Tibetan Villages of Danba Canyon - Part 2: Villages of Jiaju and Niega

Basing ourselves out of a Tibetan family guesthouse in Jiaju, we took two full days to properly explore the collection of unique villages along the canyons of Danba. After all it took us more than 16 hours of bus and minivan rides to reach this secluded Shangri-la, and it would be a shame to breeze through in 3 hours like the domestic Chinese tourists do.



Danba. The Kingdom of 1000 Watchtowers. One of the most beautiful villages in China by wide recognition among photographers. THIS was the primary reason for our mini-trip into the Eastern Tibetan Plateau. No other practically reachable destination in Western Sichuan, perhaps with the exception of Larung Gar, captivated my imagination like Danba.



Certainly there were other worthy destinations along our route. The road to Lhagang was famously scenic, and Mount Siguniang was a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right. But to me there's something wildly alluring about these whitewashed houses and mysterious watchtowers, and legends of an ancient matriarchal kingdom in these isolated canyons.



Until the 1950's this land had been virtually inaccessible from the outside world, a narrow basin surrounded by impassable mountains taller than the Swiss Alps. Even in this age of 21st Century highways a trip from Chengdu still easily takes 10 hours, before even taking into account frequent landslides in the monsoon season.



As we arrived in the dry season of November, many supposedly paved roads were still in an excavated and muddy state. The road from Lhagang was entirely torn up and rutted beginning from about 20km from Danba, and all the roads leading to the major villages were in no better state. Getting here wasn't easy at all. But we did arrive safely.



It was the authoritative Chinese National Geography magazine that voted Danba one of China's six most beautiful villages and towns. Except Danba isn't one village, but a number of geographically isolated villages scattered over five river gorges conjoined at the centre. While each village was no more than a few kilometers from the next, visiting all these villages turned out to be quite a challenge due to road conditions.



When we consulted our hostess Gema on visiting the four villages we set our sights on, she walked us up to the new government-funded viewing platform for a bird's eye view of the valley, her village of Jiaju and the roads leading to a neighboring village known as Niega.



"You can walk along this mountain road and reach Niega in a few hours," Gema pointed beyond a hilltop lined with 1000-year-old watchtowers, "then take a minivan on the way back." But all these dug-up roads was one big construction zone at the time, and ginormous dump trucks carrying rocks and construction material roamed these narrow switchbacks. I didn't want a strenuous hike with my wife still recovering from a flu, and at the end Gema pulled a few strings to find a private driver for us. That's how we met Jiangchu.



Jiangchu was some sort of relative to Gema, possibly a brother-in-law or cousin on her husband's side. Inheriting the same broad shoulders and tanned skin typical of the local Tibetans, Jiangchu operated another guesthouse about halfway between Jiaju and Niega. While his guesthouse was much harder to reach than Gema's, he did have one advantage -- a scrubby but reliable 8-seater microvan that occasionally carried tourists like us, as well as serving as a village bus for the local school children.



Cost of the private van seemed near exorbitant for the relatively short distances -- RMB 600 for roughly 60km of mountain roads over two full days. The 250km of winding alpine highways from Dartsedo to Danba cost us only RMB 700 in comparison, and the 160km from Songpan to Huanglong to Jiuzhaigou would cost us RMB 500. But this maze of treacherously narrow switchbacks were unnavigable to outsiders, and no sane taxi driver would take the risk of expensive undercarriage damages with 2-metre-diameter potholes. It was a monopoly, and we decided to bite the bullet.



With the luxury of a private van we quickly strategized our tour of four villages over two days, starting on Day 1 with a trip to one of the highest villages in the Danba Canyons, Suopo, known for its magnificent views over the canyon floor. By mid afternoon we would return to our home village of Jiaju for some exploration time.



Our Wuling microvan slowly climbed up the dusty switchbacks, navigating around massive potholes and dump trucks while managing to avoid falling off the unmarked cliffside. The village government had recently constructed several official viewing platforms, and Jiangchu stopped at each one, plus some unofficial ones, to find us the best spots for panoramas. Most of the photos in this article were taken under his escort.



