Day 6, 7 km

The trail from Luogu runs northwest along the Kegong River, past Xijiu (above) and then through the village of Kegong itself, where we were invited in for lunch by the son-in-law of Silang Zhuoma.

Silang Zhuoma’s family is Tibetan, yet looks and lives quite like any Naxi family in the region. Most of the houses up the Kegong valley are built in Naxi style, surrounded by rice paddies and cornfields. Villagers forage for medicinal herbs in the forests above; further up on the high pastures they run brown cows, not yaks.

We were provided with fresh pancakes of sticky rice, dipped in wild honey, plus a pickle of wild papaya and – the most Naxi element of all – very fatty, very fragrant bacon.

Sadly, no one we met in Kegong knew the way into the mountains and over to the Lancang River. They pointed us to the next village, promising that the people there were “mountain folk” and would be able to show us the way. That might have been so, if there had been anyone home in the next village other than a couple of women looking after little children. We could only establish rudimentary communication with these ladies, but they seemed confident enough we could follow either of two paths up to the pastures where the men were. It wasn’t quite as easy as that. Short of a guide, we found this empty building just outside the village, cleaned up the lower floor and settled in for a night on the very edge of the forest.

Happily, this Tibetan beer cooler had been left for our enjoyment.

Day 7, 10 km

Lao Yang gets more wrong directions. Beyond this old lady, we re-entered the primeval forest and hacked our way through for an hour or so before concluding that, once again, we were on the wrong track. We retraced our steps and looked for locals to consult. We could hear and occasionally glimpse people on the slopes above us, but call as we might no one came to our aid. It felt like we were being stalked through the forest. Finally, Yang Xiao clambered up to where a group of seven men and women were digging for medicinal roots. It took some time for them to warm up, but eventually two young fellows agreed to go with us – back to the village and up the next valley to the west.

It turned out we had been heading north into Deqin and back to where we were stopped last year; after lunch we finally found ourselves on a trail wide enough for men and mules, collecting young bamboo shoots for dinner along the way.

Trekking from an elevation of 2,350 meters to around 3,650 meters, it was a long afternoon – too long for Lao Yang.

We had to push on, however, as there was no space to camp in the forest. We followed a gully up to the ridge, where a freezing wind chased us across to this pasture, which locals call Lehuola.

The camp at Lehuola was surrounded by these delicate yellow azaleas.

Day 8, 17 km

Lao Yang and the mule team pass through a corridor of yellow azaleas on the morning trek from Lehuola to Ruashigu. The wildflowers on this day were the finest I have seen in seven years travelling through China. I’ll post a selection of flower pictures in a separate blog.

Just to put things in some historical perspective, these azaleas were photographed in 1929 by Joseph Rock.

Following the range west at about 4,000 meters above sea level, the carpet of flowers became still more diverse. From here, the path took an abrupt turn, plunging down into thick forest. Heavy rain on previous nights had turned the trail to mud, a particularly viscous version that sucked around boots, hooves and the twisting tree roots that criss-crossed the path. Every so often, the trail turned back up to wind around another ridge – still at around 3,500 meters above sea level, trudging through this gunge was the most exhausting experience of the journey so far. Our six mules had lost a total of seven shoes by the time we came to safe haven in the topmost house of Mimiya Village.

We were guided down by an 18-year-old Lisu man named Xiao Yu, who had spent three days on the mountain looking for medicinal roots. He set us up in a spare room of his grandmother’s house, which we used as a combined kitchen and dormitory.

Day 9, 13 km

Xiao Yu’s grandparents were helping raise three of his young relatives. Childcare has to be passed off to the older generation where possible, leaving younger people to do the labour in and around the village. Conditions in Mimiya are tough – the people here haven’t even cut terraces in the hillside; instead they farm the slopes and dig lead out of hillside mines.  

The village is awash in empty beer bottles. Xiao Yu said he didn’t know why, but the men of the village drink themselves stupid at any and every occasion. They may have fewer occasions in future, as the lead mining is being banned at the end of this year. The blasting scares the golden monkeys. 

