Mountain Trip 2: Tibetan Olympics

Sorry to all of my followers on the past two weeks of silence.  I have been either busy or in the mountains.  I just returned yesterday from my second trip into the Himalayan Mountains and Grasslands.

 Here is a picture of one of the nearby temples we visited.

Here is the largest of the temples.  It is undergoing a remodeling job.  All of the temple's roofs are painted in gold.  They are quite a site with the sun reflecting off of them.

 This was the closest we got to a shower.  It is great not having to care about what you look or smell like all week.

Later in the week we met up with a friend who took us to his uncle's nomadic home.  It was almost a two hour car ride and hike out to the remote location..

After arriving we climbed one of the nearby mountains to get a good look at the valley.  His uncle owned over a 1,000 yak, 1,000 sheep, and a 100 horses.  It was pretty cool seeing them all over the valley.

This is my trademark "Mountain Conquering TM" pose.

We arrived at the top just in time to watch the sun set over the rolling mountains.  It was indescribably beautiful.  So much so that we all wanted to try and hold it.  This picture pretty much describes my trip over here.  Beholding the Son.

Andrew wanted to pull off the action hero look.

After that we headed back down to the valley to enjoy a delicious meal and an evening of laying beside the fire talking with new friends.  Following this our hosts popped a tent up for us and we battled the cold night.  It doesn't matter what month you are up here.  When the sun goes down it gets pretty cold.

The next morning we had ourselves a little Tibetan Olympic Games.  The first event was wrestling.  A favorite of mine.

Andrew fighting for control while all watched with bated breath (I found out that there is a great controversy in the academic community over bated breath vs baited breath).

The next event was "River Jumping."  We just did it in a field marking the furthest jump in the dirt.

This event held the closest competition of all the events.

I was not one of the finalist.  Let's be real, my body is not designed to fly through the air.

 Wǒ de xiǎo péngyǒu (My little friends)

Due to time limitations we had to cut the games short and only do three events.  The final even was the 40 yard dash.

I am proud to say that USA took home gold in all three events.

This is me walking by faith across the Bái Hé (White River) neighbor to the famous Huáng Hé (Yellow River).

And this is me barely keeping my head above water.  I feel like both describe different parts of the "walk."

It was a great trip all around.  We were blessed with safety and the freedom to go where we needed to go.  The next few weeks I will be back in the big city.  Thanks for following.

Story Time

Now it is time for a few short stories from my first mountain trip. The beautiful and massive Himalayan Mountains were everything I thought they would be and more.  As I said before I spent my time between the elevations of 10 and 13 thousand feet.  However, besides the lack of oxygen I felt like I was at sea level because of all the mountains that towered above.  Later in the week we headed up to the grasslands...unbelievable.  There we rolling hills of grass in every direction as far as the eye could see.  I kept catching myself completely forget that I was 13,000 feet (2 1/2 miles!) above the ocean...then I tried to do physical activity and was quickly reminded once again.  Well here are a few short tails from the adventure.

This is a picture of me riding on the back of a locals motor bike.  I was the lucky one as I got to ride with just one other person.  My teammates on the other hand were three deep (these were no Harley's, more like dirt bikes)...I thought they were going to fall off or tip over.  It was kind of a surreal moment once we got going.  I couldn't believe I was where I was doing what I was doing.

Then I looked forward....then behind....then forward again.  This top picture is what I saw behind me...

AND this is what was ahead (hence the double take).  We were driving away from the utopia and into what looked like a clip from the movie Twister.  A long story made short the other guys somehow out ran us (even though they had 3 people on their bike) and my driver didn't know where we were going.  Now, I can communicate in English, Spanish, and Chinese...him? Nope, nope, aaaannnd NOPE.  So, as the large pieces of hail began to pound us I called and figured out where we were suppose to go.  Only a few painful minutes later we arrived and ran into our waiting tent.

The little town that we used as a base camp for our trips lay right on the road to one of the biggest tourist spots in China.  So, a few years back all of the stores were required to get matching signs that had both their Chinese and English names displayed.  Here are just a few of my favorites:

This one isn't too unusual but I still thought you guys may enjoy.

This baby was my second favorite!  I was too creeped out to actually look inside.

NO explanation or debate needed...the Gold Medal ladies and gentlemen.

We also did a good bit of mountain biking.  I think the longest was a little over 60 miles in about a day and a half.  Well, for some reason my rear tire went flat on two different rides (I'm sure it had nothing to do with the size of the rider) and on one occasion my only spare broke and I had to run my bike the last couple miles back with it on my shoulder.  The locals enjoyed though as I got a lot of laughs and honks (but no offers for a ride).

This was probably my favorite find of the trip.  I have already experienced some small things over here, (KFC experience) but this one "takes the cake" (Where does that expression even come from?  Respond if you know).  Anyways, everything over here is just a size or two smaller than you find in the states, including the people.  However, a motel that we stayed in one night provided complimentary toiletries...yay.  Inside a yellow box I found barbies toothpaste and soap.  There was hardly enough in the tube to brush once and I kept loosing the bar Tic Tac of soap under my finger nails.

Unfortunately, my last experience is picture less as my camera had already died.  It was on the way home that our 6 hour bus ride turned into 14 hours due to multiple landslides that blocked the road.  At one point we moved about 2 miles in 5 hours.  The best part?  The truck in front of us was carrying loads of honey comb boxes escorted by clouds of bees.  Bees?  Really?  Who writes this stuff?  And these were no normal bees, they were "Crazy Kamikaze Asian Bees" unset because their honey was being stolen.  Therefore the decision was to either stay inside the stationary 100 degree bus packed with half dressed sweaty people or battle the bees.  It didn't take long before I welcomed the swarming bees.  You have to just smile...

First Week in the Mountains

I recently returned from my first trip into the mountains.  It was a nine day trip that comprised of a lot of firsts.  Our base camp was in a town just under 10,000 feet, but we spent a lot of our time between 12,000 and 13,000.  Nothing in a range filled with 20,000 feet plus mountains.  I have many stories to follow in later posts, but this will be more of a picture dump.

Picture from the bus ride up

A temple we visited.  This was actually by far the smallest.

Countless prayer wheels

Just a cool two story bridge I crossed while biking

An early dynasty statue in front of the thickest standing gate left from the original Chinese dynasty.  It is pretty cool that it has lasted thousands of years, other parts of the wall have been rebuilt since the Japanese bombings of WWII.

The Yaks and sheep were king of both road and field

Who needs a Minivan?

Standing thousands of feet above a section of the Yellow River.

This little guy and his friends were blocking the road stopping each car to ask for cigarettes...little entrepreneurs.

Taller mountains in the distance (I'm already standing at over 11,000 feet).

Wearing my local clothing

Cool looking bridge

Riding through the plains on horseback

Like I said there are many stories to follow.