Having a local guide -- and one able to converse in standard Chinese rather than the local Sichuanese dialect -- was instrumental in permitting us a rare glimpse into the daily lives of a minority tribe of Tibetans, found mainly in Danba and its surrounding areas and nowhere else. Tibetans in Tibet call these people outsiders, and there's even debate on whether these locals belong to Tibetans or the Qiang nationality, but that's another story.



This land of windswept canyons has always been the inhabited by the mysterious Gyalrong, a people culturally and linguistically different from the Khampa Tibetans we met in Lhagang and Dartsedo. I knew a little about the major branches of Tibetan ethnicity -- the U-tsang, Khampa and Amdo -- but prior to this trip I honestly hadn't heard of the Gyalrong people.



Our first impression of the Gyalrong was one of mystery and hostility, taken from our previous driver who spoke of a certain fear, or at least apprehension, about his safety on the road when passing through Gyalrong territory after dark. And these were words from a member of the supposedly fierce and powerful Khampa tribe!




But the Gyalrong people we met over the next three days were just as friendly as any others we've come across in any rural Chinese village. They're also the most Sinicized of all the groups of Tibetans we met along the way, starting with their apparent usage of Sichuanese as the language of choice, especially when greeting non-family members.


At the very top of Suopo village Jiangchu stopped the van in a local family's courtyard. "They will charge RMB 5 per head," Jiangchu advised ahead of the visit, "but the view is the best in the entire village." And he's right -- it turned out to be our best panorama of the Danba Canyons, overlooking a 400m drop to a narrow valley dotted with whitewashed houses and chimney-like watchtowers.



Across the canyon narrow footpaths zigzagged up the frighteningly steep mountainside to dizzying heights, where tiny hermitic huts suddenly appeared in the middle of nowhere. "These families escaped from the battles," Jiangchu referred to the civil war of the 1930's, "and have lived up there ever since." The deathly treacherous trail was their only connection to the outside world, and as Jiangchu surmised, "The elderly would never come down again."



Meanwhile the host family was busy milling their annual corn harvest into flour, for both cornbread and pig feed. The friendly hostess gave us a bunch of sweet round pears from her orchard for free, and we reciprocated by purchasing a few bottled drinks from the makeshift grocery store her daughter operated.



The elevation here at the top of Suopo was no more than 2400m -- still worrisome for us coming from sea level but a joke to most Tibetans. The next major town of Lhagang for instance stands at 3700m, even higher than the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. This is one of the lowest valleys in the entire Tibetan Plateau with its unique microclimate, resulting in a vastly different cultural landscape.



Instead of engaging in nomadic herding like most rural Tibetans, natives of Danba have for centuries converted their steep canyons into workable terraced fields for crops. And instead of wool-producing yaks, the locals breed the same domesticated yellow oxen as the Han Chinese do for tilling soil in their fields. Gema's family had one that kept eyeing us whenever we walked past the guesthouse entrance.



We had to be thankful for the free pears as we arrived too late for a proper lunch at Suopo village. Jiangchu parked the van outside Suopo Elementary School, still full of students at the time, and proceeded to look for a teahouse for refreshments.



This Gyalrong woman in traditional garb struck a conversation with Jiangchu and welcomed us into her home for snacks and tea. I would have never found this improvised teahouse by myself -- there was absolutely no signage aside from a handwritten advertisement on the exterior wall for flat tire repairs.



As unlikely as it seemed from the outside, this apparently was the communal teahouse where students and villagers would drop by for tea and cheap eats. Traditional Yak Butter Milk flowed as soon as we sat down at a table, and Jiangchu observed my wife's first sip of the salty beverage with amusement. I did enjoy the buttery smoothness in the tea, though I declined a second cup for concern of intestinal reactions.



Jiangchu politely left the last four Pork Baozi remaining in the kitchen to us, having nothing but Yak Butter Tea for himself. I think we paid for two cups of Yak Butter Tea and four Baozi with RMB 7, certainly one of our cheapest lunches anywhere in China. The portion left us slightly hungry though, and we filled up later in the afternoon with organic apples (RMB 3 for 500g!) we bought from a villager lady in Jiaju.



