Tag: china

Terug naar Laos (2)

In de tuktuk naar het station van Vientiane wijst de chauffeur naar de lange rijen voor de tankstations. Hij schudt er zijn hoofd bij. Sommige hebben helemaal geen voorraad meer en zijn dicht. Een liter benzine kost nu 23.000 Kip (Laos’ munteenheid). Voorheen was dat rond de 10.000. De schaarste en prijsstijgingen begonnen na het uitbreken van de oorlog in Oekraïne.

Het is 20 kilometer rijden. Vreemde karakteristiek: in Laos liggen nieuwe bus- en treinstations verder van een stad dan het lokale vliegveld. Elders in de wereld is het omgekeerd. Luang Namtha, Oudomxay, Xayaboury, Xam Neua , Luang Prabang, Vientiane, Pakse – het geldt overal. Xiengkhuang is een uitzondering, daar spelen vliegveld en busstation gelijk.

De spoorlijn is afgelopen december geopend. Het is de eerste in Laos, aangelegd door China. Hij loopt van Kunming, hoofdstad van China’s provincie Yunnan, naar Vientiane. Hij moet op den duur via Thailand en Maleisië worden doorgetrokken naar Singapore. De treinen zouden nu van Vientiane naar Kunming moeten rijden. Maar door de aanhoudende Covid-reisrestricties in China gaan ze voorlopig niet verder dan de Chinees-Laotiaanse grens.

Het spoor wordt aangeprezen als een hogesnelheidslijn. In feite rijden over China’s moderne, wijdvertakte hsl-net drie categorieën treinen. G-treinen gaan 300+ km/u, D-treinen 200+ km/u en C-treinen net iets harder dan de NS. In Laos rijdt de laatste soort.

De Laotianen zijn blij met hun spoor, en trots op deze modernisering van hun land. De vraag naar tickets was al meteen groter dan het aanbod. Kort na ingebruikname werd daarom bovendien een ‘gewone’ oude trein aan de dienstregeling toegevoegd.

Bij aankomst op het station waan ik me in China door de rechtlijnigheid en grandioze schaal van stationsplein en –gebouw. Al zijn in China die pleinen kale steenvlaktes, en is er hier wat groen en staan er wat etensstalletjes. Binnen is de stationshal hier leeg, terwijl daar in China dan weer winkeltjes en eethuizen zijn. De elegante kromming in het hoge plafond geeft de hal wat Laotiaanse kleur. Als in China wordt mijn zakmes bij de veiligheidscontrole aan de ingang afgepakt.

De beschermende pakken van het personeel doen aan China in Covid-tijd denken. De jongen in mijn wagon rapporteert in het Chinees door een walkietalkie bij vertrek van ieder station dat de portieren goed dicht zitten. Ik zit in een tweedehands Chinees hard seat treinstel, schoon en goed onderhouden. Alles is me er vertrouwd – de donkergroene buitenkant, de lichtblauwe bekleding van de banken, de indeling met drie zitplaatsen aan de ene kant van het gangpad en twee aan de andere kant, de solide metalen bagagerekken. Als in China wordt streng gecontroleerd of bagage daar niet uitsteekt, en eruit zou kunnen vallen.

De Laotianen kennen de mores van Chinese treinpassagiers niet. Die lopen regelmatig heen en weer naar het eind van hun wagon om heet water te tappen voor hun thee of mie. De Laotianen blijven rustig zitten.

Deze ‘ouderwetse’ trein doet er drie uur over van Vientiane naar Luang Prabang, een uur langer dan de hsl. Maar het blijft een wonder in vergelijking met de tien uur in beslag nemende slingerende busritten van voorheen.

Ook in Luang Prabang is het station een eind buiten de stad. Maar voor de ingang staan minibussen van het spoorbedrijf te wachten die passagiers voor een schappelijk tarief naar hun bestemming in de stad brengen.

Twee jaar en twee maanden later dan ik had gedacht loop ik het erf van mijn vrienden weer op. Laotianen zijn geen uitgelaten types, doen niet aan omhelzingen. Maar ze zitten te wachten, hebben lunch klaargemaakt. Veel gelach, veel gepraat. Ongeloof dan toch hier te zijn.

2014 Preview

Hi to all!

Wishing you a happy and healthy new year.

My plans?

Awaiting publication of an article I wrote for Japanese Alpine News, detailing why I believe the new Mekong source I discovered last July together with Luciano Lepre has to be considered the river’s true source. What will reactions be?

I first introduced this source in a couple of blogs that you can find elsewhere on this page, posted between August 12 and 28, 2013.

