Edward Pollard

OK, so I know this isn't really Greater Mekong, but it had nowhere else to go

Bhutan, September 2007

Surely I should be able to see the airport by now.  There had been heavy cloud cover since leaving Calcutta and it had come as quite a surprise when the plane dropped through the cloud and I realised we were heading up a narrow valley in western Bhutan.  The plane banked sharply, we’d pulled a u-turn in the middle of the valley and I was staring out the window directly down at the ground.  Heading back where we’d come from now, we were getting lower and lower.  And there was still no sign of an airport.  Then I saw it.  Off to the side.  We were heading in the right direction, sort of, but the runway was in a parallel valley, with a low ridge in-between. At the last moment the we took a dog-leg turn, the right wing seeming to brush a monastery and we were down.  He hit the brakes hard.   

The next five days were spent sitting in a conference room with some of the biggest names in Tiger conservation.  Outside the weather had settled in like a summer’s day in the Highlands.  The meeting was intense and unrelenting, but always stimulating.  And in the off hours there was always celeb-spotting to be done.  One colleague was chatting with Matt Dillon over breakfast, comparing notes on some of the less salubrious bars of Phnom Penh.  Another evening I ended up on a table with Sashi Thoroor.  I will admit that I’d never heard of him, but it turns out he was runner-up to be Secretary-general of the UN (who knew there was such a thing as runner-up).  Go on, look him up on Wikipedia.  He’s a diplomat, a writer, and quite the raconteur.  He kept the table rapt on topics ranging from a potted history of partition, to race relations in the UK, and Shelpa Shety.  But his real passion was cricket.  Here was a man who moved with world leaders, and has met everybody, and what was the thing that impressed Colin and I the most; he’d been interviewed by Aggers on Test Match Special.  We were in awe. 

After the meetings the sun finally came out, and a few of us took off down the road to see some of the country and see some birds.  And when I say down the road, I mean it.  There is basically only one road, a single lane strip that winds across the centre of the country.  The road winds along, clinging to the valley side, six foot tall roadside weed often blocking the view.  In this part of the world roadside weed really is that, weed.  Apparently they feed it to the pigs, those are some mellow hogs.  On several occasions we passed payer water-wheels.  A payer-wheel attached to a paddle in the course of a crashing stream.  The water drove the wheel around, transmitting the prayer across the valley.  Families stopped to bathe in the sacred water. 

In the valley bottoms the rice was just starting to mature.  They grow a unique variety of ‘red’ rice here, and the landscape was a patchwork of greens and rusty browns.  Like Tibetans the Bhutanese appear to love colour.  Doorways, eaves and the characteristic multi-panelled windows were all brilliant with complex patterns in primary colours.  The dark wood shingles contrasted with squares of vivid red chilli drying in the sun.  The further east we got, the more elaborate the decorations became.  The white-washed walls sported large murals; tigers, thunder-dragons, snow lions, and enormous anatomically correct, stupendously erect penises.  Like a group of giggling school-boys we instantly became aficionados in ‘nob art’.  Tittering we would point out particularly spectacular ones, paired either side of doorway, issuance arcing over the lintel.  Apparently they are to ward of demons, maybe it works because the evil spirits are too distracted and sniggering and showing them to their mates.     

Gradually one noticed that there is something faintly sinister about Bhutan.  It is still one of the few absolute monarchies in the world, and as long as you are Bhutanese that is great.  You can carry on just fine in your house that the law says must be of traditional design, in your traditional dress which looks rather like a fancy hotel bathrobe, but worn with long socks and patent leather shoes.  Not that you are allowed to wear anything else of course, that too is illegal.  Along with smoking.  As one looked out of the car window however one would see Indians and Nepalis picking apples, or breaking rocks with hammers.  They are essentially indentured labourers, and officially they do not exist.  The Bhutanese I spoke with seemed not to notice any of this, were happy and content with the status quo.  Maybe they’d been eating too much pork.

At the end of the road, after the grass, and nobs and the massive Punakah Dzong we parked by a river to look at a heron.  But not just any heron.  The White-bellied Heron, a big, impressive bird that also happens to be one of the rarest animals on the planet.  But I was more interested in what was wandering around its feet however, an Ibisbill.  Twenty years or so ago, when I was a real birder, not just journeyman hobbyist who’s more interested in seeing Hanuman, a photo of one of these weird looking birds appeared in a magazine.  This was the first ever photo of an Ibisbill.  The thing was near mythical, found only on the wildest, most remote Himalayan rivers.  I was hooked, like seeing the Gorillas on Life on Earth I knew that I had to see one.  In the fading evening light I was a happy man. 

