station for 8am. This turns out to be a massive error as the buses have already left and after asking around it seems that I am stranded in Dege for another day. It also appears as though there are no buses going directly to Dege for some reason and so I will have to head back to Ganzi and go from there. My travel timings won't really allow this and so I decide to give the town a miss and head back to Ganzi tomorrow en route to Litang, booking in the first leg of the journey with a driver for 7am the next day.

Seeing as I am in town for another day, I take a long walk out and along the road east, which leads through a valley alongside a river. About an hour in, I get a sudden sense of adventure and decide to go off road and up into the mountains on the side of the road. Roaming past yaks rambling through bushes and having no idea where I am going apart from up, eventually leads me up to some terraced crop fields about half way up, which seem to come out of nowhere. A little further up and I run into a small village, where people look as shocked to see me as I am to see them. A path leads out of the village and ends up at a view point back over Dege where an elderly man gives me a surprised look and then an ear to ear grin and a big 'Tashi Dele (hello)'. For some reason I think it is a good idea to try and reach the peak and so continue up the path for a couple of hours which slowly starts to disappear, eventually common sense must of been dropped on my head by one of the eagles flying overhead as I realise that trying to climb the steep and scraggy paths with no climbing experience is just plain foolish... it takes about 3 hours to get back down to the bottom.

Day 68 - Ganzi, Dege

28.09.09

Steamed bun (Baozi) for breakfast and then a walk down to get my 6am minibus to the town of Dege which is about an 8 hour drive away and closer to the Tibetan border. On the way we will pass over the Tro La Pass which sits at a comfortable 5050m and through what should be some stunning scenery. I say my goodbyes to my French amis and then set off on with my joker driver in what turns out to be a ridiculous journey. The first port of call is a stop off at Manigango for about an hour of doing nothing, where people are supposed to have lunch, but in reality we just waiting for other vehicles so the journey can be done in a minibus pack. Next on the way up to the Tro La Pass, one of the minivans suffers a burst tyre and so we wait for about two hours for it to be changed. There is snow on the road up here, the scenery is stunning, the mountains around seem huge, and the air is very very thin. Lastly, I thought the journey a couple of days ago was a bit hairy, but the current driver is an absolute nutter. If the previous driver thought he was driving in Colin McRae Rally 2009, this driver actually thinks he is Colin McRae and forget about small ramp jumps, now I actually think he is trying to take off. It's an amazing ride, but when I get off in Dege, my body feels like it has had a beating.

Once in Dege, it takes me about an hour to find a hotel that will let me stay as most of them won't accept foreigners. (The one downside about travelling near the Tibet border are the constant police checkpoints on the roads and the suspicion surrounding foreign travellers.The police also have the accommodation on lock down and only allow foreigners to stay in certain places, so they can keep tabs on their movements, In both Ganzi and Dege, apart from the people I travel with, I haven't seen another foreign tourist once.) Next I take a visit to Bakong, which is probably the most important site in the Tibetan Buddhist world, if only surpassed by the Potala Palace in Lhasa.At Bakong, thousands of Buddhist scriptures are hand printed every day, by a diligent set of workers. It's corridors are lined with wooden printing blocks, that contain the complete history of Tibetan Buddhism and a copy of an important Hindhu Buddhist text which is the only one left in the world.