Yang Xiao and Lao Li fix our long-suffering mules’ feet. There were another 13 kilometers to go before we reached the Lancang River just south of Kangpu.

Mimiya features a rare example of the Lisu people’s traditional long house. Several families live in this structure, in which all the rooms are connected such that people can freely walk in on their neighbours. The villagers said that few want to live this way any more – new houses were being built as individual family homes.

In Kangpu, the mules stayed with this old gentleman and his family. They maintain a stable, a throwback to the old days when this man ran with the caravans transporting tea and sugar from Weixi County Town along the Lancang River to Deqin. That business ended soon after the Revolution when the main road along the river was built. But his son went further afield in later years, taking mule teams from the Lancang valley to the Nu River and the Jinsha. The last of those caravans finished in the early 70s, since when none had been seen – before ours.

Day 10, 15 km

We crossed the Lancang River at Kangpu, only 20 kilometers as the crow flies from the Nu River to the west.

Our guide over the Biluo range was to have been this young Lisu man, Da Yu, seen here modelling a nice Nu-style shirt made by his wife, while Yang Xiao borrows his Lisu hua la biao bag, also made by Da Yu’s wife. The Lisu in this area are unusual in that men as well as women also wear colourful bags as part of their common attire. When he was 14 years old in the early 90s, Da Yu worked with the very last “official” caravans in China. There was a mule station in Gongshan County Town on the Nu River, from where supplies were carried seven days into the Dulong River valley, the most distant outpost of southwest China and the destination of next year’s Four Rivers Expedition (details of this to come soon). A family emergency called Da Yu back to town just after this photo, so he called a Naxi friend named He Yongxing to take us, instead.

At lunch in the village of Madi, Yang Xiao found this fine crossbow in the home of Li Zhongzhi (in the background), who is the village preacher. Most of the Lisu in this area are practising Protestant Christians, although the missionaries have been gone since the early 50s.

Our lead mule, Bai Li (which sounded like Billy whenever Lao Yang called him) ran a fever on the way up to Madi. He refused his lunch, but perked up soon after Lao Yang fed him some mule medicine.

I’d like to find the market where they sell these Che Guevara t-shirts. This young man didn’t know who El Che was, but he knew a cool shirt when he saw one.

We persuaded Li Zhongzhi to part with his crossbow, here carried by our replacement guide Lao He as we approach the end of this day’s trek. The Biluo range at this point is so steep up and down that there are very few spaces to camp.

Day 11, 16 km

This was the best we could find, a small clearing at the top of a gully where the Madi villagers let their cows graze. As with other sites we’ve used on the Biluo range, this one was home to a sizeable colony of leeches. Only Yang Xiao was bitten (he got rid of it before I could get a picture, blast him), but the mules weren’t so lucky…

Poor Billy had a bad night. One of the other mules broke his tether and ran all the way to the pass – Lao He followed him at 4 in the morning and brought him back in time for breakfast. Men like Lao He only seem to exist in the countryside. After getting no sleep at all, he still took us up and over the mountain, then turned around the next day and completed the entire return journey by teatime – a journey that had taken us two days, trekking from morning until early evening.

A brief shaft of morning light points the way to the top of Biluo. Soon after, the weather began to close in.

A mining road leads most of the way to the top.

Close to the pass, a relatively low 3,700 meters above sea level, the clouds filled with rain. Shortly afterwards, they began to drop it heavily on us, turning the path down to the Nu River into a mudslide. On a fine day, this would be a good path – far better than the one down to Mimiya, for example. But on this day even Lao He fell over. Twice.

By evening, however, the sun shone brightly on our final steps down to the Nu. Our journey ends here in the village of Laza.

From the pass at 3,700 meters, we had slipped/trekked to just 1,357 meters above sea level at riverside. Since beginning our expedition near Lianhe on the Tibetan plateau, we had walked 110 kilometers and, it seems, brought the first caravan across the Three Rivers for more than 30 years.