Opting for some private exploration time around Suopo village, we went for a stroll after lunch and asked Jiangchu to come fetch us along the main route towards Jiaju. When we saw his van again we were surprised to find the backseats overloaded with elementary school students. Our creative driver managed to squeeze out a few extra Yuan turning our chartered van into a school bus!



By mid afternoon we arrived back at our guesthouse in Jiaju. Jiangchu promised to return next morning and escort us to the villages of Zhonglu and Suopo, then carried on delivering his vanload of afterschool students along the potholed road towards Danba town.



For the rest of the afternoon we would explore the village of Jiaju by ourselves, hiking up to a restored watchtower by the village entrance then down to the next hamlet where a village party was taking place. We were surprised to find a nearly empty guesthouse upon our return, the 17 Beijingners having all departed and leaving the entire house to Gema's family and the two of us. My wife's cough wasn't getting any better as the evening was even colder than the first night, and we decided out of practicality to move to Danba town the next day.

Tibetan Villages of Danba Canyon - Part 1: Village Guesthouse

This was one of the most fascinating locales we've stayed at, in China or anywhere else.



For two nights we stayed with a Tibetan family of three generations, in a village guesthouse overlooking a precipitous canyon. And it's not just any village -- this was the charming but mysterious Danba, often voted one of the most beautiful villages in China and a tentative addition to China's list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.



Each morning we started with a breakfast of fresh steamed bread and grain porridge, toured the countryside during the day, came home to play with the children in the afternoon then dined on a feast originating from the family's own organically planted fields. To two city dwelling office workers, it was Shangri-la.



Yes this was still part of our 18-Day Circle Route around Chengdu. We took a detour to the easternmost section of the Tibetan Plateau and traveled through the ethnic minority regions of Western Sichuan. Out of all these ethnic villages and towns, Danba was THE number one objective. This place is legendary among domestic Chinese backpackers, and I wasn't going to pass it up.



Getting here wasn't straightforward -- it was an grueling 8-hour bus ride from Ya'an (or 9.5 hours from Chengdu!) to Dartsedo / Kangding, followed by another full day's bus or private taxi from Dartsedo to the county town of Danba. Then there's the murderously rough and narrow switchback path to arrive at the heart of the village. The breathtaking scenery on the road was definitely worth it (see our trip reports from Xinduqiao and Tagong), but it was still tough work.



Except pre-booking a room was even tougher! Many guesthouses didn't even have websites, and those that did wouldn't use email at all! This was in late 2014 and things may have changed, but we had to either call them in Chinese or connect thru a Chinese messaging app known as QQ. We opted for installing QQ on our Android phone and using it to confirm our arrival ... all in Chinese. In terms of inconvenience this guesthouse rivaled our fax request in Japanese to book a Minshuku in Gokayama, and even that was quite a few years ago.



Jiaju Gema's Guesthouse was definitely one of the best in Danba in terms of amenities and comfort -- you won't believe the trouble it took to secure a room equipped with not only a private washroom, but with a Western style seated toilet. Here the squat toilet is the norm in most houses, and the really rustic ones would have one Tibetan style toilet -- a shielded balcony with a hole in the floor attached to a round tube extending towards a fertilizer dump -- to be shared by family members and visitors alike. Our guesthouse did have an old Tibetan style toilet, though it's now somewhat of a relic.



Arriving on a 9-hour journey from Dartsedo we didn't arrive until almost 18:00, and I was seriously worried that we would miss suppertime. In my experience suppers are typically early in agrarian societies, but that was the wrong assumption on this night -- our contact person Gema had to ride down to the county town and fetch a group of visitors from Beijing who had trouble finding her village.



Gema, principal operator of the family guesthouse, was also a young mother of two boys AND a performer in the village's traditional dance troupe AND a Ph.D. in agriculture. Unlike their counterparts in mainstream Han Chinese culture or even mainstream Tibetan culture, the women of Danba have long enjoyed high status as a vestige of an ancient tribal society of matriarchs.



