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

Sichuan trip part 2! (Chengdu to Moxigen and Hai luoguo )

(<--our hotel in Moxizhen... little did I know it would only get worse from here... they were supposed to have western toilets but only had squatters haha and the shower was a pipe from the wall with a hole in the middle of the floor)

(^^They attacked us as soon as we got
out of the bus, trying to get us to buy
near rotten fruit for way too much, haha,
i gave the little girl some candy
and she left me alone... until later that night when
she tried to sell me them again)

September 29, 2007

We woke up pretty about 730ish and then went down and had breakfast which consisted of some rice in warm water and spicy pickled cabbage and other things put in it. They also had some bread and hot milk... yum
We then left for our hotel in 磨西镇 (Moxizhen, i tried to find a map of it but i couldn't, i guess its just that small haha) about 9ish. The on the way there the roads started getting questionable, but nothing too bad. We stopped at a random restaurant in a little city called 天全 (Tianquan) but once again the food was unspicy and disappointing :o(. We then continued driving up and up and up into the mountains and stopped a few times at random bathroom places which are usually a small building that you go in that has a trough if you're lucky, if not its a tent with a hole in the ground, and you have to pay to use them, usually 5 mao or one kuai, so thats about 7 - 14 cents. Before we went in a huge tunnel ( i think the longest in asia ) we stopped to take pictures and we got some dried kiwi slices which were really good because that area is known for its kiwis. After more driving up and up we got to the hotel after 7 and were free to find out own food, but once again it just turned up to be unspicy :(. The city itself was kinda boring, mostly lots and lots of little shops that all have the same things, usually consisting of jewelry, yak horns or other things made from yak (meat, carvings from bones, hats from fur ect). It was interesting though because most of the people in the town were Tibetans and a lot of the shops had Tibetan things. So we just walked around after dinner and bought a few souvenirs and then went back to the hotel becuae we had to get up early tomorrow to go hiking for a bit at 海螺沟 (Hai luogou) Glacier Park.

here's a link again to a lot more pictures if you wanna see them
http://www.shanghaijim.smugmug.com/gallery/3603074#204939351


UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
here are pictures to see if you want to see them of this part of my trip! just click here