Day 6 Hiking on Sigunian Mountain (Mountain of the 4 sisters)

The first one is me feeding an apple to a horse on the wooden trail at Siguniangshan, and the second is the old man that was selling goat meat on a stick that was reallllly good, and the last one is the goat roasting behind the tibetan dancers that are at the bottom



October 3, 2007
Today we get up early and take a bus up to the start of the hiking trail to Siguniangshan. We had to rent rain boots because it rained a lot the past few days and it was all muddy and all I had was tennis shoes. So we all wore our rented nasty boots and walked down the 2000 meter wooden trail. It was really nice and it wasn't very cold out which was also nice and the weather was great. We basically just walked on this wooden trail for a while and then at the end of it is where the mud started and there was a LOOOOOT of it, and it was also mixed with equal parts of horse poop. So we walked through the mud for a while then got to a summit of some sort, but some people had harder times breathing and walking in the altitude so they had cans of oxygen for them. When we got there we had a picnic lunch which was kinda gross but it worked. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw smoke and walked towards it and surprise surprise there was meat on a stick!!! It was only 13 cents and sooooooo good I think I had 5 of them. After that me and a few people walked back and rested by a stream and got accosted by a woman trying to take pictures of us with Tibetan clothes who was hitting on me. Then we head back towards the hotel but stopped for some more meat on a stick where we rented the boots.

We got back to the hotel and had our dinner then we had a "surprise" for us afterwords. This was a kinda performance in a tent out front by the girls that worked at the hotel. There was lots of tibetan (and modern and lipsynced) singing and dancing which was fun and they were also roasting a goat (that we saw get killed a bit earlier) and some rabbits and chicken for us in the background while the sang. They also had everyone get up and join and had a few games and it was really fun.

After that we headed back to our hotel and played mahjong all night which was really fun... im starting to get the hang of it haha. and here is a video of a circle dance they did that they tried to get me to do but I didn't really want to haha.


here is a video of some of the dancers


here are pictures! mostly of the mountians

Day 5 Tibetan Jiaju village and lots and lots of high altitude driving on even worse roads (if thats possible)

The first picture is a random bathroom on the side of the road, the second is of normal road conditions for most of the trip, the third is a picture of the road and scenery from the bus, and the last is the yak butter milk tea

October 2, 2007
Today we get up and drive up the mountain to Jiaju Tibetan village which is basically just a small tibetan town that has been turned into a tourist attraction, but its still fun. We went to a house and looked around it and saw how the traditional houses are. Then after a bit of looking around they made us their traditional yak butter milk tea which tasted a bit like warm skim milk with barley and a lot of salt... yum... and they also gave us some little barley cakes to go with it. We didn't stay for very long though because we had to get a move on to Siguniang Moutains (Mt. Four Sisters) which was high up and far away. We left the village and headed to a Tibetan hotel for lunch which was ok but still not very spicy. It was fun at the end though because all the servers came in and sang and danced for us. After that we headed off our our trip of more and more and more terrible roads of getting stuck in the mud and having to stop and help other cars out of the mud so we can get by ect. ect. We also passed through so many small villages that looked like they may have never even seen a foreigner before.

I think the whole trip was about 9 hours and not one minute of it was on a paved road or anything so it was a nice 9 ours of crazy rocking back and forth on the bus. It was so bad you couldn't even do anything but talk or listen to music and deal with it. I heard form someone on the trip too that this was the most dangerous road in the world and I'm not surprised from how it looked from all the falling rocks and everything. The bridges too looked scary, like they would fall and collapse if we drove over them but they seemed to hold just fine.

After a long long long long time we got to our village which I think was about 11,000 feet above sea level and checked into our Tibetan hotel for 2 nights. It was a really tiny town and nothing really to do except hang out at the hotel cuz it was so late. Also it was realllllllly cold at night that high up and it was actually a little hard to breath cuz everything was a walk uphill. Also the hotel didn't have heat which was fun. And they had "western style toilets" which was basically a western toilet over a hole... so it didn't really work, but I wont get into that. Also the shower and the toilet leaked on the floor because the shower was kinda a stall with a floor but the drain in the shower just opened to the floor and kinda flooded the bathroom cuz the drain was on the other side... nice. Also you couldn't walk barefoot in the room because you would probably step on something and get a disease because they don't vacuum or clean. So the first night we just went to sleep because we were all tired from the rough trip and to get up early to go hiking on the mountains.
PICTURES!!!! click here, same as day 4 pictures, tibetan village, and danba
Pictures of Tibetan village and trip on the way to siguniang mountains and the mountains