Lao PDR, December 2004

Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic is an enigmatic place; the land of a million elephants, golden triangle, Air America, ‘the other theater’, more bombs dropped here in 2 days in 1968 than in over the entire western Europe between 1066 and 1666 (or something).  That’s about all most people know about the country.  Even the name is a mystery.  Does is rhyme with ‘house’ or ‘how’.

Vientiane is the sort of place that brings the whole gamut of clichéd adjectives out of travel writers, ‘sleepy’, ‘welcoming’, those sort of things, to which I would add small.  I was sitting outside my hotel gazing out over the Mekong (watch out, cliché alert), which here is a wide, lugubrious, greasy river, a far cry from the torrent I crossed in China three months ago, looking over to Thailand on the other bank.  The sun was setting behind the army barracks and forest of antennas that blast Thai culture into Lao.  It occurred to me that on the other bank was a small insignificant Thai town that nobody had ever heard of.  And it was bigger than the national capital I was sitting in. Vientiane is so small that when the expats go need groceries they get in their cars, drive over to Thailand to go to Tescos (and it really is Tescos too)

So yes, Lao is small.  And poor.  The population of Lao is about 5.5 million people, over 80% of whom are rural subsistence farmers.  In some classifications it is one of the 10 poorest countries in the world, alongside such marvels as Somalia, and Rwanda.  But it is a beautiful place, a land of forests and temples, the Mekong and the mountains.  The people really are very friendly and smiley and very laid back.  And it is a sleepy country, I don’t think it’s coincidence that the currency is called the Kip.  The Laotians have a wonderful phrase “Lao and Viet, like cat and dog”

I couldn’t get over how different it all was from Viet Nam.  The culture is so different.  I guess I should have known, but as per usual I’d done bugger all research before this trip.  Lao is very Thai.  The conclusion I came to is that Lao is to Thailand what Viet Nam is to China.  The food is kind of like Thai food, but not quite as good.  The culture is kind of like Thai culture, but not as intense.  The Buddhism is kind of like in Thailand,  but not as devout.  And as I read up on the history it all made sense.  It all boils down to history and Buddhism.  Lao and Cambodia have been invaded and dominated by the Thai for centuries.  The language is written in Sanskrit.  The Buddhism is Theravada school and the whole culture can be described as Indic.  The Annamite mountains shielded Viet Nam from a lot of this influence, and instead Viet Nam came to be colonised by China.  Viet Nam used to use a derivative of Chinese script and much as the Vietnamese hate to hear it their culture is very Chinese.  The Buddhism is of the Mahayana school like Japan, Korea, China and Tibet.

And I loved it.  I stayed in Vientiane for a couple of days.  Wandering around, eating good food and visiting temples.  There’s not a lot to do in Vientiane other than visit temples.  So after 2 days I travelled north to the former capital, Luang Prabang.  Somehow this place managed to escape the war damage and is now Lao’s major tourist attraction.  The old town is a World Heritage site because of its traditional town plan, French architecture, and most spectacularly, the temples.  There are lots of temples in Luang Prabang.  32 fabulous, red, gold, black temples with high roofs that sweep down low to the ground.  They are basically everywhere, on every block and street corner of the small town centre.  It is located on the east bank of the Mekong on a promontory formed at the confluence with another river.  The old town is maybe only 1 km long and 500 m wide.  Enough for 3 parallel streets and a maze of crossing alleys.  And also enough for at least 68 internet cafes interspersed with places selling “Traditional Lao food : Pizza” or “Luang Prabang Pizza. Lao Massage”.  And unusually enough I think there might have been a couple of places that sold banana pancakes too.

