China

I got up early. Knowing that Alex didn’t have a good night sleep the day before, I didn’t wake him up. Waiting bored me so I decided to go down the hill to buy some dumplings.

Yesterday, I wanted to try the cable car, but today I had to cancel it because Alex woke up late. Thinking that his reading of comic books was very boring, I dragged him down the hill again to buy some ice creams. Ice creams here were effing good.

We checked out of the Zhilam Hostel and waited for the bus at the Princess Bridge. The bus came on time, but the Israeli guy Gal wasn’t. He must have been going to somewhere else. We had to leave him behind.

The bus reached the Tagong Grassland at 5 PM. We passed some places where there were clouds outside the small bus. I dozed off sometimes so couldn’t enjoy the view much.

Like in Kangding, we stayed in another dorm room, but with more people. The hostel was operated by a Tibetan family whose living room was shared with the guests, there was no curtain in the dorm room this time. So a guy heard of my Vietnamese talk with Alex. Then I learned that he spoke Vietnamese, too. He was a Vietnamese Danish guy. He was very nice and as old as the Israeli guy, 22 years of age. He said he was studying Chinese. He also knew how to speak many other languages. He understood Vietnamese, but couldn’t speak much. I joked with Alex that Vietnamese was no more our secret language here like in Kangding.

Even though I was tired, I still walked around to find some peanuts and stuff to hang clothes in the room.

We had dinner at a place with an English menu, and bought some Coke. We met the Gal and his gang here. They were so noisy that they ruined my mood to eat.

Was clueless if there would be a horse racing festival tomorrow. But I already told Alex that I didn’t wanna ride any animal. I won’t ever do it in my life, I guess.

P.s.: Tagong’s altitude is said to be from 3,700m.

In the hostel, I heard that there was no bus to Garzê aka Ganzi. After discussing, Alex chose to go to Litang instead.

And then he decided to trek the mountain behind the hostel. We headed downhill for some food like Chinese pizzas, then went up to begin our journey. I didn’t know that it would be so hard to hike up a mountain. I was so surprised by Alex’s health. He might look like a nerd, but he was indeed a sportsman. We made it to the top around noon. The feet were like stone in my mouth, but I felt so happy and proud of myself somehow.

I was wrong again to think that going down was easier. The damn shoes hurt my big toes too much that I felt nothing at my feet on the latter half of the journey. Somewhere along the line, I couldn’t stand no more and decided to walk barefoot despite Alex’s objection. What a relief! One hour of walking barefoot was a lot easier to me.

I intended to take the cable car in the afternoon, but because of my slow speed, we finished the hike too late, so I decided to delay the cable car visit until next morning.

Before dinner, I watched “The soloist part 2” movie with Alex. We wandered around after that, then hesitated but finally chose a rice restaurant. They served rice with spinach and tofu. We ate on the street, not even the sidewalk. People were staring at us, mostly at Alex, I guessed.

In the end, Alex’s destination moved from Litang to the Tagong because rumor had it that there would be a horse festival the day after tomorrow.

P.s.:
From zhilamhostel.com, I found out the mountain behind the Zhilam Hostel was called Bai Tu Kan. (updated on December 14, 2011.)