Monks, Nomads and the Tibetan Golden Worm

Heading further west, we considered taking the train directly through Lanzhou and on into Tibet. We have always wanted to visit this region of China as we have heard that the culture and scenary are spectacular. The problem is that as foreigners, we require another special permit over and above our regular chinese tourist visa to enter this province. It is not that difficult to obtain the permit, but the only way is to travel with a guided tour. Currently, foreigners are not allowed to move around Tibet on their own without a tour guide accompanying them at all times, and that includes any of the public buses (which means independant travel is essentially impossible). Since the prospect of being restricted to a guided tour did not seem very appealing (not to mention very expensive), we decided to turn south along the border of Tibet and head through Gansu and Sichuan provinces instead.

We quickly learned while travelling in this area that the province of Tibet is only a small part of what is commonly referred to as the much larger Tibetan Cultural Region. The historical kingdom of Tibet was actually made up of three distinct areas which spans several of the provinces in China. The first, called U-Tsang covers what you would normally refer to as the province of Tibet. The second, called Amdo Tibet, is to the north and encompasses most of Qinghai province and the far south-western part of Gansu province. The last is called Kham Tibet, which encompases the western half of Sichuan province.

Our first two destinations in the region were Xiahe and Langmusi - both of which are in the south western part of Gansu province, in the traditional prefecture of Amdo Tibet. Arriving in Xiahe by bus from Lanzhou was like being time warped into another country. The polluted haze in Lanzhou was replaced with clear blue skies, Chinese signs were now replaced by Tibetan writing, prayer flags were everywhere and the streets were packed with red robed monks and Tibetan pilgrims in traditional dress.

Xiahe is on the edge of the TIbetan plateau at an elevation of 3000m, and our first day there we were huffing going up stairs as we adjusted to the altitude. The town is centered around the Labrang monastery which is one of the main centers of study of Tibetan Buddhism - we were told there are 1800 monks studying here at any given time. The monastery is absolutely huge, and surrounded by a 3km perimeter of prayer wheels where hundreds of Tibetan pilgrims continually walked the circuit (for what seemed all day and night) prostrating themselves as they made their way around.

On our second day in Xiahe, we hired a car and driver for the day with some friends we met in town in order to try to explore some of the amazing countryside. We headed out to the Gainja grasslands where our driver dropped us off at a number of different sights including the 2000 year old Han-dynasty village of Bajiao and also the nearby Nekhang cave complex. Here we were guided by a monk with flashlight for about 20 minutes down shafts, ropes and ladders to two sacred Buddhist shrines deep in the mountain. While we lowered ourselves with ropes down steep slopes into the caves below, our fearless monk guide would just run down into the darkness ahead - I still have no idea how he didn't trip over his robe or slip. Maybe it was the special monk boots he was wearing made of sheep skin... mental note: need to get myself a pair of those for climbing.

On our way back we past through a village made of entirely mud-brick homes, and ran into a "construction crew' building a new house. Since we showed a lot of interest they invited us to take a closer look, and even get our hands dirty. Marie got right in there up on the wall... the walls were made by pounding dirt into moulds by hand.

Next we travelled farther south by bus to the small town of Langmusi. This town was smaller than any place we have been in so far in China, and had a real frontier Tibetan village feel. Home to a 14th century temple and monestary, monks wandered the streets along with the occasional herd of sheep or yaks causing traffic jams. The place is surrounded by 4000m+ peaks and made for a pretty spectacular couple days of hiking in the surrounding mountains.

Here we also decided to go on a three day horse trek, and homestay with a nomad family out in the grasslands. I would have to say that this trip has been the highlight of my stay in China so far. We stayed with our guide and his family who live a traditional life out in the surrounding grasslands raising yaks and sheep, along with 16 other families. All these families live a nomadic lifestyle, moving with their livestock every few months to different grazing pastures depending on the season.

Our guide picked us up in town on the morning of the first day with our two Tibetan horses, from where we rode about 6 hours into the surrounding mountains to the area where his family was camped. We stayed in his traditional yak hair tent with his wife for the next two days as we explored the surrounding countryside and REALLY experienced the nomadic lifestyle.

