Too High

Half way to Litung lies a small town, Kangding (pronounced Candy) with gushing rapids running right through the centre, neatly dividing it into two, and brightly coloured buddhas painted onto the mountainside above. Its here that China begins to really feel like Tibet – where green tea becomes ‘butter tea’ – a salty milky frothy drink which tastes like its fresh from the Yak - and where bright red cheeks give away the people’s true Tibetan mountain blood.

We stayed at the top of town, in a hostel where travellers congregate on their way into the highlands. Talk soon turned to the Litang horse festival, where we learned that there had been trouble earlier in the week. The festival is one of the few traditional meeting places for Tibetans from all over the Kahm region of Tibet (part of which is in China, and part in the Tibetan Autonomous Region); and for that reason the horse festival has been politicised by the Chinese ‘occupation’ as a rare chance for Tibetans to come together and voice their unhappiness. Consequently, the second day of the festival had been marked by political protest, soon descending into a stand off with the Chinese army; and then riots in which a Tibetan man was shot and killed by the military. Things had apparently calmed down, and the festival was still going, but it was to be the last ever horse festival of this kind that the Chinese would tolerate. We decided it was still worth the chance.

The next day we were up at the crack of dawn (she didn’t seem to mind - J) to begin what has to be one of the bumpiest, uncomfortable and yet stunning drives. Beautiful mountain countryside, ravines and waterfalls, dotted with grey brick Tibetan houses with multi-coloured windowsills. After a few hours, every bump in the road (and there were many) could be felt through the ancient bus seats, making the bus trip almost as much of an endurance test as climbing the mountain itself. We drove higher and higher, (the night before we’d been asked how high we’d been before; our response was, um, “is that a metaphorical question?”). We past a sign that said, scarily, 4600m . From a height of 2500 the previous night, we had climbed over two thousand metres in a matter of hours. I turned to Jonny, who was looking exceedingly pale. I feared the worst; travel sickness being one of the few minor ailments Jonny doesn’t suffer from.

Altitude sickness is a strange thing. If you’ve had it before it doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily get it again. And if you’re a super fit trekker accustomed to high altitude you can get it just as easily as someone who isn’t. Either way, at best its unpleasant, at worst it can be extremely serious. Jonny had suffered once before, in Peru; my only experience of altitude sickness had been a legendary New Years Day hangover in 1997, when I swore blind I had it (at 1400m), and passed out in the back of the car for the afternoon while the family went skiing.

An hour and a half later we were in Litung. Two hours later we found out there had been more arrests the previous day and two monks had been arrested for handing out political leaflets. Three hours later, we were both in a real state with extreme headaches and being violently sick. There was only one thing for it: we had to get down the mountain as soon as possible. Early next morning we found ourselves going back the way we came. Tibet and the horse festival had been screwed by China. And we had been screwed by Tibet.