The family dwelling may seem several hundred years old to the untrained eye, but according to Gema it was rebuilt only 15 years ago on their ancestral parcel of land. Rebuilding such a house is a labor of love and sweat, each stone laid and mortared by hand and each wooden beam hand-carved and painstakingly painted in the most brilliant of colors.



Whitewashed stone walls, trapezoid-shaped window sills and owl-like horns protruding from the four corners of the rooftop -- it's impossible to misidentify an indigenous Danba Tibetan house. Climbing those tree trunk-hewn ladders took a fair bit of balance, but the view from the top was worthwhile.



A landscape of archaic stone houses and ancient watchtowers could be seen for miles, scattering along a deep gorge that plunged towards the raging rapids of the Dajinchuan River.



Small as the guesthouse may seem, I counted at least 8 guestrooms sleeping close to 20 visitors on our first night. Most of the clientele came from various outdoorsmen clubs throughout China; independent travelers were the minority, and foreigners were almost unheard of.



Most of the guestrooms were classic Tibetan style rooms with these flamboyantly hand-painted box beds sleeping four. My wife wondered why we didn't book one of these exotic rooms, though she quickly understood after seeing the squat toilet.



Ours was one of four western style rooms equipped with a soft bed, satellite TV and the rarely seen seated toilet. Amenities were almost on par with economy hotel rooms in any Chinese city except for the lack of air conditioning / heating. This was early November, and it was cold at night at 2100m above sea level.



Dinner and breakfast were all included ... where else would guests eat in a secluded village with no real restaurants in a 5km radius? Even lunch could be easily arranged for a nominal fee of RMB 20 or so per person, serving whatever seasonal dishes the host family would eat.



Our first dinner was a rowdy communal affair with 17 other guests -- 3 long tables with 6 guests sharing an 8 course meal, with us being the only non-domestic travelers. Gema came out in full Tibetan regalia to perform a traditional song, half in Gyalrong Tibetan and half in standard Chinese, and poured Qingke Wine for each of us. I remember much less about the food than the conversation with the Beijingner photographer sitting across from me. I probably had a few cups too much.



Next evening's dinner was served in the courtyard as we were the only guests left. The portion -- 6 courses plus a soup! -- was way more than the two of us could finish. The broth of bellflower roots and lard was excellent and the home-cured bacon was also memorable.



But the best course was actually the bowl of brown rice stir-fried with lard and spring onions. I actually felt bad about not finishing the lovingly roasted cornbread, but I barely touched them as I just couldn't resist finishing the rice.



The daily breakfast of porridge and spicy pickles was more Sichuanese than Tibetan. Total cost of a room and two meals was a cheap RMB 100 per person per night, one of the best bargains we found on our 18-day trip. I get the feeling prices will go way up though, if Danba becomes successful in its World Heritage bid.



The host family of six would gather for meals inside their kitchen only after the guests had their share. I visited this kitchen at least four or five times daily, fetching hot water for my wife who was fighting remnants of a flu. Naturally we took it easy on the sightseeing, opting to hang around the village more, playing with the children and just chilling.



Gema's two boys shared a small and grubby bedroom beneath the stairs. The 6-year-old was an expert at formulating paper airplanes of various shapes and designs, and the 3-year-old was the family cat's best friend and worst nightmare. For a good 10 minutes this innocent kid demonstrated how to peel open a cat's closed eye lids and forcing it into submission by pulling on its tail ... all without getting seriously scratched or bitten.



This was the only Mainland Chinese family I had seen with two young boys; even families with two girls were rare, courtesy of the ever-changing interpretations of the infamous One Child Policy. But apparently ethnic minorities parents are allowed two kids regardless of gender, and in rural villages rules may be even more lax.



Located in the small hamlet of Jiaju, this guesthouse turned out to be a decent base for exploring all the other villages in the canyons of Danba. We hired a private driver to deliver us through some extremely rutted roads to the villages of Niega, Zhonglu and Suopo over two days. These will be covered in the upcoming articles.

