By Jarek Buss

The Context

In summer 2018, having just finished grad school, I had one final hurdle to pass before joining the Foreign Service through the Pickering Fellowship: an internship at an embassy or consulate overseas. So, less than 48 hours after GW’s graduation ceremony on the national mall, I found myself on a plane to Chengdu, China. Kaylee and A stayed in Colorado for the summer to save money and so Kaylee could do online classes (we weren’t sure how far to trust our Chinese internet!). All of a sudden, I had time, freedom, and opportunity to travel.

Without Kaylee, though, I’ll admit travel lost most of its attractiveness. Once you’ve traveled the world with your best friend, going it alone just isn’t very interesting. There was one exception to this, however, due to the simple logic of “now or never:” Tibet.

I love mountains; Tibet has obvious appeal. It’s also difficult to get to, and Chengdu is a good staging point. So… I went for it.

Not the whole sha-bang. Tibet is huge and, again, difficult to get to. Access to the Tibetan Autonomous Region is strictly controlled; you need a special travel permit and an authorized tour guide. But, when China “liberated” Tibet in the 1950s, it partitioned parts of it off into other provinces. These areas are still geographically, historically, and ethnically part of Tibet, but usually without the travel restrictions. So for my one chance over a three-day weekend, I set my sights on the Yading Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province.

The Hike

Luckily, my fellow intern and roommate, Clayton, agreed to come along. We caught a one-hour flight from Chengdu early Saturday morning and landed at the Daocheng Airport, billed as the highest commercial airport in the world at 4400 m elevation (14,435 ft). From there we caught a bus to Daocheng (45 min) and then on to Riwa (another two hours). In Riwa we paid to enter the nature reserve, and took a special bus to the village outside the hiking area (another hour). Straightforward enough, though the parts of the road that were starting to crumble down the mountainside certainly caught my eye.

The final bus driver did not know our hotel, and so, of course, dropped us off at a random spot in the village. Two nice women, however, were more than happy to take us in, serve us food and yak butter tea, and make a few calls. The hotel soon sent someone to pick us up. Benefits of being a white, relatively handsome male in rural China…

After lunch, we set out for the first park of our trek. The trail is a loop around the tallest of three peaks, Chenresig (6032 m or 19,790 ft). The two other peaks, Jampelyang and Chane Dorje, both top out at 5958 m (19,547). Just one would be breathtaking, but all three…

Anyways, the trail has three basic sections. Part is paved, part is maintained dirt, and part is just earth beaten by Tibetan pilgrimages. That third part was our goal—the place beyond all the Chinese tourists, with peace and quiet in the wild, thin air.

For the first day, though, we covered the paved section. This gave us a little bit of time to adjust to the altitude, and saved us time on the next day (we bypassed the paved section in a bus). We also explored the spectacularly settled Chong Gu monastery, elevation 4000 m (13,123 ft).

After a night of fitful sleep (the elevation had my heart racing even at rest!), we set out for a strong day to cover the rest of the trail, a distance of around 10 miles ranging in elevation from 4000 to 4700 m (13,000 to 15,500 ft). It was do or die—if we didn’t make it all the way around in time, we wouldn’t be able to travel back to Daocheng that evening to catch our early morning flight the next day. We powered through, though, and made it back to the hotel by 4 in the afternoon, to the astonishment of the staff. For the details of the hike, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. If you want play-by-play instructions, I heartily recommend landofsnows.com (here), which gave me the info I needed to feel comfortable taking this on.

Leaving the maintained path behind was surreal. I’ll never forget how it felt to enter a space where the only sounds were the wind in the canyons and bells on a herd of yaks, after having been in a city of millions just the day before. It felt beautiful.

Hiking in the high altitude was unique. Climbing up to the highest point, a pass at 4700 m (15,500 ft), I could barely go 10 steps without being so winded I had to stop. But after only 10 seconds of catching my breath, I’d feel back to normal—not tired, not out of breath. 10 steps later though… such a weird feeling, going back and forth from “passing out” to “downright chipper” a couple times a minute. I guess you really do need oxygen.

The whole thing was spectacular, totally worth the effort. There was still some trash scattered along even the dirt track (my guess is that there’s quite a lag for a nomadic people adjusting to non-biodegradable plastic wrappings), which was a shame, but otherwise, everything I’d hoped for.

The Return

Getting back to Chengdu was a whole adventure in and of itself, far more difficult and exhausting than the hike. It’s not over till it’s over… Trouble started when we got back to Riwa, when instead of getting on a bus, we fell in with a Tibetan driver (I’d read about them online and thought it might be faster). We climbed into a car almost full of people… and sat around. We finally asked them if they knew what was going on, and it turns out, they’d already been sitting there for 3 hours. The driver kept telling them he had other customers who were almost there, whom he’d arranged with in advance. When we showed up, he claimed we were some of them. We started climbing out and threatened to leave immediately if the car didn’t get going, so they packed us in a new car and took off… to drive around town looking for more people to fill seats. Just at the moment when I was about to yell at the driver to let us out (I regretted that bus), he found some people and we hit the road for real.

Alas, t’was but the beginning. Once in Daocheng, the driver couldn’t find our hotel (reserved online). We had him call the hotel, but his Chinese wasn’t great and it took him forever to get us there. We did eventually make it, but then wished we hadn’t. The hotel was dingy and empty, and the staff were completely incompetent. They didn’t know we were coming, they didn’t have a room ready for us, nothing was clean, and they treated it all like a joke… we walked out. I hadn’t paid anything online, and they didn’t have my credit card info. So they yelled after us, but we never looked back.

In five minutes we’d found a great place for a whole $10 more per person. We at last settled in, getting comfortable, when Clayton realized he’d left his phone in the Tibetan driver’s car. With a prayer and some determination, we set out to follow our only lead: we saw where one of the other passengers had been dropped off, and we knew he had the driver’s number because he had arranged for a ride to the airport in the morning. So we asked at three different hotels after a “new guest in a black baseball cap,” with no success. At the fourth hotel, our guy was sitting outside smoking. Total miracle, prayer answered. A few phone calls later, Clayton got his phone back.

But wait, there’s more! At 6 in the morning the next day, our driver to the airport (new driver… we didn’t trust the old one to leave on time) was banging on our hotel door, asking why we weren’t downstairs yet. The answer was that he originally told us to meet him at 6:30, so… but no worries. Our bags were already packed and we were soon off. Once we were in the car, the driver told us not to tell other passengers how much we were paying for the trip—he was charging them more. Awkward.

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Finally, landed in Chengdu at last, all that was needed was a taxi back to the consulate. With a meter, the trip costs 40 RMB or less. Con artists targeted us at once, offering to take us there for 100 RMB. Over and over, I told them in Chinese, “use the meter or take a hike.” One guy finally grabbed us, “Ok, meter, meter.” We followed him out. As soon as we approached his car (not a real taxi), he said, “80 RMB!” He got an earful and we got in line at the taxi stand.

Taxi stands are easy, right? There’s a line of taxis, and when it’s your turn, you get in the next one and they take you wherever you want to go. Well, our guy refused to take us using the meter (“80 RMB for that destination!”), so we got out and went to the next one. That guy wouldn’t take us since he was second in line. Soon we were all yelling in Chinese, until the police came over and forced the first guy to use his meter. 36 RMB later, we arrived at home, satisfied with our hike but exasperated with Chinese transportation. There’s probably deep symbolism in our painful return to civilization… Maybe we should have stayed.