Day 168: Langmusi – Day 1
We tie-toed out of the hotel just after dawn, and walk down to the main street to catch a taxi to the bus station. The bus to Langmusi was the first of the day, and was already boarding when we arrived 15min before departure. After an easy 3.5 ride, we disembark at our final destination just before
Igor had arranged a 3-day horse trekking tour, with a 2-night homestay with a Tibetan nomad family through Langmusi Tibetan Horse Trekking. We met with Liyi, our English-speaking contact, at the tour company’s restaurant, the Black Tent Café. We had a good 2hrs to review the itinerary with her, finalize payment, repack and store our bags, and even grab some lunch before meeting our guide, Tchacy, at 1:30PM. We followed Tchacy to the other end of town where his horses were waiting. As he was loading our saddlebags, a German couple walked by and greeted us – apparently they had just returned from the same tour the day before. We asked them how they liked it, and they were very positive, ensuring us we would have a fantastic time, “As long as the weather stays nice.” They did warn us that they were exhausted afterwards, and spent the whole day in their hotel room after they got back. Since we knew there are no beds in the nomad’s tents and we would be sleeping on the ground, we prepared ourselves for a poor 2-nights sleep.
Heading down the empty streets of Xiahe early in the morning to catch our bus to Langmusi
We can’t afford to get sick, so when people coughing on the bus, we bust out our new face masks
We arrive in Langmusi in time for lunch. Our tour company owns the Black Tent Café, right across the street from the bus stop, so we grab some eggs sandwiches while we review the tour itinerary
The horses can’t carry a lot of weight, so we pack a few essentials into a saddlebag and lock our big bags in the tour company’s storage room (kinda sketchy location, behind the building in an auto shop – but whatever)
We have a short walk to the other end of town where our horses await
Lindsay is saddled up and ready to ride!
Igor’s horse munches on some grass as we prepare to head out – as we soon discover, all our horses are little fatties who would far rather stop and eat than carry us along the mountain trails
The horseback ride to the nomad’s tent was wonderful – just the three of us, meandering through the grassy mountains. We weren’t even following a trail half the time – our guide and his horses just seemed to know the way. We were miles from the nearest village and out of earshot of the road, so the ride was extremely peaceful – the only sound besides nature was our guide, who liked to sing Tibetan chants to himself. We observed over the next few days that we must be a devout Buddhist, as he constantly sang chants, and seemed to pray each morning.
Heading into the beautiful alpine grasslands outside Langmusi
We have a long ride to the White Dragon River that afternoon
Every now and then, Lindsay has a battle of wills with her horse, urging him to keep walking when he’d rather be eating grass
Rolling green hills, as far as the eye can see
Hundreds of sheep dot the grassland, but none of them belong to the family we are staying with
When we arrived at the nomad’s tent, no one was home. After unsaddling the horses, our guide motioned for us to enter the tent anyways (which upset their guard dog who barked his head off at us for the rest of the day). Clouds had rolled in during the afternoon and we were starting to get chilly, so we were happy to get out of the wind, especially when Tchacy started a fire in the stove. We noticed a pile of dirt in the corner of the tent, which Tchacy used as fuel to light the fire – on further inspection we realized this was a huge mound of dried yak poop! Surprisingly, it didn’t smell at all, even when it was burning. Hey! Waste not, want not.
Our hosts finally turned up about half an hour later. Even though there was a huge language barrier between us (our hosts only spoke Tibetan, and Tchacy only spoke Tibetan and Chinese), it was surprisingly comfortable. We learned quickly to ask only simple questions that required either “Yes & No” or number answers to Tchacy in Chinese using our offline Google Translate App – Tchacy would then translate to our hosts. Any questions that didn’t make it through the language barrier were easily laughed off on both sides as unimportant.
After a few hours of riding, we finally reach a hilltop near the White Dragon River where a black, yak-hair tent sit
Our host lights the stove, burning their traditional fuel – dried yak dung!
An afternoon snack of sugared yak yogurt! Later that evening, Lindsay helps crank the machine which separates the yak butter from the milk
Once our hosts started their evening chores, we got up to see if we could help. We joined the husband, Umatashi, round up the yaks from the hillside (we didn’t have to go far – it seems the yaks are conditioned to return to the tent every night), although our tour company advised us not to try and tie up the yaks ourselves, as they can be very skittish and hurt strangers. Once all the female yaks and their babies were tied down (for some reason the one male yak they owned remained untied – I guess he protects the herd at night?), Lindsay took the opportunity to ask where she should go to use the toilet. Our hostess, Lagay, smiled and waved her hand AROUND THE WHOLE HILL. Anywhere. Got it. Lindsay didn’t see any toilet paper littering the ground, so she deducted that had to be thrown in the trash bag inside the tent. NOTE: if hygiene is super important to you, we wouldn’t recommend this tour.
We never saw our hostess wash her hands before cooking, although she did insist that Lindsay rinse her hands before helping to make noodles later that night, so we assumed she must be cleaning her own hands as well when we weren’t watching. In any case, we never got food poisoning during nor immediately after the tour, so either everything was a lot cleaner than we thought, or yak dung doesn’t have that much bacteria.
Around sunset, our host beckons us to join him outside and help round up the yak herd for the night. Since no one speaks English, we’re not exactly sure how we can help – we figure walking behind him is good enough, as that seems to herd the yaks in the right general direction
The woman seriously does all the work around here – while the husband walks around “herding” the yaks, his wife runs around and single-handedly ties all 50+ yaks to the ropes stakes at the top of the hill outside the tent
Once the yaks are put away, our hostess, Lagay, prepares meat and potatoes for a stew dinner
Lagay invites Lindsay to help stretch dough into handmade noodles – after a few minutes of ripping and butchering the dough, Lindsay hands the mess back so our hostess could fix it.
Dinner was pretty late, around 9PM. After about an hour, our hosts made hand gestured for, “do you want to go to sleep?” As they prepared the sleeping mats and got out our sleeping bags, Lindsay and Igor headed outside to use the “toilet” one last time, hoping to prevent the need to climb over everyone in the middle of the night. As Lindsay squatted down to do her business, she started to freak out when she realized the male yak was following her! She begged Igor to stand in between the while she peed – as soon as she was done she ran back to the tent. Lindsay was disgusted when she saw the male yak walk over to her pee and started licking it up – GROSS. Igor was amused, “Hey! That’s what the lion in heat did in Africa too!”
We returned to the tent and crawled into our sleeping bags at the far end of the tent. “Thanks, Mommy!” we chimed as Lagay *literally* tucked us in. I wish I could say we slept well, but the first night was a bit of a nightmare, at least for Lindsay. A few minutes after turning out the light, it started to rain. The yak-hair tent is not waterproof, although there is a plastic lining protecting the half with the sleeping mats. Unfortunately, as Lindsay was all the way at the end of the tent, raindrops kept spraying her face throughout the night. And while Lindsay had taken to wearing earplugs to bed, Igor was constantly woken up by the barking dog.