Our bed for the night was on a thin floormat, with a pile of blankets on top. Although the temperature dropped almost to freezing at night, the tent had a yak dung stove that was used for cooking and heating which kept things toasty. There are no trees at this elevation and the only source of fuel is dried yak dung (which there is LOTS!). Surprisingly, that shit burns hot! The food was also very simple, but all homemade by hand by our guide's wife. Dinner both nights was an amazing dish of homemade noodles (made from scratch), with re-hydrated yak meat (no fridges, or power out here) and vegetables. Marie even gave making the noodles a go which were made by flattening strips of dough and tearing chunks off by hand. Dessert was fresh, heated yak milk pasturized on our tents stove.

Dinner was always very late since the animals always had to be taken care of first. Every night around sunset, thousands of sheep and yak were brought back into camp from the surrounding hills and tied up. The sheep were corralled into fenced off areas to protect them from wolves during the night, while the yaks were each individually tied to stakes near the tents (we were told that they were big enough that the wolves would leave them alone!). If this sounds like a lot of work - it definitely was! The process took about two hours every night and was a chaotic combination of men on motorcycles, women in Tibetan dress running around hooting and hollering, and sheep and yak everywhere! Once all the animals were safely in camp, the yaks were milked (this was because the baby yaks didn't need milk at night), and then it was time to start making dinner (around 9pm). Our hosts were incredible and work amazingly hard literally from dusk until dawn. It was amazing to be a part of the daily activities - even though we were about as useful as a bump on a log. We mainly tried to stay out of the way while the work was going on, while scaring off a horse or two that was trying to trample its way through our tent during all the nightly chaos.

The second day out on the grasslands we rode on horseback another 4 hours (each way) to Huagaishen - where we climbed the last bit by foot to the 4200m summit and had spectacular views of the surrounding mountains and grasslands. By the time we got back to camp that day, we were really starting to get to know each of our horse's personalities. I have never actually rode a horse for this long before, and never in the wide open countryside where there are no trails. These are not your typical trail horses that just follow one another in a line, our mounts really needed to be guided in the direction we wanted to go. My horse was the biggest of the three and was clearly the boss - whenever he would get behind any of the others he would always have to gallop ahead to be in front again (we named him Black Lightning - partially because we couldn't pronounce his Chinese name). Marie's horse (Cho'ra), was well, slow. Most of the time he needed a bit of encouragement to keep going on up some of the steep climbs (on any given day we probably climbed about 1000m in elevation on horseback). Her horse would litterally stop sometimes, refuse to move, and even turn back to look at Marie as if to say "Seriously, you want me to keep going?". A little horse rump slapping thankfully kept the show moving - I personally think he was just being lazy and stubborn. Cho'ra was five years old... which might be a teenager in horse-years?

It was here on the grasslands that we were also introduced to the Tibetan Golden Worm. Every year around this time (May/June) we learned that literally everyone living in the mountainous regions of Tibet go in search of chongcao (pronounced something like Choong-tzoh). Literally every women from the camp we were staying in would head out to the mountains, and spend the day crawling on hands and knees in search of this elusive "worm". Chongcao demand across China is HUGE and is used in traditional chinese medicine to help with everything from back pain, to diabetes - one could call it the Chinese wonder-drug. For an interesting article from National Geographic on the golden worm, click here. To find chongcao is REALLY hard - all that shows above ground is a little brown sprout about an inch long. Once found - the earth is carefully dug up around the worm, and the whole thing removed from the ground. Once extracted chongcao looks like a bright yellow larva-esk worm, with a long brown unicorn protrusion from its head. It is actually the larva of a type of moth, which is infected with a fungus that devours the worm and grows a sprout up to the surface. Can't say that it looks very apealing, but it makes up a significant portion of these nomadic families yearly income and Chinese can't seem to get enough of it. We tried looking for some outselves that night, but even with the help of our guide we didn't find any. Not surprising since most of the expert local pickers would only find less than a dozen after a full day of searching.

All in all, it was a great authentic experience, but we were also quite glad to be back home. After riding for so long, we were both saddle sore and needed a bit of a break! I highly recommend the Tibetan Horse Trekking company here in Langmusi - everything was professionally run, the animals all seemed well cared for and the experience as authentic as I could have hoped for.

Click here for more pictures!