After the 20th temple and 583rd Buddha statue I was getting a little burnt out, and wondering what wat was that.  An expat I had spoken to told me that it was New Year for the Hmong and there was a festival going on just outside town.  It was also a love market.  So one foggy morning I jumped in a motorbike sidecar and headed out there.  The Hmong are an ethnic group that live in the mountains of Viet Nam, Lao and Thailand.  The are probably most well known now from Sapa, the backpackerville in northern Viet Nam, but there is also a sizable population in Lao.  The CIA had trained some of them up as a guerrilla force back in the 1960’s and since 1975 they have been pretty brutally repressed.  Many left Lao and oddly there’s now a large Hmong refugee community in Minnesota or somewhere equally unlikely.  Some that remained have been continuing a low level insurgency against the Lao government, and I was surprised to see such an open display of their culture.

The festival was taking place only 15 minutes drive out of town, but I was the only tourist there.  There were hundreds of people there; middle aged men in Soviet-chic suits, young lads in their best shell suits, and young girls in incredible day-glo and black, jingling traditional costumes, complete with hats that either had fluorescent baubles, or beads attached.  It was stunning.  As the sun broke through there was a riot of colour.  In one corner an old guy was playing a large phallic pipe and chasing the girls like some Hmong Benny Hill.  At the back was a row of booths where you could get your photo taken in front of a painting of dramatic landscape of mountains, waterfalls, cranes and tigers.  A romantic representation of a long gone southern Chinese landscape.  A couple of other popular things appeared to be bingo, and watching DVDs.  And when this got to be too much one could stop for a snack of noodles, or dried river weed, or grilled chicken’s feet.  Some of the young guys came up to chat with me and practice their English.  I tried to get some idea what was going on.  It was their New Year and people had come down from the hills, and from all around to see and be seen.  I never got an explanation as to why it was mainly the girls in traditional costume, but I was also told about the love market.  Which basically is an opportunity for boys to meet girls from other villages.

When they used to live in villages separated by many days walk, this was a traditional festival to make sure that there was some out breeding.  They gather in their finery, and court, and recite poetry to each other.  Rather like an Oxford ball really.  Except for the poetry thing.  I did see one session of poetry, that must have been terrifying.  A very nervous man was running through his best lines to his chosen one.  And they were surrounded by a crowd of about 40, all commenting on the quality of the poem and whether he was worthy.  No chance for courting in private here.

But the most important part of the love market was taking place in a large open space in between the photo-booths, DVDs and bingo.  Here long lines of people would form up.  Men and women facing each other about 1 ½ m apart.  They would eye each other up.  And then throw and orange back and forth.  And that was it.  Everybody loved it.  I was sure there was something more to it.  It didn’t appear particularly challenging.  An orange is not that hard to catch when lobbed at you from somebody standing 4 feet away.  But I was told it was a very important way of meeting people.  One of the lads I was talking with asked if I want to join in.  This of course was hilarious, and not only because I am such a crap fielder.  So I stood there for 10 minutes catching the orange.  I am not certain, but I think I am now engaged to a 17 year old Hmong girl.

NW Yunnan, China, September 2004

The Chinese mobile phone network continued to amaze me.  There was some confusion over which muleteer we were supposed to use, so the Chinese student who was accompanying us just got on his phone and called the office.  We thought we were in the middle of nowhere.  But that clearly no longer exists in north-west Yunnan.

700m below us was the Mekong, a brick-red, swirling, surging mass cutting through ‘moon river gorge’.  4,000 m above us in the clouds were the peaks of the Meilixuashan range.  Carry on further west and you drop down into the Salween valley, over another mountain range lie the head waters of the Irrawady.  Looking east back over the dry scrubby Mekong valley we could see the foot of Mt. Baima, a 5,800m peak that divides the Mekong from the upper Yangtze.  We were near the bottom of a 4,000 m (12,000 ft) deep valley at the heart of the Great Rivers World Heritage Site.  At the closest point these four rivers, whose watersheds are home to one in 10 of the world’s population, run within 55 miles of each other.

Since starting working with The Nature Conservancy in 2000 I’d heard about their China Program.  It had taken on mythic proportions.  Whilst things were tough in the Indonesia program, China went from strength to strength.  They were working on a huge scale, they had political support all the way to the top, they could raise more money than the Bush campaign, senior staff had famous movie stars for sons, this was the place to go.  While I was actually working for TNC I had no opportunity to go there, but since leaving I have made the most of my connections.  Last year I got a bargain trip to see whale sharks in Belize, this year I finally got to the Middle Kingdom.

