Warm with some sun - cool later
Another 6am get up (which now we were so far west, but everything is still based on Beijing time is more like 4am - ie very dark and cold). However today even I thought it was worth it to get out of Bamda at last and little was I to know this was going to be one of the best days of my life.
Not that you would expect that being confined to the open back of a jeep with suspect suspension over dirt track roads with nothing to sit upon but your rucksack could ever be a near highlight of a life, but this day I got my first view of the Himalayas, hunted rabbit, cheated death many times, witnessed the antics of two fine but crazy fellows who were our drivers, and best of all travelled at crazy speeds down one of the world's most amazing roads hugging rivers one minute before clinging onto mountain sides the next - awesome day.
Being on the open back of the jeep meant we got excellent views of all of the amazing scenery and before long we were descending hundreds of meters around about 20 hairpin bends with the jeep often being forced to reverse back and forth to get around.
Down and round and down and round until we reached the river which was swollen from heavy rain and was rapids most of the way, dirty brown with all the silt it was carrying.
The road hugged the side of the river for a while and in places was very narrow where the water had eaten away at the banks and washed part of the track away. Not that the drivers slowed down much.
As the valley opened out a little the drivers would occasionally pull over to the side and stop. We couldn't work out what they were doing to start with, but they had little rifles and would crouch down low and scuttle up a hill and then lay flat. They were hunting wild rabbit and took it very seriously, but were a bit hopeless eventually catching nothing. It was amusing to watch though and on the last stop they gave me a go. I was no better.
We passed through some little villages way out in the middle of nowhere with a few fields of pasture and a small herd of yaks, or these ones below which are probably half cow, half yak which are easier to domesticate.
Slowly we were gaining in altitude and the mountains to the south of us were getting higher and higher, until we saw some valleys with glaciers in them in the distance.
And then some mountains with snow capped peaks which got us excited.
We stopped for our packed lunch which we had bought from the restaurant in Bamda and the drivers boiled some water on a little kerosene stove for tea. I don't think we could have been happier munching on hard boiled eggs miles away from anyone else.
Soon after lunch we had made the 184km to Rawu where we had an hour and a half break.
Rawu is basically about 10 single storey wooden shacks either side of the road protected by some hills. The people here were fascinated by us but were very, very wary to come close. After half an hour of watching us from behind the corner of a building a little boy of around seven and his older sister came over to us waiting near the jeep.
They found the hair on our arms and legs amazing and rubbed their grubby little hands up my arm to see what it would feel like. The little girl pointed at my sunglasses which I passed to her, but it was a long time before she dared to put them on. I am sure she had never seen anything like them before and was so impressed she tried to steal them off me.
Unfortunately there was absolutely no way they were going to let us take their photo.
So is was back on the jeep and a perfect afternoon of driving and scenery of mountains, glaciers and later some lakes.
We had one pit stop for the drivers to haggle over buying some mushrooms where we saw this little boy with a buttermilk tea maker on his back, but he was very shy and hid behind the tree everytime he saw a camera.
We had one more stop to wash all the dust off the jeep in a stream, so we could arrive in Bomi in style and I snapped this picture of the trusty vehicle as we arrived about 6pm.
Later, as we were having dinner in a little restaurant, we were chatting to some of the locals in there trying to find a way to carry on our journey west. Our Chinese skills, by necessity and lots of repetition, had become reasonable for these conversations now, but one round faced little fellow seemed to be indicating that there was a huge landslide 80km further down the road and he kept pointing to the word, "Danger" in our phrase book. Oh well, we had come this far already, so we decided to carry on until we saw the landslide, if indeed it did exist, and see if there was a way around it and just hoped we wouldn't have to come all the way back.
After dinner we bumped into Christophe & Rory who'd had a dreadful ride the day before shut in the back of a truck with drums of chemicals and little to see through the tarpaulin sides. They were more than a little jealous of our cheap and scenic journey.
As we all went our different ways to bed Rory's last words were, "I hope you haven't used up all your good luck."
If only he had known what was to befall us...
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