Trips I am planning later in 2014:

In July will set out on a great China road trip. This will diagonally cut through China from the southwest (China/Laos border post at Mohan) to the northeast (China’s northernmost county of Mohe on the Russian border). Four weeks and 6,000 kilometers or so. From subtropical to Siberian latitude, crossing China’s main rivers: the Yangtze in the south, the Yellow River in the north. Public transport: battered mid-size buses, modern touring car models, the occasional high speed train. Always among the Chinese people – those still poor, those of the new middle class, those now rich. Small villages, huge cities. No better way to experience China.

Yunnan – Myanmar border trip

Will roughly follow this border, staying on the Chinese side. Starting in the south in the lands of the Wa – my current favorite tribe. Headhunters as late as the 1960’s they are now the kindest and most welcoming of people. Among other ethnic groups will be the Kachin, called Jingpo in China.

Of course there is the semi-independent (?) Wa State itself, across the border….. Accessible or not? That would be another trip.

These are exploratory trips. They will stay clear of places described in guidebooks. I believe real travel takes you to the unknown. By nature an exploratory trip does not have a fixed schedule. Just a fixed general idea.

In November I will guide a Yunnan tour. That is well researched already, but it is a tour I much like to do. It takes in the best, most interesting and most authentic places Yunnan has to offer. Ancient villages, hill tribe markets and natural beauty all are part of the itinerary.

If you wish to join any of these tours, send me an email: info@pieterneele.com.

A new Mekong source – the true one at last?

I started out with the tempting thought we were the first to visit both the Jifu and the Guosongmucha source. I wrote that all of the expeditions to the headwaters concentrated on one source, and one only (blog post of August 12). But re-reading publications on the search for the Mekong source I find conflicting accounts about this. It is possible Dr. Liu Shaochuang visited both places during his 1999 expedition. So maybe the idea was to good to be true.

But here is an even more tempting thought. We have discovered a ‘new’ source of the Mekong, previously visited nor identified by anyone. And in doing so we finally found the Mekong’s real source.

Hubris? Making a fool of myself? Possibly.

The fact though is that the Mekong’s source at the head of the Gaodepu, always refered to as the Jifu Shan source, is not on Jifu Shan (‘shan’ is Chinese for ‘mountain’).

See this picture first, taken from the valley of the Gaoshanxigu looking in a northerly direction. The mountain to the right (east) is Jifu Shan. But the Gaodepu’s source, and so the Mekong’s source, is on the norhteastern face of the mountain to the left. (On this photo that means on the back side of the mountain.)

The next two photos are taken in the valley of the Gaodepu looking in a southerly direction. Now Jifu Shan is to our left.

At this confluence the stream from the left is the bigger one. So that is the one we followed when hiking to the source. It turned out that it loops around the hill that can be seen ahead. At no point did we come across a stream from the left, i.e. a stream running down from Jifu Shan, feeding into the Gaodepu.

Behind the hill is the Tibetan ‘marker’ for the river source. But we found that small trickles of water flowed from higher up still. We followed these, and in doing so climbed the mountain to the right in the picture, until we reached the foot of the glacier.This is the source of the Gaodepu and of the Mekong. It is not on Jifu Shan, but on the mountain west of it.

Now to the claims of the ‘father’ of the Jifu Shan source, Dr. Liu Shaochuang. In 1999 he published the location of the Gaodepu’s source and contended it is the Mekong’s source. In ‘Geoinformation Science’, 1999, no. 2, he wrote:

‘The headwaters of Zayaqu are those of the Mekong River. The headwaters are in Jifu Shan 5552m (N33 45 35, E 94 41 12) which is on the boundary of Zhidoi County and Zadoi County. Water supply source to the headwaters is one of snow basins in Zhidoi County.’ (As quoted by Mr. Kitamura in Japanese Alpine News, Vol. 10, 2009).

Then in the March 2007 issue of ‘Geo-spatial Information Science’, page 54, he came up with different coordinates for the Gaodepu’s / Mekong’s source:

‘The Mekong originates from the foot of Mountain Jifu. The geographic position of the source of the Mekong is latitude 33 45 48 N and longitude 94 40 52 E, in which the elevation is 5.200 meter, on the boundary of Zaduo County and Zhiduo County, Qinghai, China.’

