Up early and waiting for the minibus to Litang. After being picked up the driver decided to pfaff around for half an hour sorting out one of his tires (they jacked the car and replaced the tires with all the passengers inside – but not as fast as an F1 pit stop). We got going eventually. The road was a little bumpy but not too bad. Would have been some nice scenery along the way but the weather was still being uncooperative. The young Israeli couple that were at the same hostel last night were very quiet. Sim asked them about their military service. They had been in intelligence and were not allowed to talk about it. We left it at that fearing that if they told us more they would have to kill us.

Arriving in Litang after 3 hours or so we checked into Peace Hotel which was a grubby little place down the road from the bus station. From our research we had been led to believe that there wouldn’t be anything better so we settled for it (When will we learn to check more than one spot ?!)

Litang, one of the highest cities in the world and an important place in Tibetan Buddhism (a couple of Lamas were born here – the Dali kind, not the ones with 4 legs), is described as one of the most atmospheric stops on the Sichuan-Tibet highway, ‘more Tibetan than tibet’ and a true treasure. It looked horrible. Construction causing chaos everywhere, pigs and yaks roaming the streets. Apparently atmospheric actually means poverty stricken dump that requires a 4×4 to safely commute down main street. Reports say it’s nice once you get out of town and into the hills but since it was still overcast, drizzly and freezing cold, that wasn’t going to happen for us. We wanted to move on, as far as we could which meant a bus to Kanding.

We immediately headed for the bus station to buy a ticket. When we eventually found the station turns out everyone was at lunch. We went to lunch ourselves at a smart looking Tibetan restaurant. Can’t say the food was that memorable. Back to the bus station we hung around the window until 2 people who appeared to work there arrived. One of them opened the window but then went and sat back down to carry on with washing her clothes in a bowl. Eventually the other one decided she felt like breaktime was over and seemed to come to the window. We were right at the front of the window but another woman immediately pushed in and ordered 4 tickets to somewhere. The ticket lady took 10 minutes to issue those 4 tickets I kid you not. I have never seen anyone work so slowly. First they all had to be given the official red stamp (nothing in china is official without some sort of red stamp on it) then she had to initial every one then count them all twice, then tear them off of the pad, fill in some other form, count them all again and pause every now and then to say something to her mate doing the washing. It was ridiculous. Then finally after the buyer had handed over her money, a monk tried to shove in front of us. Simon, fed up by now, promptly shoved him back out of the way. Think he was pretty surprised by this.

We eventually were told through the usual sign language that there were no tickets for tomorrows bus only for the day after. We could not bear the thought of staying in this cruddy looking town and went back to the hotel to ask Long life (the guy who runs the hotel) for advice.

We got chatting to a nice Israeli bunch that were on their way to Daocheng. They had come from Tagong and Danba which was where we were aiming for next. Even gave us a detailed map of the province and some advice to get off at XinduQiao instead of Kanding. We in turn recommended the hostel in Daocheng and the stone forest when they reached Kunming. It was a pleasant exchange.

Long life told us he could organize a ride in a minibus to XinduQiao the next morning for about £8 each which seamed reasonable. That organized we set of to go see the only sight in town, the tibetan buddhist monastery. It was a pleasant walk just outside town past interesting buildings and polite locals who all greeted us. A couple of cheeky kids dived into Simon’s pockets expecting sweets but were sorely disappointed to find nothing at all. [sim: I felt like swatting them – really annoying]

We reached the monastery, which was huge, in the drizzle, took a photo and took a slow walk back through the main part of town which turned out to be larger than we thought it was. Lots of monks around, on motorbikes too which always cracks me up for some reason. Tibetans swinging prayer wheels, and people working away fixing, making, cooking or selling things as usual. It was a nice enough afternoon walk but it was getting chilly (we were at 4000m after all) and we headed back to our hotels fly infested communal area for a hot chocolate.

We had dinner at Potala guest house which had gotten a lot of bad reviews but looked a lot better than the place we were in. Sim had a yak pie thing and I had cheese dumplings that were a bit odd in taste and texture (they come with a sort of condensed milk type dip) but were edible.

We retired to our room which thankfully had electric blankets though how they expect people to plug both blankets in when there is only one plug socket I don’t know. [sim: hehe. They didn’t expect me to have my own adapter – problem solved] We went to bed content in the knowledge that we had been to Litang and would be leaving the next day.

[Pictures: Useless bus station staff doing their laundry and the monastery complex entrance gate]

– Posted from my iPhone via Wifi