It
is early in the morning and we are heading to Jiuzhaigou Valley, a
nature reserve and national park in norther Sichuan, located on the
edge of the Tibetan Himalayan Plateau. It is 8 hours and a half on a
minibus and now i realize i haven't talked about driving in China,
that is, another extreme adventure. They literally have no rules here
and i really wonder if they ever learn them at the time they get
their driving licence or is also like this during their learning
period. Forget about traffic lights, pedestrian areas, stops,
directions etc etc. When you cross the road you will have to dodge
thousands of motorbikes (many of them carrying entire families),
bikes, cars, buses etc which will not stop for you unless they can
almost touch you. Add to this that they sound the horn for
everything. If they overtake, if a car is approaching them, if they
are approaching a car, if a car is going to incorporate on the road,
if they are going to stop, if they are going to turn and cannot see
much (and if they can it does not matter, they will still sound it),
for anything you can imagine, they will sound the horn and they are
so well trained, that they can sound it dozens of times in a second,
and this will happen every second minute (if you are lucky). Now
imagine 8 and a half hours through a local road, with a driver who
would never be allowed to take any type of vehicle here, hysterically
sounding the horn, smoking all the time and casting away demons
(actually he went one step further and he was literally vomiting his
entrails) while overtaking in a way that made my heart climb up to my
mouth.
To make it is possible because the scenery outside is
stunning. Going from subtropical-looking landscape, with misty hills,
big lakes and lush forest to the more dry high altitute, with
fast-flow very violent rivers, beautiful mountain ranges, sharp and
rocky, and small Tibetan villages with big statues and old city
walls. The forest is fantastic with reds, yellos, greens...an
explosion of colours all merging to create an incredible collage. A
bridge appears split into two halfs, i suppose result of the 2008
Earthquake that was quite devastating. We make a stop and i go to a
public toilet which is simply fantastic. There are no doors so you
can actually see everyone doing its “major business” and the
toilets are like the Turkish ones so you see a line of Chinese
squatting and doing their bussiness while smoking or checking their
mobile phone. AWESOME.
On the way to Jiuzhaigou
We
arrive and i cannot believe what i see: thousands and thousands of
people (later on i find out that the park receives more than 2
million visits a year and about 10 thousand people a day during the busiest period which is of course, now while i am there. When i
checked the website of the park there was no warning about this and
looked quite good and remote, well...i was wrong. The website also
said that people are not allowed to stay overninght in the park and
it is only if you go with a guide for a 3-day hiking trip that you
are allowed to. Of course there is no way to check this because
nobody speaks a single word of English, not even in the hostels or
tourist information center.
Next day we head to the entrance where
there is no information center (later we will find out that the
information center is inside the park, quite a few km up, does it
make any sense?) and of course no English so it gets a bit hard to
get the ticket since the woman does not want to understand that we
just want the entrance ticket and not the bus. These 10 thousand
people are going in massive groups, hopping on a bus which will take
them up to the top from where they can walk down or go back again by
bus, making stops to take photos. She finally understands we do not
want that and gives us only the entrance tickets and surprise
surprise, we are the only ones doing the hike up (to be precise there
was also a Chinese girl going alone which was a real
surprise)...
Going on the walking tracks becomes marvelous because
most of the time, there is not a single person. Actually, most of the
tracks are closed and we find out soon why. There is a carpet of
leaves and branches, fallen trees on the way and broken bridges which
cross the river. They are not taking care of any of the walking
tracks, which makes it more fun for us but, this is really disturbing
and i will explain why later.
The park is incredibly beautiful, where
the subtropical and temperate floristic zones meet with the Tibetan
Plateau. To enumerate the wonders of the park would be endless but it
goes something like this: beautiful forests of mountain conifers;
their karst land forms with breath-taking waterfalls such us Nuo Ri
Lang, the widest travertine topped waterfall in the world; the
wetlands sweeping through weeds, willows and cypresses; the most
stunning lakes i have ever seen, with incredible emerald, turquoise
and azure blue colors and where the red, yellow, green and brown
colors of the trees provide a magical reflexion on their surface; and
the small Tibetan villages scattered throughout the park. Then you
understand why it is considered China's top national park.
At
the top once again we see all these shops selling all type of stuff
you can imagine plus people offering to dress you up for the most
costly photo of your life. Thousands of people with their cameras
(some having two cameras, each of them more expensive than my flat),
their ipads, their smart phones, taking pictures incessantly and then
i think, Chinese people are incredible making business. Anywhere you
go it is about trading and selling stuff and they can make business
out of everything. From any shop to a guy who will try to find a
hostel for you on the street if you give him some money or someone
who will try to find you a way to sneak in a national park without
paying if you give him money (i know this from the Chinese guys who
were in Mount Emei). But this is already too much. It is a national
park and it is pure business. The entrance plus bus costs 220 yuans a
day (660 Kc, around 26 euros) which runs from 7 am to 6 pm. Multiply
this by 10 thousand people and you get 260 000 euros a day! I really
wonder what they do with it because you go on the website and in
their “Sustainable tourism and conservation” section they mention
some monitoring, reforestation blah blah. Well, of course i do not know
how much effort they put into it, how much money is alocated into
these things and how useful they are but at least i can feel a bit
skeptical, specially considering that one of the things they proudly
talk about in that section is their wooden walkways, which, if you
remember, are closed and pretty destroyed...I wonder where all that
money goes. They also write proudly about their Eco-tourism, which is: you pay much more for a 3-day trip with a guide. However, i suppose
you have to order that beforehand through the website or calling,
because nobody there speaks English and literally has no idea what
that is about. It was still worth coming here. I cannot hide my
disappointment about these things i mention, but the park is simply
amazing, a real natural wonder.
Mother nature is the best artist and
next to this, that view of Hong Kong from Victoria Peak becomes
nothing. If you ever go there, be ready to share it with thousands of
Chinese taking a thousand photos per minute, pushing you out of their
way if you are in between the camera and the thing they want to
capture. Be ready to see people looking like they are going to a
night club or for a regular walk on the street, including suits and
high heels. Do not forget to go into the towns as you step into one
of the other Chinese souls. I remember this one with their “stupa”,
a conmemorative monument housing sacred relics, and their large size
fixed “prayer wheels”, which pilgrims set in motion, going around
the building in a clockwise direction. I remember the beautiful
houses with their statues and people greeting you at the entrance.
They are such different coexisting worlds...
Stupa and the prayer wheels
So yeah, be aware that
you will pretty much anywhere have to share these natural wonders
with the expanding commercial development, that is, thousands of
Chinese. Forget about any independent, explorative travel because
China is were “mass travel” was invented, a country where
individualistic behaviour is not encouraged at all. They travel in
massive social groups, going where everyone else goes and at the same
time. China is cheap but if you want to visit these places, be
prepared to see your money disappear...
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