The change in coordinates may seem minor. But it means shifting the source from Jifu Shan to the mountain to the west of it. This is easily visible on Google Earth. And it corresponds with  our own observations: the source is on the mountain to the west of Jifu Shan. Our GPS readings for the source: 33 45 677 N and 94 40 562 E. We were using a slightly different ‘decimal’ unit for the last digits, but this is quite close to the 2007 source of Liu. However, our source is located at an altitude of 5.374 meters (GPS measured), so no less than 174 meters higher than Liu’s, at the foot of the glacier where ice melts and starts to flow. So I regard our source on the mountain to the west of Jifu Shan as a more valid Mekong source than Liu’s. It is important to know also that Liu himself has not visited this source west of Jifu Shan, his claim is the result of the study of satellite images.

(By the way, Liu erroneously repeats in 2007 that the source is straddling the boundary between Zaduo and Zhiduo, which is also the divide between the Mekong and the Yangtse basin. Jifu Shan and his original source location are indeed on this divide. But the mountain to the west is not, it is inside the Mekong basin. (See the first photo above.))

Those that favour Guosongmucha above Jifu as the source of the Mekong have come up with  arguments to discredit Jifu. I would like to discredit some of these attempts to discredit.

According to Zhou Changjin and Guan Zhihua the Jifu source is less valid than Guosongmucha because the larger part of Jifu’s glacier is located in the Yangtse basin, a smaller part in the Mekong basin. With the new source west of Jifu, and inside the Mekong basin this becomes an irrelevant remark. Furthermore they ‘accuse’ the Jifu / Gaodepu stream of seasonal changes. However, there is nothing seasonal about the glacial source west of Jifu: it will not run dry at any point of year.

Wong How Man in a newspaper article with dateline Taipei, July 11, 2007 calls Jifu a ‘wetland source’ as opposed to the ‘glacial source’ of Guosongmucha, maybe suggesting a glacial source has to be taken more seriously. As seen however: the source west of Jifu is glacial too, located 400 meters higher than the wetland. In the same article he levels against the Jifu / Gaodepu stream that it is only longer than the Guosongmucha / Gaoshanxigu stream because it does a lot of meandering. The Gaoshanxigu doesn’t, ‘it seemed to be because (it) has a much larger flow thus creating a much larger riverbed and allowing the river to flow in a straight line.’ And he suggests ‘a scenario that if it were to have a smaller flow, the river would meander much more, making it longer.’ First I have to dispute the Gaoshanxigu doesn’t meander because of its larger flow. It doesn’t meander because it is mostly hemmed in by somewhat elevated banks. Second meandering is not only influenced by speed and volume of a water flow, but also by factors as softness of terrain. The meandering of the Gaodepu takes place in a relatively short stretch. After coming down from the mountain it flows rather straight through a rocky river bed, then for a couple of kilometers meanders through soft wetland, then for more than half the distance between source and Yeyongsong confluence flows straight again through a hard rocky bed.

Note that despite everything Wong has to say about the Gaodepu and Jifu Shan, he has visited neither. 

In 2009 two teams announced their intent go on an expedition to the Mekong headwaters. I don’t know if these have indeed taken place. I have found no record of their results. I can’t exclude the possibility they have come up with findings similar to ours. I readily concede of course if anyone shows proof in the shape of photos or GPS tracks they discovered the source on the mountain west of Jifu before we did.

If they do, my tempting thought of having discovered a ‘new’ Mekong source, and even finally the true Mekong source, was to good to be true.

But it will not take away the immense satisfaction of having found this source by ourselves, not by viewing satellite images, but by actually exploring on the ground, following a stream, climbing a mountain and ending up at the foot of a glacier where ice melts and Mekong water starts to flow.

Mekong expedition – July 15 and after

We drive to Zaduo, then Yushu, then Serxu where we rest in the monastery guesthouse, do laundry, eat well, watch photos, make notes. Then to Garze from where we go our own ways.

Last month at the bus station of Kangding I saw there is a direct bus to Xichang along a route that I don’t know, and from there other unknown bus routes lead into Yunnan and will get me to Kunming, ‘base camp’ for seven years now.

Mekong expedition – July 13

All this week I don’t think of my mother, brother, sister. Not of my father. Not of lovers past and present. Not of friends. Not of  Bach or Rush. Not of favorite books. Not of sports results. Not of  health worries that I am prone to. Not of upcoming trips. I think of nobody, of nothing that constitutes life for me normally. And I am not even aware I don’t think of them.

There is just this focus. Where to put my feet? Enough food in our day packs? When Luciano is ahead making sure I stay close; when I am ahead looking around to see if he stays close. What is the weather going to do? How to stay safe from nomads’ guard dogs? And if not these questions, I feel my feet hurting.

We walk.