We were waiting for mules to carry our bags the 15 miles or so over a high pass and down into the Yubeng valley.  This was the highlight of the trip.  Audrey, my travelling companion, had spent the summer working with the TNC team, and was spending the last couple of weeks travelling around seeing the field sites.  During the previous week we had been to the old town of Lijiang, the amazing red sandstone valley of Liming which kind of looks a little like a miniature Yosemite (with a hint of Kakadu), and Birong gorge with its limestone cliffs and beautiful old growth forest.  Audrey had been to these before, but had never been to Meili Snow Mountain.

We finally found some a couple of mules and a very friendly Tibetan mule driver, and started the long climb.  The trailhead was at about 2,600m above sea level and from what we could work out we had to climb up to 3,500m before descending steeply into Yubeng.  I have to admit that I was initially rather disappointed.  This was the flagship site, the one in all the pictures, but for the first hour or so, we trudged up some very unimpressive young pine forest.  I was stuck behind the mules who rapidly became less romantic.  Initially it was fun to be following the mules with their brightly coloured blankets and bells tinkling as they walk along.  But you know what, mules are stubborn.  They keep on stopping and holding up the traffic.  And they smell.

After a couple of hours we stopped for an early lunch.  This consisted of some nasty instant noodles, the first bad food I’d had in China, and more excitingly yak-butter tea.  Meili is on the edge of the Tibetan plateaux.  If you are looking on a map we were in the far northern bit of Yunnan Province, in the south-west of China.  Burma is only a couple of rivers away to the west, Sichuan to the east and Tibet a stone’s throw to the north and west.  We were in China proper, but it was a completely Tibetan area.  Not only is TNC working in an incredibly important area biologically, but the region is also home to 15 ethnic minorities.  We’d already spent time in Naxi areas with its hieroglyphic language and funky bat winged clothes, heard Lisu pipe music and even had a Muslim taxi driver wearing a hijab, but here was all Tibetan.  98% of the population in the conservation site is Tibetan, and that means yaks.  And yaks mean-yak butter tea.  I first heard of this stuff years ago after friends returned from hiking in the Himalaya.  It was infamous, the world’s most repulsive drink.  I had always imagined it as a kind of weak broth with lumps of yak lard floating in it.  And now I finally got to try it myself.  Call me a freak but I didn’t think it was too bad.  OK I’ll grant that I didn’t have to drink it 8 times a day for 5 weeks trekking up a frozen river in Zanskar, but it wasn’t that repulsive.  Basically it is just black tea with yak butter added as  a high-fat ‘creamer’.  The oddest thing about it is that the butter is salted, and so it is a slightly salty drink.  But not entirely unpalatable. 

The Tibetans are very attached to their yaks.  Unfortunately I did not manage to find out much about the culture, but I assume like in many places, livestock are a wealth store.  They are quite funky animals, big shaggy cows really.  But one odd thing I noticed was that all the other domestic animals looked like yaks.  The dogs looked like yaks, the goats looked like yaks, the cows looked like yaks, some of the horses looked like yaks.  The donkeys didn’t look like yaks.  They looked like donkeys.  I don’t know why this is.  Maybe that is the aesthetic, animals are only considered suitable if they look like yak. Or maybe it is the weather.  Only things that look like yaks can survive the winters.  Far and away the best yak story I heard was that earlier this year TNC took a group of Tibetans to Indonesia to see the conservation work there. When they got off the plane in Jakarta one of  the Tibetans turned to one the TNC guys and said “my yaks wouldn’t like this weather”.  Frankly I think that’s the best assessment of Jakarta I have ever heard.

Whilst we were sampling the yak butter tea the student (you know I never did learn his name) explained that this area had been logged in the 1960’s.  I guess the pine forest was just the secondary forest that was slowly regenerating, and a little further up the track it came to a dramatic end.  Just like that, in a clear line it was replaced by spectacular old growth spruce / fir forest.  This forest is huge.  I had heard that there was old growth forest in the TNC sites, but was not expecting this.  One hears about the huge trees of the Pacific north-west, but not of Yunnan.  Some were monsters pushing 2 m diameter at the base and a good 60 – 70 m tall.  I stumbled along craning my neck up at the trees which were not only big, but beautiful too.  Far more so than the forests of the Pacific north-west, or especially the huge boreal coniferous forests ringing the far north, these forest are diverse, very diverse.  The most diverse temperate ecosystem in the world.  There are thought to be nearly 15,000 species of plants, including 230 species of rhododendrons (a quarter of all species), and more than 40% of the herbs used in Chinese traditional medicine.   There are red pandas, snow leopards, wolves and rare cranes.   Sometimes birdwatching here reminded me more of birding in tropical rainforest than temperate forest.  There was just so much to look for and you get waves of mixed species flocks, something I have only ever seen in the tropics.

