Day 170: Langmusi – Day 3
Before going to sleep the night before, Lindsay made Igor switch spots with her, as sleeping as the far end of the tent left her exposed to occasional raindrops. As a result, Lindsay slept *wonderfully* that night! Poor Igor, however, found the edge of the tent to be too cold, and had a second night of poor sleep. Regardless, when we saw our hostess get up at dawn to milk the yaks, we crawled after her to help shovel yak dung. Igor seemed to be making really good progress, finishing half of the yard during the hour that Lagay was milking. (Lindsay decided she was better taking a management position rather than taking the poop hands on) However, we were speechless when Lagay took the shovel back after finishing her final yak and rapidly cleaned the rest of the yard in under 5 minutes!
Since we had to catch a bus to Jiuzhaigou that afternoon, we had to cut our tour a bit short. The normal itinerary would have us return to Langmusi via the Jikehe Village, where we were supposed to stop for lunch. Instead, Tchacy led the horses directly to the highway, where we had to dismount and walk along the road for a good 15min before our pre-arranged taxi met up with us. It’s a shame, because up until we hit the highway, our final ride was fun and peaceful – the sun had come back out and we passed many other nomads who were busy cutting grass for their winter stock of hay. Walking the horses along the road was unnerving – there was barely any shoulder and we had to cross a one lane construction zone, all the while normal traffic (including semi-trucks!) was zipping by. We were relieved when our taxi arrived, although we felt bad that we had to bade a hurried farewell to Tchacy and his horses on the side of the road.
Rain, shine or foggy mist – Lagay is up with the dawn everyday to milk the yaks
Igor has real talent for shovelling shit
Igor took another try with the “pe” – while he doesn’t get the slingshot as far or as fast as Lagay yet, he succeeds in making (most) of the rocks fly in the right direction!
After finishing chores, we return to the tent where Lagay laddels up some egg & veggie soup for breakfast
Poor Tyet! The dog keeps sticking his head into the tent to see if anyone will come give him affection!
The sun finally starts to break through the clouds during our ride back across the plains to Langmusi
We returned to the Black Tent café where we collected our bags from the tour company’s locked shed, and settled into a booth by the window. After three days with nothing but the wild outdoors to use as a bathroom, even the squat toilet at the restaurant was a welcome luxury!
Since we were missing out on our final lunch in the traditional village, Liyi included a Chinese meal at the café for us, which was really nice. We had about an hour to kill before we had to catch our bus, so we had a chance to catch up on a few emails and repack our bags. A little after 3PM, we hailed a taxi (ended up being the same guy who picked us up on the highway – he must have been waiting outside for us) and showed him the Chinese directions Liyi had written on the back of our bus ticket.
Final lunch at the Black Tent Café before catching our bus to Jiuzhaigou. The bus doesn’t actually stop in town, but drives by the crossroad into Langmusi. Liyi had called the bus company the day before to buy our tickets and confirm that the bus driver knew to pull over on the side of the road to pick us up. We had our doubts, standing in the middle of nowhere with huge semi-trucks blaring their horns at us, but sure enough, a bus pulled over at 3:15PM and picked us up!
The bus ride took about 4 hours to reach the Jiuzhaigou area, where traffic started to pile up on the dozen or so hairpin turns down the mountainside. It took us over an hour to reach the bus station at the other side of the village, which looked more garishly lit, overdeveloped Las Vegas than a national park! As we slowly passed through the neon lights, our hearts sank as we realized we had finally encountered the real Chinese “mass tourism.”
After our bus finally let us off, we caught a taxi to our hotel for the next 5 nights: The Qianhe International Hotel. When Igor was originally booked our hotels (back in February! Everything had to be finalized before we even applied for our travel visa!), for some reason the Qianhe didn’t have availability the full 5 days, so we had a different hotel on our itinerary for the first night. We didn’t want to waste a day switching hotels, so we checked to see if the Qianhe had opened up – we were in luck! The price was several times the rate we had secured in February, but we decided the convenience was worth the last-minute price hike. While everything eventually worked out alright, the reception staff at the Qianhe were completely thrown for a loop when we tried to explain that we had 2 back-to-back reservations. Long story short: we were asked to check in twice, once today and again tomorrow morning – but we could keep our luggage in the room when we went to the park.
By the time we reached our room, we were utterly exhausted. We took showers and washed 3 days’ worth of yak dung off our clothes, before crashing.