June 24 - Dartsedo (Kanding) to Trango (Luhuo)

We had another long day ahead of us travelling to Luhuo. I was already tired from the previous day's 8 hour trip, and it looked like we were in for another long day. The plan was to make it all the way to Kandze (Garze,) but the drive was just too long so we stopped in Luhuo.

I was surprised at how cold it was when we got up in the morning. The rain had stopped, the sky was clear and we could see our frosty breath as we waited outside the hotel to find a restaurant for breakfast. We chatted outside the hotel with two other Westerners who were traveling by bus. As it turned out they were two the only a small handful of Westerners that we would see on the entire trip. We found a tiny restaurant and had an excellent breakfast of sweet hot soy milk, sweet egg soup and sweet deep-fried dough (my kind of breakfast.)

As we resumed our trip we began to see the beautiful variety of landscape and architecture that characterizes the Tibetan countryside. the valleys had become wider now and the road almost always followed a river. The mountains, worn with age, were rounded and covered in an emerald green velvet carpet. Summer wildflowers of yellow, red, blue and white shimmered on the lush grass.

In the morning we saw a lot of tall stone houses. They were usually three stories and more or less a square shape with the top being slightly narrower than the bottom. The top floor always had a chunk missing, either on the corner or the middle, giving it a gap toothed look. This open area seemed to give people a place to hang laundry and perform other outdoor tasks. The bottom floor was often the "barn" where animals were kept. In general, these houses were enormous and spread widely apart, housing several generations of family members, .

The construction was of colored stone or brick with colorful window panes (red, yellow and blue) framed by a section of whitewashed brick. The lintels above the windows were painted with beautiful carved geometric designs. After lunch, we saw more houses in a low horizontal ranch-style, often made both of stone and long red painted logs.

As we drove on, the roads began to get rougher and the ride was often quite bumpy, creating a constant need to reposition the luggage in the back. It was constantly bouncing loose and bumping us on the head or landing in the backseat. As the trip progressed we became quite adept at strategically packing so that we had fewer of these problems.

There were often long stretches of road with huge trees on either side whose leafy tops formed long green archways filtering the sun and cooling the air. Depending on the time of day and the altitude we experienced quite remarkable changes in temperature. The morning cold gave way to a beautiful dry heat which gradually cooled again as we ascended to the high mountain passes (sometimes covered in snow.)

It becomes quite difficult to remember which passes we went over on what day. I believe that it was on this day when we ascended one of the more dramatic snow covered ones. The hightest point is always marked by multi-coloured prayer flages. At that spot, we all got out of the car to take pictures and shout "Ki ki, So so, Lha Gyalo" ("Ki ki, So so, Victory to the gods), the traditional cry that is sent up when once reaches the apex of the pass.

Charlene Reader (on the right in this picture) was quickly dubbed "the reference librarian" by the group in our car. She had brought several good guidebooks and maps and was always able to tell us the elevations of the passes we crossed and the towns where we stayed.

In the late afternoon the roads became quite rough (Rinpoche says never to say that a road is "bad" because roads are constructed from the very difficult labor of human hands) and the cold rain began again. It was getting dark by the time we reached Luhuo so we found a somewhat rougher but still decent hotel where we stayed the night. This was the first hotel whose bathrooms only offered squat toilets, but the water was hot so we could have refreshing showers before dropping exhausted into bed.