On Tibetan Roads - Part 2: Lhagang Lamasery to Danba Canyon

First full day on the Tibetan Plateau and we arrived at a town higher than Lhasa in elevation.

Not a smart move for two out-of-shape office workers living at sea level our entire lives. Within 24 hours we moved from an elevation of 500m at the Ancient Town of Shangli to 3700m at a small Tibetan settlement known as Lhagang / Tagong. Good thing we'd been taking Tibetan Rhodiola as a herbal remedy to combat altitude sickness.



But we hardly felt any effect from the altitude -- or perhaps we're just full of adrenaline, having finally arrived in ethnic Tibetan territory after a grueling 8-hour bus ride from Ya'an the previous day. There was something exotic in everything we saw, heard and smelled, and I was just happy that months of planning had paid off.



For foreigners like ourselves it takes a certain degree of luck to enter this pristinely beautiful region in the eastern Tibetan Plateau. This is Western Sichuan, a traditionally Tibetan annex in a primarily Han Chinese province. Political volatility can spark and travel restrictions can pop up any moment. We were careful to avoid the Tibetan New Year when political unrest tends to intensify, but even so we're never sure about our chance of arrival until we finally arrived.



Leading the way on this day was a most honest and dependable Tibetan driver, who went by the Chinese name of Gao as well as the Tibetan name of Abu. Finding a good private driver wasn't easy: all I could do was to randomly pick one out of a small list of drivers recommended by Chinese bloggers. We ended up hiring about five different private drivers on our trip, and Gao Shifu was among the two that I would recommend to fellow travelers.



Through 250km of winding mountain roads Gao Shifu would deliver us from the ethnic Tibetan town of Dartsedo / Kangding, over the saddle of Mount Zheduo to Xinduqiao, then up to Lhagang where we're stopping for a late lunch. In the afternoon we would journey north and settle into a village guesthouse overlooking the canyons of Danba for the next couple of nights.



Lhagang. Tagong. Whatever you call this dusty semi-nomadic settlement, it's probably been here since prehistoric times, arising out of practicality for herders of the surrounding steppes to congregate and trade their flocks. To this day it still exists as a market town for several nomadic clans nearby, even though times have changed and the caterpillar fungus has overtaken yaks as most valuable commodity.



Since time immemorial this has been the homeland of the Khampa, a distinct branch of Tibetans known for being fiercely independent from both Lhasa and Beijing throughout history. Hints of their ferocious warrior genes can still be spotted in the physique of the dagger-carrying males, but it's mostly the genuine warm smiles of the women that welcomed us.



One peculiar sight in town was the clever use of parabolic reflectors for heating water, which is especially important at such high altitudes where water takes much more effort to boil. Archimedes would be proud.



Gao Shifu took us to his favorite roadside restaurant, conveniently located on the townsquare opposite the Lamasery. The driver usually gets a small kickback from the business he brings, a practice we're fully aware of and accept as the local custom. Besides, prices here were definitely cheaper than in Chengdu.



These wild mushrooms were in season as we visited in late autumn. We ordered three dishes and a soup to share between the two of us plus Gao Shifu -- taking care of the driver's meals is another one of those unspoken rules of hiring a private vehicle in China. Though if the trip goes multiple days, drivers are often able to negotiate with the hotels / guesthouses to get his own room for free in exchange for bringing in business.



Seeing that the back of the restaurant doubled as a store for the local specialty of yak jerky, we decided to order some Red Braised Yak Meat for lunch. The meat wasn't as tough and fibrous as we expected, and carried a stronger beef flavor compared to the Albertan beef that we're used to in Canada. At RMB 50 (CAD$8.7) this heap of yak meat was already the most expensive dish of the day.



Under cloudless blue skies we wandered into the courtyard at one of the best known lamaseries outside of Tibet Proper. The 1300-year-old Lhagang Lamasery is not only a treasure house of medieval Tibetan art and fabled relics, but is also home to about 200 lamas and boarding students.