We continued to climb, since we had entered the old growth forest the place had some alive, birds twittered around us and squirrels scampered along the path.  The altitude had begun to have an effect now and we were trailing far behind the mules.   The path got steeper as it zig-zaged higher and higher.  Eventually the it began to ease, I turned a corner and faced a wall of colour.  A couple of things you really have to give to the Tibetans, they like bright colours, and the have a convenient habit of letting you know you have arrived somewhere by smothering it in prayer flags.  This tunnel of fluorescence marked the top of the climb.  The  20 cm x 20 cm squares of coloured cloth are coved in the Tibetan script of a prayer.  They believe that each time the flag flaps the prayer is transmitted on the wind.  Prayer flags, incense burners, stupas and temples are dotted all over this landscape, which is one of the most sacred in Tibetan Buddhism.

The main peak of the Meili range, Kawagebo (6,740m), is considered one of the five most important mountains Tibetan Buddhism.  It is seen as the embodiment of a god (an indication of the large amount of traditional pagan religion that influences Buddhism here) and every year pilgrims travel from 100s or 1000s of miles away to follow a 200 mile pilgrimage route that circumnavigates the mountain.  Last year was an especially auspicious year and it is estimated that over 30,000 pilgrims completed it, consequently earning many extra credits, or something.  We were well inside the main pilgrimage route, but on an additional pilgrimage path to a sacred waterfall.   A couple of days later we completed the trail to the waterfall.  The route was lined with flags, cairns, slates engraved with intricate Tibetan script, and at the end a beautifully painted hermitage.

I stooped down and walked through the prayer flag tunnel (Tibetans are a little shorter than me).  The trail flattened out and then started to drop away slightly.  I stopped to catch my breath, it was over 11,500 ft here, and glanced up to be greeted with a breathtaking view (if you excuse the pun).  Through a break in the trees, and framed in flags of green, blue, red and yellow was a range huge mountains.  Cloud covered the peaks, but it was still clear enough to see glaciers tumbling down into the forested valleys.  Directly in front of us, wreathed in cloud, was Miacimu peak, just over 6,000 m high and considered the female counterpart to Kawagebo.  1000 m below us we could see the village of Yubeng which consisted of a couple of small clusters of houses on either side of a roaring river (we could hear it from where we were standing).  The valley bottom around the villages was flat, verdant pasture, the crops of barley had just been harvested and were left to dry in the rafters.  Yaks, cows, pigs and other yak-like creatures were left to wander in the fields, eating the stubble and fertilizing the land for next year.  It was slightly reminiscent of a post-card view of Switzerland, but then you realise that the peaks in the alps are 3,000m above sea level.  Here they are 3,000m straight up from the valley floor.

The strong high-altitude sun beat down on us as we started the hard-on-the-knees decent.  On crossing the ridge from east-facing to west-facing the forest changed completely.  The towering spruces had been replaced by dense oak woods.  Gnarled, moss-covered and blanketed in strands of lichen it was the image of a deep dark forest.  And a couple of days later we were to see tracks of the big, bad wolf.

We spent several days in the idyllic village of Yubeng.  The Chinese government have decided that this area was the inspiration for Shangri-La (in a book written by somebody called Hilton, a curious hotel coincidence) and on the last morning you could understand why.  We had been spending the days doing treks to glacial lakes, the sacred waterfall and some incredible forest, but the weather had never quite cleared.  Then on the last morning the cloud lifted for a magical 30 minutes.  As it crept higher we couldn’t believe there was more mountain.  We’d been used to seeing the base of the glacier, but not sure how much higher the peak was.  A lot as it turns out.  Miacima peak was stunningly beautiful.  The botanist / explorer Joseph Rock, who was here in the 1920’s and 30’s described it thus :

The most glorious peak my eyes were ever privileged to see… like a castle of a dream, an ice palace of a fairy tale.