We reach the source at Guosongmucha. Located lower than Jifu, and the tributary flowing from here is a bit shorter than the Gaodepu that starts at Jifu. But it is more dramatic, its glaciers are more impressive and more water is running more forceful here.

Mekong expedition – July 12

We walk. We follow the Gaodepu and aim for its head below Mount Jifu: the source of the Mekong.

We make our way through a wetland, finding our footing on hummocks. It isn’t difficult, just tiring after a while.

Further up the ground becomes more solid, consisting of stones and pebbles.

Impatience.

We pass the spot where I turned around last year. After I got home, it seemed on Google Earth to be 140 meters or so away from where the river starts. Indeed a little further on we get to this Tibetan style marker of the Mekong’s source. Source?

Disappointment. No glacier, no spring, no pool where water flows from. Instead the lower part of a rocky slope. Here and there tiny streams can still be seen trickling down between the stones. We move higher up and find a first patch of melting ice, and yet higher up a second patch. Feels more like it. We shoot our source pictures. But now we see the edge of the glacier, high above us still. Luciano hesitates: ‘That is at least another hour’. But I can’t turn around now. We start climbing again. Soon it is my turn to hesitate. I feel uneasy on this steep slope of loose stones, slip a few times.

‘Look for bigger stones and keep walking’, says Luciano. That’s what I do. From then on I am not aware of anything.

I am sitting at the foot of the glacier. I think the final climb has taken me five minutes. I remember nothing. Luciano says it has been about forty, with several short breaks.

My GPS reads N 33.45.677, E 94.40.562, altitude 5.374 meters. This is the highest source of the Mekong at the head of its longest branch.

Joy.

Weather has been good to us today. Hail and rain when we descend, but mild this time. My shoes leak, I didn’t  use them in wet conditions for a year.

Mekongexpeditie – 13 juli

De hele trip denk ik niet aan mijn moeder, broer of zus. Niet aan mijn vader. Niet aan vriendinnen van vroeger of nu. Niet aan andere vrienden. Niet aan Bach of Rush. Niet aan favoriete boeken. Niet aan sportuitslagen. Niet aan kwalen en ziektes waarover ik me makkelijk en nodeloos zorgen maak. Niet aan komende reizen. Ik denk aan niemand, en aan geen van de dingen die normaal mijn leven bepalen. En ik ben me niet eens bewust dat ik daar allemaal niet aan denk.

Alleen maar die focus. Waar zet ik mijn voeten? Genoeg eten in onze dagrugzakken? Raak ik niet ver achterop bij Luciano; of omgekeerd? Wat gaat het weer doen? Hoe houden we ons de waakhonden van de nomaden van het lijf? En wanneer ik me die dingen niet afvraag, voel ik mijn zere voeten.

We lopen.

We bereiken de Mekongbron bij Mount Guosongmucha. Lager gelegen dan de Jifu-bron, en de riviertak die hier begint is korter dan de Gaodepu die ontspringt bij Jifu. Maar hij is dramatischer, de gletsjers zijn indrukwekkender en de waterstroom is groter en veel krachtiger.

Mekong expedition – July 11

Not a day as planned.

We pass a small group of picnicking Tibetan nomads. They have bought provisions in Zaduo and are on their way to their grazing lands in the valley of the Gaodepu. That is the longest source river of the Zayaqu, and so of the Mekong. Where the Gaodepu originates, the Mekong originates. We were to visit Zaxiqiwa first but decide to travel together with these people and their two cars.

The road turns into a trail, or less than a trail. Every now and then a car gets stuck. Then there is pushing or towing – laughing, enthusiastically. Sometimes it seems clumsy, with a car sinking only deeper in the bog. Once it takes an hour and a half. But in the end we always move on.

Striking T-shirt of the youngest driver. No wall for him. He is living in one of the freest spaces on earth.

‘Famous band, famous album’, I try to explain. But he has no idea. Let alone of complicated western associations with settlement programs of the Chinese government, that house nomads in new permanent villages and put an end to their traditional way of living out on the grasslands with their yaks. A measure to protect the soil and the environment according to some, a measure to better control the people according to others.

No wall for him. But what will the future hold?

For the first time we pitch Luciano’s small tent of Swiss brand H. ‘The Rolls Royce among tents’, he says, ‘even 12 years ago it cost a thousand dollars’. At midnight another terrible hailstorm. Nothing to do but sit up straight in a sleeping bag and wait what will happen. To my surprise the tent holds out. Then water starts leaking through the bottom and I am not surprised anymore. ‘Oh well, it is getting older and I didn’t use it for a few years’.

Ahh, this was the view of the day, of the Tuo Ji tributary (from right) joining the Mekong.