Khampas from all over the region arrived to worship in their most respectful and extravagant outfit of wooly Chuba. Out in the courtyard resident teenage lamas juggled to balance Buddhism studies versus tuning their old motorcycles or playing with apps on their phones. These are all facets of a fascinating culture to which we, and the Western world in general, have very limited exposure unfortunately.



Visitors are allowed to enter the heavily curtained sanctuary hall after taking off their shoes, and it's just unspoken that ladies should never wear anything too revealing ... not that anyone would in this cold climate. Photography seemed to be unallowed officially, but we saw a group of Chinese travelers asking the custodian for permission to take non-flash pictures and we simply followed suit. But it didn't matter -- the mystique inside was just impossible for me to capture on camera.



Venerated inside were 1000-year-old statues adorned with the most vivid colors and wrapped in gold leaves. The Sakyamuni statue is said to be an exact copy of the one inside Potala Palace, meaning that for the Khampa of the surrounding region a visit here is almost as effective as a long pilgrimage to Lhasa.



These images were taken exactly 2 weeks before the 2014 Kangding Earthquake. Little did we know at the time that the region would be devastated and some of the Lamasery's priceless murals and statues would be forever damaged. While Lhagang was quite close to the epicenter, luckily the area was so sparsely populated that only a handful of houses collapsed and casualties were few ... as far as Chinese earthquakes go.



North of the Lamasery the valley opens into wide alpine steppes and gentle rolling hills where Tibetan cowboys and their nomadic clans roam. Twice a year they would return in full Khampa attire for equestrian games and festivals in the shadow of the white Stupas. Herding is still the principal way of life in this eastern part of Kham territory.



It's a wild and romantic lifestyle, one that has enticed a few Westerners to forego material comfort and settle down in the nearby plateaus as modern day hermits. There's also the Khampa Café and Guesthouse in town which is owned by an American and her Tibetan husband. With a relatively mild climate (for the Tibetan Plateau!), close proximity to resupplying in Chengdu, less political hassles than in Tibet Proper and a unique and colorful tribal culture, I can see the appeal of moving here for a cheap retirement.



There's also the appeal of breathtaking sceneries in the shadow of the venerated Zhara Lhatse, better known by its Chinese name of Yala Snow Mountain. While its full Tibetan name roughly translates to Mountain of the Eastern White Yak, we did not encountered even a fully beige one through our travels.



From Lhagang we set out again in the northern direction towards Danba, passing by a peculiar rock formation known as the Stone Forest of Bamei at about the 50km mark. We did not stop for long periods anywhere as Gao Shifu was slightly anxious to arrive at Danba with a couple hours to spare before sundown. At the time we didn't know why.



We did make one more stop in Bamei when our van climbed over a 4000m mountain saddle with a sweeping panoramic view of these Khampa steppes. You won't find even sheep at this altitude -- stocky Tibetan steeds and wooly yaks are all the locals can breed in this extreme climate.



Closer to the county boundary of Danba we had a glimpse of the mountaineers' route into the holy mountain. Not to be confused with the Yala Peak of Nepal, the jagged crest of Yala Snow Mountain is extremely technical and I'm not aware if anyone has succeeded in reaching the summit.



As the afternoon wound down our driver became increasingly concerned about his safe return to Dartsedo that night. "We are different from the Han Chinese," warned Gao in the most serious tone, "Absolutely do not travel on these roads after dark." He recounted stories of 21st Century motorcycle bandits that echoed myths of Khampa warriors of old, their Tibetan daggers ready to prey upon anyone trespassing their ancestral land. So according to at least one Khampa this ancient land is still the lawless wild west of China, even in 2014.

"I'll be safe as long as I make it back to Lhagang before sundown," concluded Gao, "Just don't travel at night north of Lhagang."



We said goodbye to Gao Shifu soon after entering the canyons of Danba, transferring to a different van prearranged by Gao so that he could return safely to Lhagang in time. From here we still had to take the bumpy potholed ride to our guesthouse in the Village of Jiaju, which turned out to be another adventure in itself ...